I've been thinking about writing about Emergency Communications(EMCOMM) during the up and coming Zombie Apocalypse. It doesn't matter if you don’t believe in Zombie’s, because they might not be real but an apocalypse is possible. My writing on EMCOMM will be spread out since there are many avenues of technology that we can use for communication. For my first article I am going to focus on Wi-Fi direct communication between smartphones. The reason I decided to start off with this, is that there are over a billion smartphones out there in the wild world. This data was collected in November of 2012 so imagine there are many more now.
We've all seen Wi-Fi direct connection on our phones, but do we even know what its for or how to use it. According to Wikipedia Wi-FI direct “is a Wi-Fi standard that enables devices to connect easily with each other without requiring a wireless access point and to communicate at typical Wi-Fi speeds”. So one phone can connect to another phone without a wireless router, and do normal things that are done over Wi-Fi. What we are after is communication, and with Wi-Fi direct two smartphones are able to communicate without the need of any other device.
I didn’t want this article to turn into a review of various smartphone applications, therefore I chose two applications. One application is for voice communication and one for data communication, I tested them out made sure that they work as intended and will present them here. The first one is Wi-Fi Direct Walkie Talkie, the application is simple: you start it (on both phones), search for devices(each phone finds the other) and that's it you are connected. To talk you either press the volume up button or a on-screen button.
What about more discreet communication, for the moments that a text message would be better than audio. FireChat an application available both on Apple’s IOS and Google’s Android, this application does the same as the above mentioned one but instead of exchanging audio it exchanges text messages. Once again all of this is done directly from one phone to another without the need for wireless routers or access points.
There are many applications that are able to run using Wi-Fi direct protocol, these are just two of them. I hope that this article sort of peaked your appetite and made you want to search for more Wi-Fi enabled applications and even give them a try. For my next article I am going to be writing an article on MotoTalk and how it can be used for EMCOMM. If you do not know what MotoTalk is stay tuned for my next write up and you’ll have a bit of an understanding.
P.S.
I know my writing is not the greatest, I expect that there are various if not many grammar, spelling, syntax, and other types of mistakes. It’s not a post on the english language and its greatness, it’s a post on a Zombie Apocalypse scenario you can’t expect perfect english. If you want to make any type of comments go ahead, but keep warned I might ignore them all even the nice one.
THX