TouchStone Theories Confirmed

February 21st, 2011

Precentral.net read through the initial TouchStone theory post I put up and asked HP about my theories. As they posted in this article on the site, HP confirmed the identification to work as I assumed.

The new TouchStones will use the 3.1 MHz frequency to pass a unique key to the new WebOS phones, which will enable them to know where it is docked. You will obviously have to tell the phone where each dock is located the first time you use it. Derek did a great job translating my geek speak into general WebOS fan digestible content.

Only a few errors with the wording in the document. He refers to a coil for each frequency. I believe that both frequencies will use the same coil. It is resonant on both the communication frequency (3.1 MHz) and the charging frequency (118.5 KHz), so there is no reason to add extra hardware to the mix. This isn't really important to the end user, but just trying to be technically correct.

Some have speculated that this 3.1 MHz frequency will allow the TouchStone to have a data USB cable. I don't think this is possible. The data rate on a 3.1 MHz carrier is very low. The best that could be emulated is an old style serial connection (think phone line modem speeds). Nothing even close to the speed of even USB 1.0. It will most likely only be a method of establishing the connection via Bluetooth for major data transfer. Otherwise, it will just be used to exchange fairly short messages, like the URL example shown during the Feb. 9th event.

Small capacitor hidden inside larger one.

This is a picture of a capacitor from a Chinese company, after being cut open. Inside, it is just a small capacitor. There are two problems with this. First, capacitors are rated with two values: Working Voltage and Capacitance.  The most important is the working voltage. On the large cap, it is listed as 50V. Notice the smaller cap is 35V. When a capacitor is submitted to over voltage for a long period of time, the dielectrics (the insulator between the two sides of the capacitor) in the capacitor break down and it explodes. Yee-haw. The capacity issue is a little less troubling. You bought 6800uF, but were only given 2200uF. You got a capacitor that is 1/3 of what you thought it was. These are most commonly used in power supply filters and the device it is used in will be subject to the power line frequency hum, do to poor filtering. The business model on the company is genius. By capacitors, put them in a pretty case, sell for more money. A quick search shown retail cost of the small capacitor at about $1.50. The large one, near $3.00. Genius. Until power supply capacitors start exploding.