Abstract
This paper introduces the concept of synchronous user operation, a user interface technique for establishing spontaneous network connections between digital devices. This concept has been implemented in the “SyncTap system”, which allows a user to establish device connections through synchronous button operations. When the user wants to connect two devices, she synchronously presses and releases the “connection” buttons on both devices. Then, multicast packets containing button press and release timing information are sent through the network. By comparing this timing information with locally recorded information, the devices can correctly identify each other. This scheme is simple but scalable because it can detect and handle simultaneous overlapping connection requests. It can also be used to establish secure connections by exchanging public keys. This paper describes the principle, the protocol, and various applications in the domain of ubiquitous computing.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Normally, wireless broadcast packets are processed in the wireless device driver and it is not possible for applications to send and receive these packets. We modified the existing wireless device driver [11] to allow applications to send and receive broadcast packets without establishing a wireless connection.
Some tablet PCs have physical “hot” buttons, which often act as an “Escape” key. In this case, these hot buttons can also be used as a SyncTap button.
References
Rekimoto J, Ayatsuka Y, Kohno M, Oba H (2003) Proximal interactions: a direct manipulation technique for wireless networking. In: Proceedings of the 9th IFIP TC13 international conference on human-computer interaction (INTERACT 2003), Zurich, Switzerland, September 2003
Swindells C, Inkpen KM, Dill JC, Tory M (2003) That one there! Pointing to establish device identity. In: Proceedings of the 15th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology (UIST 2002), Paris, France. ACM Press, pp 151–160
Rekimoto J, Ayatsuka Y, Kohno M (2003) SyncTap: an interaction technique for mobile networking. In: Chittaro L (ed) Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services (Mobile HCI 2003), Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, LNCS 2795, pp 104–115
Rekimoto J, Saitoh M (1999) Augmented surfaces: a spatially continuous workspace for hybrid computing environments. In: Proceedings of the ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ‘99), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 1999, pp 378–385
Want R, Fishkin KP, Gujar A, Harrison BL (1999) Bridging physical and virtual worlds with electronic tags. In: Proceedings of the ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ‘99), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 1999, pp 370–377
Tandler P, Prante T, Müller-Tomfelde C, Streitz N, Steinmetz R (2001) ConnecTables: dynamic coupling of displays for the flexible creation of shared workspaces. In: Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology (UIST 2001), Orlando, Florida, November 2001
Zero Configuration Networking: http://www.zeroconf.org
Holmquist L, Mattern F, Schiele B, Alahuhta P, Beigl M, Gellersen H (2001) Smart-Its Friends: a technique for users to easily establish connections between smart artefacts. In: Ubicomp 2001, Atlanta, Georgia, September/October 2001. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 116–122
Hinckley K (2003) Synchronous gestures for multiple users and computers. In: Proceedings of the 16th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology (UIST 2003), Vancouver, Canada, November 2003
Diffie W, Hellman ME (1976) New directions in cryptography. IEEE T Inform Theory 22:644–654
Jouni Malinen. Host ap driver for intersil prism2/2.5/3 and WPA suppicant: http://hostap.epitest.fi/
Schilit B, Adams N, Want R (1994) Context-aware computing applications. In: Proceedings of the IEEE workshop on mobile computing systems and applications, December 1994, pp 85–90
Bahl P, Padmanabhan V (2000) RADAR: an in-building RF-based user location and tracking system. In: Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2000, Tel-Aviv, Israel, March 2000, pp 775–784
Rekimoto J (1997) Pick-and-Drop: a direct manipulation technique for multiple computer environments. In: Proceedings of the 10th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology (UIST ‘97), Banff, Alberta, Canada, October 1997, pp 31–39
Holland S, Oppenheim D (1999) Direct combination. In: Proceedings of the ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ‘99), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 1999, pp 262–269
Acknowledgements
I thank Michimune Kohno and Yuji Ayatsuka for their thoughtful discussions with me on the idea of synchronous operations.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rekimoto, J. SyncTap: synchronous user operation for spontaneous network connection. Pers Ubiquit Comput 8, 126–134 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-004-0262-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-004-0262-2