qupada

it's essentially 2 PCI Express x1 lanes and USB 2.0

Sometimes there's only a single PCIe lane though. And as you say, that's not a x2 but explicitly two x1s.

No WiFi card needs the bandwidth (yet), at PCIe 3 speeds you've got around 7.8Gbps for a x1, and PCIe 4 double that.

The Coral comes in a "dual" version for exactly this reason (https://coral.ai/products/m2-accelerator-dual-edgetpu/) you just have to be very sure the slot you're putting it in is actually delivering two PCIe connections.

Also for bonus fun, most WiFi/BT cards use the PCIe interface for the WiFi and USB for the Bluetooth.

It sounds like you're thinking of LoRa, another 900MHz radio protocol.

LoRa has similar bandwidth to Zigbee (125kbps), and as you say is designed for low-power devices running on battery. I have PIR motion sensors at home which have used only around a third of their battery after 2 years.

Security cameras seems to be a large target market for HaLow though, where you need a couple of megabits at a few hundred metres.

My last laptop (owned from 2013-2020) had an NFC reader under the touchpad.

I managed - exactly once - to get my phone to send a file to it using Beam. Did everything exactly as expected; initiated the transfer by NFC and sent the file over Bluetooth.

I could never repeat the experiment. Once, and only once.

Thanks, not hungry anymore.