A beeper-app for your cell phone
Suppose
your cell phone has an app that sends out a shrill, recognizable whistle every
hour for two seconds or something like that. It could be handy if you ever get
caught under a lot of debris from a falling building. You would obviously like to
be able to keep it turned off most of the time, but then you have to hope that
if you get caught in an earthquake, you are able to reach for your phone and
turn the app on!
Or perhaps,
the app can be programmed to sense that signals from cell phone towers have
stopped coming and turn the beeper-app on. It would act as a kind of black box for the
individual.
As an
additional feature, you can make the whistle a frequency-modulated signal
carrying your cell phone number or a contact number of someone who is to be contacted.
If the rescue team carries a cell phone equipped with the same app, it could
decode the signal from the buried phone and display it.
Skiers and
hikers could also use this app. In addition to an audible whistle, the app
could send text messages that can be picked up by some specialized equipment
that rescue teams could carry. The design of such equipment is itself an
interesting project; it would have to work in the absence of normal coverage by
a cellular network. Can one use microcell equipment for this purpose? It is worth investigating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcell
The European Commission has co-funded a project for cell-phone assisted rescue work:
You may also find the following item interesting:
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