Hasta La Gadget!

Hothead Technologies and Kennesaw State University are currently testing an RFID-enabled helmet that tracks the body temperature of a player and promises to lessen dangerous instances of over heating.

In the last decade, companies have looked into developing systems to better measure player temperatures to catch those in danger of heat strokes, as they’ve led to unfortunate deaths.

The most high-profile player to die from over-heating in the NFL is Korey Stringer, an offensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings. He died in 2001, a day after collapsing from heatstroke during an especially hot and humid day practicing at his team’s training camp facility.

Younger players at the high school level have also died, and they all had the same symptoms: dizziness, body weakness, and heavy breathing. But the culture of football sometimes makes it hard to distinguish between tiredness and illness – players often practice for hours without a proper on-field check-up.

The HOT (heat observation technology) system from Hothead is betting that a real-time observation plan for players will make a difference. A tiny RFID transponder (with a thermal heat sensor) is placed inside the forehead area of the helmet and measures temperature. It’s supposed to handle intense collisions, which is key because the crown of the helmet is often used as a directional ‘spear’ to blast opponents.

The transponder (Range: 500 meters) sends the temperature of every player on the field to a secure PDA gadget on the sidelines, and seems to be packed with WinMo(see pic above). A green dot shows normal temperature, yellow shows a loss of connection, and red places the temperature of a player in danger at the top of the screen, setting off a loud signal as an alert.

The system also comes with a software database that helps coaches determine the trend for each player over time. This is expected to be especially helpful because some players have different heat threshold levels than others.

Athletes and their coaches have long been aware of the problems caused by over-heating. Recently, the American College of Sports Medicine said that players suffer heat strokes because they’re often not acclimated to the intense heat levels coaches subject them to, because of ‘the intensity/duration of practice,’ and even because of improperly ventilated uniforms.

The group has also called for better hydration of players, proper treatment (such as fluid replacement), and better knowledge of environmental conditions.

Hothead Technologies is looking into pushing this technology into other areas where heatstroke is a concern, like firefighting and the military. They company tested the equipment this past fall with a couple of high school teams, and we’re waiting for comment from the team Head Coach to hear about how accurately he was able to manage his players’ temperatures.

There’s no current price available for the system.

Check out a helmet with the RFID tag inside of it (on the side) after the jump:

Follow Jose Fermoso on Twitter at twitter.com/fermoso, and Wired’s Gadget Lab at twitter.com/gadgetlab

Korey Stringer photo: Sports Illustrated

See also:

• Creepy: The RFID Urn Retrieval System
• Eat an RFID-tagged Pill Before a Run, Prevent Over Heating
• Problems at The Gates? RFID-enabled Tix to Olympics’ Opening Ceremonies to Include Passport Data
• European Retailer Using RFID to Improve Customer Service

It’s not an official confirmation, but it looks like the chances of at least some of Gigabyte’s new netbooks showing up ’round these parts just got a bit better, as the M1028 has now hit the FCC and been put through its necessary paces. Now sporting the “CafeBook” moniker, the netbook appears to be mostly identical to the T1028 Touch Note model that made its debut at CeBIT which, as you can glimpse above, takes things a bit farther than the norm by opting for a convertible tablet form. Somewhat curiously, however, the manual now indicates that the system packs an 8.9-inch touchscreen (as opposed to the 10-inch we heard before), but all the other specs remain the same, including Intel’s new and slightly improved N280 Atom processor, up to 2GB of RAM, a max 250GB hard drive, your choice of a four-cell or six-cell batteries, and optional 3G and WiMAX, to name a few features. Hit up the link below for the complete breakdown, including a peek at the system’s innards.

[Via Liliputing]

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

Gigabyte’s M1028 netbook / tablet hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I can’t really describe Sixth Sense in a line. Sure, it is a system that projects information about what surrounds you over objects’ surfaces, but it’s also much more. You just have to watch it:

(If you have the time, you can go through the whole video and Pattie Maes‘ explanation. If not, go to minute 3:10, where the cool demonstrations begin. There, Pranav Mistry—the MIT student who has implemented Sixth Sense—shows how it works)

Basically, Sixth Sense is a mini-projector coupled with a camera and a cellphone—which acts as the computer and your connection to the Cloud, all the information stored on the web. Sixth Sense can also obey hand gestures, like in the infamous Minority Report.

However, instead of requiring you to be in front of a big screen like Tom Cruise, Sixth Sense can do its magic—and a lot more—everywhere, even while you are jumping hysteric over Oprah’s sofa.

The camera recognizes objects around you instantly, with the micro-projector overlaying the information on any surface, including the object itself or your hand. Then, you can access or manipulate the information using your fingers. Need to make a call? Extend your hand on front of the projector and numbers will appear for you to click. Need to know the time? Draw a circle on your wrist and a watch will appear. Want to take a photo? Just make a square with your fingers, highlighting what you want to frame, and the system will make the photo—which you can later organize with the others using your own hands over the air.

But those are just novelty applications. The true power of Sixth Sense lies on its potential to connect the real world with the Internet, and overlaying the information on the world itself. Imagine you are at the supermarket, thinking about what brand of soap is better. Or maybe what wine you should get for tonight’s dinner. Just look at objects, hold them on your hands, and Sixth Sense will show you if it’s good or bad, or if it fits your preferences or not.

Now take this to every aspect of your everyday life. You can be in a taxi going to the airport, and just by taking out your boarding pass, Sixth Sense will grab real time information about your flight and display it over the ticket. You won’t need to do any action. Just hold it in front of your and it will work.

The key here is that Sixth Sense recognizes the objects around you, displaying information automatically and letting you access it in any way you want, in the simplest way possible.

Clearly, this has the potential of becoming the ultimate “transparent” user interface for accessing information about everything around us. If they can get rid of the colored finger caps and it ever goes beyond the initial development phase, that is. But as it is now, it may change the way we interact with the real world and truly give everyone complete awareness of the environment around us.

Or just make a few people look like dorks. It can go either way, really. Whatever it is, I want to try it. [TED]

Want to go fast and not pedal too hard? Want to leave fixie mounted hipsters in your dust at stoplights? Want to ride what’s essentially an electric moped? If you’ve got a spare $9,000 to spare — and really who doesn’t — you can pick up an Optibike to cart your posterior about town in style.

This electric assist 2-wheeler is assembled with an 800-watt motor, Fox shocks, 9-speed drive train shifters, and a healthy dose of pure awesomeness. Watch as we take the bike into traffic, punch each other in the head, and endo over handlebars (dramatization, may not have happened.) And yes, Steven and I do all of our own stunts. That’s why we wear protection!

This video podcast was produced by Annaliza Savage, edited by
Fernando Cardoso with camera work by Annaliza Savage and Michael Lennon.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The creator of the TV-B-Gone, Mitch Altman, has turned his love of open-source electronic mayhem into a one-man business.

His website offers the basic TV-B-Gone, a $20 keychain device with a protruding LED that emits 140 different TV power-off codes, enabling it to shut down 98 percent of all televisions with the press of a single button, Altman says.

"The way I see it, it’s only fair," Altman says of his infrared light-emitting device. "If a TV shines light at me, I’ll shine a light at it. And if it stops shining light at me, I’ll stop shining light at it."

He also sells a $20 TV-B-Gone kit for do-it-yourselfers who want to assemble the parts themselves, and a $50 TV-B-Gone Pro that looks a bit like a chunky iPhone and has a range of 100 meters.

"I used it in the hotel lobby last night," Altman says. "I was trying to get some work done and there were four TVs on, with no one watching them. I aimed it at the two in front of me and all four turned off, that’s how powerful it is."

Altman’s invention, covered by Wired.com in 2004, achieved notoriety last year, when writers from Gizmodo used it to turn off dozens of displays at a time in the TV-saturated booths of CES 2008.

Afterwards, Altman says, he made $24,000 in new sales. "I called those guys to thank them personally," he says.

But business is, it seems, just a means for Altman to keep doing what he loves most: Hacking electronics. In a workshop Monday on how to build things with microcontrollers here at the Emerging Technology conference, Altman explained the basics of electronics while standing in front of a table littered with blinking, pulsing, glowing, beeping and whirring devices.

Many of his hacks, including the first versions of the TV-B-Gone, were built using the MiniPOV3 kit by hardware hacker Ladyada. That kit lets you create ghostly messages with a bank of 8 blinking LEDs, by waving the LEDs back and forth in the air.

By making changes to the kit’s circuitry, replacing the red LEDs with different colors and reprogramming the included microcontroller, Altman has made not only the TV-B-Gone, but also glowing lights that respond to hand gestures, an electronic "dog" that spins its tail in reaction to sunlight, a 3x3x3 cube of LEDs that displays abstract 3-dimensional patterns, and even a pair of glasses with embedded, flashing LEDs and a pair of headphones for getting your brain waves into a meditative state.

Altman is a fan of open-source hardware. The MiniPOV3 kit he uses is open source, and he recently released the schematics and code for his own projects as open source. Altman describes the decision to go open-source as a way of giving back to the hardware hacking community, which was already modifying and improving the TV-B-Gone.

"There are thousands of people who are incredibly intelligent and creative helping me, for free, and they love it," he says, describing the benefits of open source hardware.

He’s also helped found a hacker space in San Francisco, Noisebridge, where hardware hackers (or those who would like to learn more about hardware and software) can gather to work on their projects.

"I make enough money to live the life I want to live," Altman says. "And I love this life."

Photo: Mitch Altman wears the $35 Brain Machine he designed. Photo by Dylan Tweney / Wired.com