Description

About TF Channel (v2.1)

TF Channel is an Internet-based communication technology that securely connects various locations through TF Channel terminals. Example locations where TF Channel terminals can be installed include family living rooms, assisted living apartments, hospital patient rooms, industry labs, and offices. In all these use cases TF Channel emphasizes security, privacy and ease of use. The idea behind TF Channel is to virtually remove walls and distances between remote working or living spaces. The mission of TF Channel technology is to create private virtual spaces that seamlessly connect the different physical spaces of individual families or organizations together. The resulting private and secure virtual spaces can consequently bring physically separated members of families or organizations closer, resulting in better care, interaction and collaboration.

With the current release, TF Channel provides the following services to users through its terminals:

1. Quick video calls between two or more terminals. All calls are drop-in, e.g., calls go through instantly requiring no manual input.
2. Call from authorized mobile phone to TF Channel terminal is also supported.
3. Messages in the forms of text, image and video can be created or recorded at a terminal or mobile phone and posted to other terminals.
4. Terminals can forward posts to each other or delete posts that they have received.
5. Terminals can specify the expiration time for received posts. Expired posts are removed automatically from the terminals.
6. Terminals play back multimedia posts automatically without the need of any intervention.
7. Terminals notify users the arrivals of new posts.
8. Terminals are divided into separate private groups. Each group is managed by a controller, which has full access to the terminals in the group. Connections between any terminals must be preauthorized through the controller.
9. Controller can remotely operate, monitor and configure the group terminals over Internet.
10. Users can post to terminals through emails, which also requires preauthorization.

TF Channel focuses on security. All the posts to terminals and connections with TF Channel are encrypted following industry standards for data security. TF Channel uses a two-factor authentication approach requiring all terminals to submit valid certificates before it can make connection with TF Channel. Therefore, it is suitable for use cases where information security is desired.

Furthermore, any connectivity between TF Channel terminals must be explicitly pre-authorized through the group controllers. TF Channel group sizes may vary from small to large. Each group, with minimum of 2 terminals, is self-governed and has a dedicated controller that controls all other display terminals in the group.

With this preauthorization-by-user requirement, TF Channel is completely secure from stranger calls. TF Channel users are protected from annoying spam calls experienced by regular phone users.

As a dedicated private communication system for families and small organizations, the drop-in call and auto playback features of TF Channel are designed specifically with elderly users in mind. TF Channel terminals are extremely simple to use involving only a few basic operations, such as browsing posted texts/pictures/videos or making video calls. For disabled elderly users, the experience of using a TF Channel terminal can be very much like that of watching TV. TF Channel is a user-friendly system that elderly users can access with ease.

We illustrate the use cases of TF Channel with the following example scenarios.

Example A – Family

Family A has two children who are currently out of town in college, and grandpa and grandma who live alone in a different city. The family uses a TF Channel group with 4 terminals. Two placed in the dorms with the college kids, one is placed in the grandpa/grandma’s kitchen, and one is placed in the family’s living room, which serves as the controller terminal of the group. The family is then fully connected even though they are separated geographically. Anyone in the family can use a terminal to connect to others any time. The family members can conveniently have one-to-one individual video calls or family conference calls. Anyone in the family can post privately and securely messages/pictures/videos to any of the terminals. The grandpa and grandma now feel fully integrated into family’s digital communication.

Example B – Assisted Living

Family B has an elder living in an assisted living facility. The facility uses TF Channel to connect families with the elders living in their facility. The facility placed one terminal in the elder’s living room, and one with Family B. The facility also assigns a dedicated caregiver who also has a terminal that serves as the controller of the group. The caregiver authorizes Family B’s terminal to have access only to the terminal in their elder’s living room. Now, Family B can check on their loved one anytime. Family B can also interact with the caregiver through TF Channel terminal, or even start a conference call with the caregiver and the elder at the same time. The caregiver can also use TF Channel to help the elder to make calls back to Family B. Now the family can be constantly engaged in providing quality care to their loved one with the assistance of a professional caregiver.

Example C – Hospital

Hospital C has installed TF Channel’s regular terminals in its patient rooms and controller terminals at the nurse stations. With these terminals, nurses can periodically call into the patient rooms to check on their patients’ conditions, and patients can also call the nurse station with a simple button click on the terminal screens. A nurse can post patient medicine plans or scheduled tests or personalized entertainment to the patient terminal. More importantly, Hospital C can also lend patient families TF Channel terminals temporarily, and through these terminals, families keep constant connection with their loved ones in hospitals.

Example D – Industry Lab

Organization D is a pharmaceutical company that has labs conducting experiments related to medicine development, which need to meet government biosafety regulations. Working in these types of labs, all personnel when entering the labs need to wear special personal protective equipment (PPE). These regulated conditions post big challenges for in-lab scientists to use either mobile phones or even regular landlines in the lab to communicate. It is extremely inconvenient and inefficient for the scientists to de-gown, take off all the PPE, and then put them back on again just because they need to go to next lab to check instrument readings, or pick up needed items or lab materials.  Organization D installed TF Channel terminals in its labs to simplify inter-lab communications, discussion, and information sharing, which facilitates smoother collaboration and improves lab productivity.

As a new TF Channel user, after you sign up for TF Channel through the purchasing of TF Channel Terminals from the website (tfchannel.com) for your family or organization, you will receive a set of specialized tablets. These are your TF Channel terminals. The minimum size of a TF Channel group composes 2 terminals with one as the controller and the other a regular (or display) terminal. You can always add more regular terminals to your TF Channel group as needed later.