So, what is a Poken, really? I mean: how do they work?

Well, here are the two versions I know:

The left one is the Poken that was inside my Lift09 badge. It doesn’t look like a production model and the date on the edge says “02.02.2009″. The “cute” Pokens have a very different layout. If you want to open one yourself, here is a YouTube video that shows how.

So, what is all this? First you’ll notice the USB port. Also clearly visible is the coil (the white round thing) that should point in the direction you want to high four the other Pokens. The Lift model does not have a button for ghost mode etc. while on the cute model it’s inside the coil ring.

The heart of it all seems to be a 18F14k50 chip from Microchip Technology. But that’s where the easy insights end. As Stéphane hinted in his Google TechTalk video, no obvious or known RFID or wireless chips. The coil hints to something like induction but I have to admit I’m not much of an hardware guy. I will rather poke at the software side of things in the next couple of days and see what’s going on there. But if somebody knows a bit more what’s there, please write it up and link it in the comments, thanks!

Tags: Hardware, inside, poken

This entry was posted on Sonntag, März 8th, 2009 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.