Electrical Engineers develop LED ’Magic Wands’

Engineers from the University of Bristol have developed illuminating 'magic wands' that work by picking up radio signals from mobile devices. The wands, to be showcased on BBC's Bang Goes the Theory [16 April], visualise how radio waves bounce around a city. Researchers from the University's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering have been working with the BBC to see if they could find a way of showing how radio signals travel to and from your mobile phone. The Bristol team, led by Professor Andrew Nix , Naim Dahnoun and Mr Denys Berkovskyy, made three LED Wands that work by allowing radio frequency signal levels from Wi-Fi, cellular or FM radio to be sent to the Wand using Bluetooth. This information is then visualised using a microcontroller which illuminates a two-metre strip of LED lights. Naim Dahnoun said: "Here's the cool bit, if you put a camera on a long exposure and then walk around with the wand you get to see a bright graph of the radio signals in your local environment." Using the University's Communication Systems & Network Group's radio modelling technology - ProPhecy, which has the ability to consider every 3D building, tree and hill over an area of more than 140 square kilometres, the team were able to predict how bright the LED Wand would glow at a number of points in central London. The work for the 'wireless edition' of the BBC programme continues its investigation into how life surrounded by wireless signals affects us by exploring how microwave ovens interfere with Wi-Fi signals in the home.