Picard to Enterprise – remember this phrase? Well, if you are a Trekkie, you are sure to remember as any member of the crew just touched a badge attached to the chest of their uniform to contact any other member, or the ship itself when in an away team. Communicator badges were many people’s dream until today – now a company called OnBeep has transformed it into reality.
OnBeep’s Onyx communicator badge looks and works like the real deal. It is not connected to a Star Trek ship’s internal communication network – it connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth. Users of the new communicator badge can add other Onyx users to their network, and communicate with them quickly, with just a press of a button on the badge.
Push to talk communicators have been around for quite some time. A company called Nextel has launched a nationwide solution in the late 1990s, turning cellphones into a long range walkie talkie. Texting and unlimited minutes mobile plans have killed push-to-talk technology, and Sprint has discontinued the Nextel brand in 2013. Instant voice communication made a short comeback recently, though. Apple has introduced voice messaging in its iMessage, and WhatsApp (currently owned by social giant Facebook) added voice messaging to its texting app – and it seems to work for its users. From here to Onyx there was just one step – and it has been taken.
“Cell phones are terrible for short messages and real-time communication, because they take you out of moment,” OnBeep founder Jesse Robbins said. Onyx, in turn, allows its users to communicate without missing a step, without the need to look down on their phones to place calls or respond to text messages. Besides, Onyx has “countless other uses”, Robbins said, envisioning instant communication at home, at work and in many other aspects of our everyday lives.
Onyx can be pre-ordered at the OnBeep website, for $99 apiece, or $195 for a pair. It’s cheap enough to make it attractive, but also expensive enough to be appealing for those who really want to use it. Still… Star Trek communicator badges! How cool is that?