smart homes need a way to protect wireless communication between devices: paint

Wireless screening paint

Wanna build a smart-home? You have all the ingredients? A central server managing the lights, the tv, the stereo, the blinds, the thermostat, the solar panels on the roof, the LCD displays in every room and who knows what else? I suspect you want a wifi-capable cordless phone that can do skype? Then I am sure you exchange music, contacts and other files between your smartphone and your laptop. Or perhaps use that eye-fi card in your camera to download photos to your digital album. You don’t want all those files traveling wirelessly over your home network to be seen by others, do you?.

That’s why a team of researchers from the University of Tokyo has developed a paint that can prevent this. It uses an aluminum-iron oxide that resonates around the frequencies used by Wi-Fi, not only up to 50Ghz as of the present solutions but also about 4 times above that, being able to deal with the 100Ghz+ frequency used by modern wireless to communicate.

The paint should be relatively cheap to manufacture, around $14 per kilogram, which sounds good compared to the 4+ figure your neighbour might ask for your naughty pictures.

I am also expecting a transparent coating you can apply on windows as it is another way the signals can leave your home. Or a plastic sheet that can do that. This may be required for all our future homes.

(sources here and here)

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