Silicon Updates: Kirlian Device – The Device that Visualizes Wi-Fi signals around you

Always, we are surrounded by some radiation or the other – mobile signals, Wi-Fi signal, FM signals etc. In a metro city, we are a lot surrounded by these signals. Just imagine that we can visualize these signals/radiations around us. Luis Hernan from Newcastle University has designed a device that visualizes these signals. Ironically, the device enables us to visualize only the Wi-Fi signals.

Wi-Fi Visualization by Digital Ethereal

Kirlian Device is the device that was developed by Luis that turns the internet signals into vibrant LED-based visualizations. Luis is a PhD candidate with the Architecture and Interaction Design Group. Previously, a blogger Nickolay Lamm, has imagined the geometry of the Wi-Fi signals, as if they belong to the visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Here are the images by Nickolay from his imagination.

 

Nickolay Lamm Imagination of Wi-Fi Signals at different locations

Unlike Nick’s imagination, the Kirlian Device is capable of turning real data into visuals. Digging little more, the Kirlian Device was developed by Digital Ethereal, the company owned by Hernan. Kirlian gadget translates the Wi-Fi signals that it captures with and LED panel, based upon the signal strength. The gadget displays red colour for high intensity signals and blue for low intensity signals.

Due to the brightness of the device, my figure is ghosted away in the process. In some pictures you can see my feet or even my blurred head underneath the light strikes. I believe our interaction with this landscape of electromagnetic signals…can be characterized in the same terms as that with ghosts and spectra. They both are paradoxical entities; whose untypical substance allows them to be an invisible presence. In the same way, they undergo a process of gradual substantiation to become temporarily available to perception. Finally, they both haunt us. – Hernan, in an interview with Discovery.

Hernan compares his work of Wi-Fi signal visualization with the visualization of ghosts. Hernan’s accomplishment is based upon the work from Arnall, Knutsen and Martinussen from the Touch Research project. They have introduced long-exposure and Received Strength Signal Indicator (RSSI) sensors to visualize and spatialize Wi-Fi networks Lightpainting WiFi.

Wi-Fi visualizations by Kirlian Device

On the other hand, Hernan has also developed a mobile app – Kirlian Device mobile app that indicates the Wi-Fi signal strength in the app. It indicates the strength of the signal just by displaying relevant colour upon the screen; red being high intensity signal and blue being low intensity signal. 

Image courtesy: Digital Ethereal