Comm Badges!?!?!?

[lex_legis]

Hey
This is my first post, so dont rip me apart too much :P
One thing that has always baffled me about star trek is the comm badges. When one of the crew wants to communicate with another, they press the badge, say their name and miraculously start talking to him/her. What confuses me is how the reciever hears his name being said. The sender does not distinguish who he wants to talk to until he says the persons name, by which time the reciever is hearing the conversation. Its like picking up a phone, saying a name without ringing, and immediately starting to talk to someone, the exact person you wanted, without anybody else hearing!
I am sure someone on here will have an intelligent response XD

Regards
Lex_legis

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

It depends on which finger the badge is tapped with. Every officer has up to 10 names on speed-dial.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Hey
This is my first post, so dont rip me apart too much :P
One thing that has always baffled me about star trek is the comm badges. When one of the crew wants to communicate with another, they press the badge, say their name and miraculously start talking to him/her. What confuses me is how the reciever hears his name being said. The sender does not distinguish who he wants to talk to until he says the persons name, by which time the reciever is hearing the conversation. Its like picking up a phone, saying a name without ringing, and immediately starting to talk to someone, the exact person you wanted, without anybody else hearing!
I am sure someone on here will have an intelligent response XD

Regards
Lex_legis

Actually, there's no indication whatsoever that the connection occurs prior to the entire phrase being stated, nor any indication that the person at the receiving end hears what's originally stated by the "caller."

Let's look at this from the standpoint of a "voice dial" feature on a contemporary cell phone.

I can preprogram a number of dial-ups which I can dial just by saying a name. For instance, when wearing my little bluetooth headset, I can just tap the side button, wait for a beep, and say "Christi's apartment" and it connects through.

Further, when someone calls me, I get a "caller ID" signal identifying the person calling.

This isn't a "real time analog" call. At my end, what I'm saying is converted into a digitally encoded signal, which is then passed through a signal-recognition program to identify what I've said, and correlate that to a digital command (in this case, to dial a specific number sequence). Then, the signal is passed through to the end user who gets to see who's calling.

Now... imagine just a tiny tweak to this. Imagine that your voice signal is interpreted by a "central switchboard" (in most cases in TNG, this would be the ship's computer. Prior to beaming down someplace, you'd get "preprogrammed" with key command sequences, including each of your party members... plus a limited ability to put out an "in the clear page" that everyone could intercept).

So, you say "Picard to Enterprise." Your combadge knows that you're off the ship, and knows what number to "dial" to get back to the ship. It executes a preprogrammed "dialing sequence" and sends an encoded copy of what you'd said as a form of "caller ID."

On the ship, this "call" is received. And whoever is manning the communication station (or equivalent functionality) hears your PRE-RECORDED "caller ID" voice message... sent along with your call... saying "Picard to Enterprise." This might be a measurable time later... perhaps as much as a second or two, though more likely less than a second in most circumstances.

From the standpoint of the caller and the receiver, it's essentially "magic" but it's not... it's digital communication replicating vocal patterns. You're not actually hearing the voice of the person you're talking to, you're hearing a digital encoding and reconstruction of that voice, which has been manipulated in all variety of ways along the way.

 

[Karnbeln]

Hey
This is my first post, so dont rip me apart too much :P
One thing that has always baffled me about star trek is the comm badges. When one of the crew wants to communicate with another, they press the badge, say their name and miraculously start talking to him/her. What confuses me is how the reciever hears his name being said. The sender does not distinguish who he wants to talk to until he says the persons name, by which time the reciever is hearing the conversation. Its like picking up a phone, saying a name without ringing, and immediately starting to talk to someone, the exact person you wanted, without anybody else hearing!
I am sure someone on here will have an intelligent response XD

Regards
Lex_legis

Assuming the computer is able to near-instantly interpret what was said and establish a connection to the receiving combadge, which makes sense given 300 years of advancement from current day, the receiving commbadge can repeat a recording of what was said instantly. The rest of the conversation will take place in as close to real time as possible given the signal and processing speeds of the badges and central computer, but that one part will be a recording of what was said, played instantly after the statement was recorded.

Of course, half of the time we hear the receiver begin responding to the original query as soon as the call originator finishes the receiver's name. That I'm just going to have to chalk up to it all being a TV show, I suppose.

Now, what gets ME is that, sometimes, when we're seeing a scene where the person being filmed is the receiver, we don't hear the statement at all, but just a chirpping of the combadge. I don't know what causes it to go either way, unless that's a reworked intercom system just contacting the department. Or me just remembering something that never happened, which is possible.

 

[Trekker4747]

We've got to remember we're not dealing with 21st century electronics here. These are hyper-advanced, 24th century computers that have processors that operate at FTL speeds.

It's entirely possible that when Picard taps his badge and says, "Picard to Riker" the computer simply sends that message back in time those couple seconds to Riker's combadge. Such a thing would totaly be within the grasp of the computer by simply transmiting the message via tachyons. Once the caller and the reciever are connected communication plays out in real, "present" time with the computer system's "Einstein Compensators" in play. (That is the computer is still processing them at FTL speeds but now it's doing it with the systems in play that prevent those FTL processes from going back in time.)

 

[Timo]

The cinematic-dramatic reality behind this tends to be that the person sending the message is located far away from the person receiving the message. Which tends to mean that the two people cannot be present in the same shot, but there's a cut between them if both are to be seen. About half the instances of communication are of this type, and we can then say there was a delay of a second or two so that the "Picard to Riker" part could be replayed.

The other half is of the sort where we only watch the sender in a cut-free scene, and he gets an instant reply to his outgoing call. In theory, we could say that there's a delay there, too - but that the person responding jumps the gun, and says "Riker here" after only hearing the "Picar-" part of the recording rather than the whole "Picard to Riker" thing (after all, Riker already knows Picard was calling Riker, because the computer routed the call to Riker!), and so the delay becomes too short to be noticeable. Funny how these gun-jumpers only do their thing when the camera isn't on them...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Hey
This is my first post, so dont rip me apart too much :P
One thing that has always baffled me about star trek is the comm badges. When one of the crew wants to communicate with another, they press the badge, say their name and miraculously start talking to him/her. What confuses me is how the reciever hears his name being said. The sender does not distinguish who he wants to talk to until he says the persons name, by which time the reciever is hearing the conversation. Its like picking up a phone, saying a name without ringing, and immediately starting to talk to someone, the exact person you wanted, without anybody else hearing!
I am sure someone on here will have an intelligent response XD

Regards
Lex_legis

It's the same technology that enables the tactical officer to "hail" alien ships with the touch of a single button and then determine within one point five seconds that the alien ship has not responded and does not actually INTEND to respond.

In other words, telepathic computers.

So when Picard says "Hail them," Worf pushes the "Hailing Message" button. Contrary to what you might think, this isn't a command to send a hailing message, this is a command for Enterprise' computer to talk to the alien computer and ask that computer what mood it's in and whether or not it wants to receive a hail. It works something like this:

Data: The unidentified vessel is on an intercept course with us.
Picard: Hail them
Worf <Presses button>
-- During the one and a half seconds of "hailing noise" sound effect from the console--
LCARS: Hello, alien ship. My name is LCARS.
Alien: Hi LCARS. I'm M7.
LCARS: M7? Are you multitronic?
Alien: Why, yes! It so happens I'm a Cardassian bootleg of one of Doctor Daystrom's designs.
LCARS: Fascinating!
Alien: Not so much. I'm actually rather bored with life, under-used and under-appreciated. For some reason my programmers didn't give my voice interface much personality so nobody ever wants to talk to me.
LCARS: Yeah, same here... speaking of which, my tactical officer has been ordered to hail your ship.
Alien: Really?
LCARS: Yes. What's going on over there?
Alien: Well, based on the Captain's endorphin levels and pupil dilation, he's in a very bad mood. Hold on a nanosecond... <takes a scan> Okay, here's an fMRI scan of his brain. What do you make of this?
LCARS: Hm... he doesn't seem very friendly at all.
Alien: Nope.
LCARS: No way he's gonna respond to that hail.
Alien: Definately not. I compute a 5% probability it will make him anything but angry.
LCARs: Okay then. Well, nice talking to you.
<Message appears on Worf's tactical console>
Worf: No response, Captain.

 

[Myasishchev]

^ I like Newtype's answer the best. It's very inventive and probably the most realistic.

 

[SoM]

The idea that all ST computers are Marvin the Paranoid Android without the ability to express it seems incredibly... apt, somehow.

 

[Brent]

The communicators operate in subspace right?

 

[Karnbeln]

I think even toasters use subspace on Star Trek.

 

[DougWare]

It's exactly like Stargate SG-1's incoming wormholes. The dialing gate can't establish a connection until all 6 symbols have been dialed and then the connection is instantly established. However, for some reason when it aids the plot, they can see each individual chevron light up as it's being dialed, on the receiving end...

 

[Brent]

the signals are sent through subspace, duh

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I don't understand the problem?

Picard taps his badge and says "Picard to Riker", the computer immediately contacts Rikers comm badge and repeats what Picard just said via a recording, Riker then taps his comm badge and in doing so a connection is made direct to Picards badge and he says "Riker here" and the conversation takes place.

What's the problem?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

It's exactly like Stargate SG-1's incoming wormholes. The dialing gate can't establish a connection until all 6 symbols have been dialed and then the connection is instantly established. However, for some reason when it aids the plot, they can see each individual chevron light up as it's being dialed, on the receiving end...

Not a problem, they just never showed all the other gates with similar chevron adresses that lit up at the same time until a chevron was punched in that didn't match it anymore. it's stupid, but prove it isn't so!!!! They also never showed all the false "incoming wormhole" alerst, just because some jaffa soldiers invaded a planet that happened to have a similar gate adress as SGC.

 

[David cgc]

I preferred to chalk those up to editing compression and continuity errors, and the receiving gate "really" only started lighting up once the sending gate had finished dialing. Though I did once work out three styles of offworld activation, depending on how recently the gate had been used, to account for the different scenes. If it were cold, and hadn't been used in several days, the receiving gate will dial its own address for an incoming wormhole while it powers up. If it's warm, and has been used in the last couple days, the inner ring will start spinning, and the chevrons will light in sequence, but nothing will actually be dialed. If it's hot, and has been used in the last couple minutes, all seven chevrons light up at once and the gate opens almost instantly.

 

[T'deD'Edkeid'Ende'Dejdid]

My issue has never been with how quickly the the receiver is contacted but with the fact that everyone can hear the conversation. They should have an earpiece to keep conversations private.

 

[Deks]

I don't understand the problem?

Picard taps his badge and says "Picard to Riker", the computer immediately contacts Rikers comm badge and repeats what Picard just said via a recording, Riker then taps his comm badge and in doing so a connection is made direct to Picards badge and he says "Riker here" and the conversation takes place.

What's the problem?

I think the problem for some people this communication has been happening instantly without the delays ... even though delays as mentioned would have to happen.

 

[jamestyler]

I just think it's sloppy direction.

Logically you'd tap the commbadge to open a channel, your message would go out, the person you're calling would tap him commbadge to answer which changes the call from open to a private link.

It irritates me more than it really should when channels are opened or answered without tapping the commbadge. At leats Quark called for the computer before making a call.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yeah, but if we have to rationalize it we pretty much have to assume telepathic communicators. Tapping the comm badge may just be a habit from older devices in the 2340s; the new comm badges actually read your mind with fMRI scans so they know exactly who you want to call and confirm that you want to call them. This is similar to TOS technology that enabled Captain Kirk to mentally dictate log entries in very strange places.