Flucard

Flucard is a wireless SD card that is used primarily with digital cameras. The Flucard is manufactured by Trek 2000 International, which is the Singaporean company that invented the ThumbDrive technology.^[1]

Features

The Flucard is compatible with any device with an SD host slot. Once the Flucard is plugged into the device, the device gains Wi-Fi functionality and will be able to wirelessly transmit files (i.e. photos and videos) to other Wi-Fi enabled devices. The Flucard also allows users to wirelessly upload files from the host devices to an online Flucard Portal or an alternative server of choice.

History

In 2005, Henn Tan, the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Trek 2000 International, was on an overseas trip with his family in China. On the third day of the tour, Tan's daughter's camera was found missing. Tan would later recount that it was not so much the cost of the equipment but the loss of three day's worth of invaluable memories that affected him. Out of this ordeal, however, came the idea for a new product.^[2] Tan saw the potential for a better way to quickly and effectively store and protect such data on-the-go. When he got back to Singapore, Tan committed the company's Research and Development team to create an "intelligent" SD card that could wirelessly transmit files.

It was only by 2008 that the Flucard started to materialise. The name "Flucard" was purportedly chosen as Tan believes that the adoption of the Flucard would spread like a contagious flu, eventually displacing the standard SD card. Notably, one of Trek's previous invention, the ThumbDrive, was the disruptive technology that replaced the floppy disk as the medium-of-choice for digital storage.^[3]

In 2010, Trek, together with its long-time partner, Toshiba jointly launched the forum "Standard Promotion Forum for Memory Cards Embedding Wireless LAN" * to promote the adoption of the Flucard.^[4]

Specifications^[5]

• Capacity:8GB
• SD Interface: SD memory Card Physical Layer Version 2.00
• Wireless Interface: 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi technology
• Wireless Security: WEP 64/128, WPA,WPA2
• Wireless Range: Camera to Wi-Fi Devices: 20m (Typical) ; Camera to Camera: up to 6 m (Camera model applies)
• Dimension/ Weight: 32mm (L) x 24mm (W) x 2.1mm (H) / 4g
• Antenna: Internal
• Buzzer: In-built Buzzer
• SD performance:Class 6 (Sequential Write: no less than 6 MBytes/s)
• Wireless performance: Max connection rate: 65 Mbit/s ; Transfer speed: up to 2 MBytes/s

Supporting Applications^[6]

See also

• Pentax FluCard
• Eye-Fi, a similar Wi-Fi SD card
• Transcend Wi-Fi, a similar Wi-Fi SD card
• Toshiba FlashAir, a similar Wi-Fi SD card
• LZeal ez Share, a similar Wi-Fi SD card
• PQI Air Card, a similar Wi-Fi SD card
• PHS CF, a PHS wireless modem technology based on CompactFlash cards

References