Hasta La Gadget!

Some years ago, Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson was dealt a healthy dose of paranoia when he tested out a Mercedes with keyless entry. The car would lock and unlock automatically if you had the fob in your pocket. The trouble was, Clarkson never knew if the car was actually locked. If he went back to check it, the door just opened again.

Nathan Seidle of Sparkfun electronics decided he needed the same level of niggling worry in his life and rolled his own car-opener with a Nike+ dongle and receiver, an Arduino board, a Nike+iPod Serial to USB Adapter and some creative sabotage.

With a little plugging, soldering and very simple programming, Nate has himself a widget in the cart which constantly beeps out a signal, fishing for an in-range Nike+. When it hears one reply, it decodes its unique ID and if the “key” fits, the car opens. But Nate, like Clarkson, had a problem:

While testing I found the range of the transmitter (the footpod) was really pretty impressive at 50+ feet. This was cool, but I didn’t want my car to be unlocking/lock while walking around my house or office.

The answer? A Tin-Foil hat. A few wrappings of aluminum foil and the range was halved. The car itself ignores the iFob while the engine is running, so it can’t switch off on the road, and Nate has finally rid himself of his final mechanical key. We just wonder what he’s going to use to scratch up any cars that steal his parking space.

iFOBing A Mazda [Sparkfun via Lifehacker]

You a fan of netbooks, smartbooks, CULV thin-and-lights, and whatever the next trend brings to portable computing? Good, Engadget Chinese is on the ground in Taipei covering the big Computex show live. It’s the best place to be for Taiwanese-sourced products, manufacturing, and silicon… which pretty much means the entirety of the consumer electronics industry. Best of all, our Chinese editors are translating the most important news to English on the fly. So hit the read link to follow the action in near real-time or kick back right here and see the best-of-the-best mingle with the rest of the our global coverage.

Engadget live from Computex 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After failing to show at the Mobile World Congress event in February, Samsung’s rumored 12 megapixel cameraphone has finally arrived. Meet the Pixon 12 and its 3.1-inch AMOLED touchscreen with a Sammy promise of fast shutter speeds and quick browsing. As a camera, the Pixon 12 (M8910) brings a dedicated shutter button, touch auto-focus (wherever you touch becomes the focal point) that locks in to track moving subjects, Smart Auto mode that adjusts to conditions, and a 28-mm wide angle lens. The unit also saves images relatively quickly (for a cameraphone) so that you can fire off the next shot within 2 seconds. Just remember, more megapixels do not make for better photos especially when jammed tightly into a sensor small enough for a cellphone. And 12 megapixels translates to files ranging from 2MB to 18MB and beyond depending on the compression used (Samsung doesn’t say). So ask yourself: is it really worth the storage space and the associated delays when uploading images to Samsung’s Share Pix service (with Facebook, Picasa, Flickr integration) over the Pixon 12’s built-in WiFi and HSUPA data? No rush, you’ve got time to decide — Pixon 12 will be hitting Europe in late June, other regions sometime in August. One more pic after the break.

Update: Full specs just came in: 150MB of on-board storage (up to 16GB MicroSD expansion); quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, HSPA 900/2100MHz; Xenon + Power LED flash; 720 x 480 pixel videos at 30fps; internal GPS, and FM radio with RDS.

Continue reading Samsung’s Pixon 12: a dozen megapixels of cameraphone nonsense in June

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras

Samsung’s Pixon 12: a dozen megapixels of cameraphone nonsense in June originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toshiba’s TG01 made us quick fans of the 1GH Snapdragon processor. Now we hear that Qualcomm will have its 1.3GHz QSD8650A chipset on the market for sampling before the end of 2009 — that means new smartphone and smartbooks (get used to it netbook fans) in 2010 running 30% faster while using 30% less power (and just 10 milliwatts in standby) thanks to the use of reduced 45-nm manufacturing processes. The new chipset supports multi-mode UMTS and CDMA 3G connectivity in the same 15 x 15-mm package as well as featuring enhanced 2D acceleration and 3D graphics core, integrated GPS, high-def video recording and playback, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi, and support for WXGA (1280×800 pixels) displays pumping out your choice of MediaFLO, DVBH, or ISDB-T digital mobile television. The new chipset makes for a snug fit right in between the existing 1GHz QSD8x50 chipset and Qualcomm’s dual-CPU 45-nm QSD8672 chipset running up to 1.5 GHz. After seeing the TG01 in action, you’d better believe that we’ll be hunting down all the Snapdragon devices we can find at Computex this week.

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

Qualcomm’s 1.3GHz QSD8650A Snapdragon chipset is 30% stronger, uses 30% less power originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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