Getting rid of cables isn't easy to do

[Gservo]

BEHIND THE SCENES -

How far can wireless technology take you? If I look behind my desk, I
see a mass of wires that is nothing short of painful to behold. On my
main machine, I have two monitors set up, an external USB CD-RW drive,
two speakers, a subwoofer, a couple of network cards, a PDA cradle, a
soundboard, keyboard, mouse, and printer.

Let's lay that down in terms of actual cables:

Speakers - 4 (two each: power, line audio)
Subwoofer - 3 (power, left and right audio out)
Monitor 1 - 2 (power, video)
Monitor 2 - 2 (power, video)
Network connections - 2 (local network, external network)
CD-RW - 2 (USB, power)
Printer - 2 (parallel, power)
Soundcard - 2 (line out, mic)
PDA cradle - 2 (USB, power)
Keyboard - 1
Mouse - 1
Main PC - 1 (power cable; the rest are counted already)

That's a total of 24 cables that make the backside of my desk look
like a mess and that collect all kinds of dust. Why do I need all of
these cables? Of course, we need power cables today, but many of the
other interfaces could be changed to wireless interfaces. If we go to
a scenario where everything is wireless, we could cut down that cable
count.

In a fully wireless world (except for power) we'd have:

Speakers - 2 (power, wireless audio receiver)
Subwoofer - 1 (power, wireless audio receiver)
Monitor 1 - 1 (power, wireless video)
Monitor 2 - 1 (power, wireless video)
Network connections - 0 (2 wireless connections)
CD-RW - 1 (power, wireless data connection)
Printer - 1 (power, wireless data connection)
Soundcard - 1 (power to mic, wireless audio out)
PDA cradle - 1 (power, wireless data)
Keyboard - 1
Mouse - 1
Main PC - 1 (power)

If you add that up you get only 12 cables. That's certainly an
improvement. I could, of course, move the CD-RW into my PC to get rid
of that. Also, there are wireless mice/keyboards, but then you have to
deal with batteries.

One way to eliminate cables is to use a laptop, but that doesn't solve
everything. It just moves the mouse, keyboard, audio system, monitor,
and CD-RW internally. If you want a nice big keyboard, a good mouse,
good audio, and dual monitors, you will still have cables.

Even moving simple audio and video to wireless has a lot of security
issues. What if someone intercepts your audio or video and records it?
Certainly there will have to be a lot of thought about security if
those connections are ever to gain widespread acceptance.

Wireless networking is picking up steam, and maybe someday we can
eliminate some of these other cables. The power issue is a big problem
as far as cabling is concerned, but maybe over time we can figure that
out as well.

[BigBen]

I know what you mean :D

Regards

[mackerel]

Isn't Bluetooth intended to replace short range low bandwidth connections? Keyboard, mouse, and PDA are obvious candidates.

For networking, you want a bit more bandwidth so you'd use 802.11b and later the "a" version for yet more bandwidth. Higher bandwidth devices could appear as devices on your network too, like multi-channel sound devices. All sent digitally, so you don't have that analog stuff flying around collecting interference.

I don't think security is a significant problem. Assuming everything is done in the digital domain then you can choose one or more of the many encryption schemes possible. For example, when was the last time you worried about someone listening to your GSM call?

What are the barriers? I'd say at this time it's cost and maturity. A wireless thingy will cost you more than a corded one, so unless you have good reason to go cordless most people would save the money. And the maturity will improve with time, as more ways of using technology appear.

Wireless power transfer would be the most interesting one...