Things are not always what they might look like. For example, a LED light fixture might appear to be switched on when its actually being switched on and off more than 1000 times in one second!
Yes, science has yet another technological frontier for us. And this time, its gonna replace WiFi. Its called Visible Light Communications. Its a technology which uses LEDs in a light fixture to transfer data to and from your computer. The LEDs are switched on and off thousands of times in a second. This does not affect the light in the room as this is undetectable by human eyes. Off is binary ‘0’ and on is binary ‘1’. You have a VLC data card in your computer which has a photo diode capable of intercepting this flow of data. This data card is also capable of sending data back to the light fixtures which then passes it along to the network infrastructure.
This system saves about 30 to 80 percent of energy charges (savings from LED and probably electricity saved by removing the WiFi routers) which you can use to pay your internet bills.
The municipal office of the Minnesota city in the US is the first place where the systems have been installed by LVX systems, a Minnesota based startup.
Currently, the technology can transfer a maximum of 3 Mbps, which is good enough for sharing a home wireless connection.
