I have only seen iButton's "in the wild" in one use case - for tracking the nightly rounds of security guards in commercial buildings/industrial complexes. You've probably seem small round discs on the wall in office buildings (normally a round disc with a concentric ring); those are iButton terminals. The guards each have a keychain with an iButton, and as they do their rounds they press it on the terminal to record proof that they went to each terminal at the proper time. Obviously this is a use-case for NFC or a variety of other technologies but for some reason I've seen the iButton-based systems used in a half dozen buildings.
I remember thinking that some of the tracking features (temperature) of the button would be helpful in some situations. But the ring was the crazy model. Between these and smart cards, authentication was starting to look futuristic. I even remember getting a smart card reader from my credit card company. They thought it would make for more secure web transactions.
I’ve still seen some iButtons in the wild in odd places. Most recently, I saw them tracking car keys at dealerships. The last car I test drove had a key attached to a fob with an iButton. I was more excited by the iButton tracker than the car.
But I thought of it as an example of how long lasting some design decisions can really be. I’m sure someone designed this system 20-25 years ago and it is still in service today. I’m sure today it would be NFC. But now I’m thinking about what the iButton of 2050 will look like.
If I had to guess, it's probably because another Dallas Semi product, 1Wire, already gets used a lot for things like facilities, and so far as I can tell iButton seems to integrate OK into that whole ecosystem.
Trying to imagine some guy tapping the terminal with his belt buckle :)
What was electronic cash referring to in 1998?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash
> Chaum published the idea of anonymous electronic money in a 1983 paper; eCash software on the user's local computer stored money in a digital format, cryptographically signed by a bank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Nielsen_(usability_consu...
"took up an entire room and now I can carry more computer power on my finger"
Sure, but does it run Doom?
IIRC there was some coding that enabled each workstation to know where it was physically, so the security systems could know "User is signed into workstation X, and is requesting a move from workstation X to workstation Y, which is physically one meter away, so AOK to keep signed in."
songodongo•1mo ago