Hasta La Gadget!

Extreme Reality‘s technology revolves around gestures, and its latest effort is to bring that movement to the masses: its Extreme Motion developer kit turns just about any off-the-shelf webcam or built-in camera on common platforms, including Android, iOS and Windows, into an almost Kinect-like system capable of tracking 3D motion. Despite missing depth cameras or other additional sensors, it’s theoretically quite accurate — the software tracks joints across the body in every frame, although it’s not quite so sensitive as to track fingers.

This author had the chance to make a fool of himself in front of a laptop’s camera to see how well Extreme Motion works. In short, reasonably well: while it wasn’t in perfect sync, it recognized with less-than-elegant moves in a Dance Central-style demo title and flagged whether a shimmy was right on target or evidence of two left feet. Of course, this experiment was conducted in a brightly-lit hotel ballroom, where body detection is ideal, so take the experiment with a grain of salt. It’s still adept enough that the developers who will have access to the (currently free) toolkit can produce motion games we’d be sincerely interested in playing.

Michael Gorman contributed to this report.

Filed under: Gaming, Software

Comments

Source: Extreme Reality

Bluetooth accessories that let you keep tabs of your stuff aren’t exactly new, but few are as charming and well-designed as hippih’s hipKey, at least from our initial impressions. Created and designed in Denmark, the tiny crescent-shaped device made its US debut at CES 2013 after a couple of very successful months abroad — it apparently sold out just five days after it was available through Apple Online Europe. It connects to any iOS device with Bluetooth 4.0, where you can either use the hipKey to keep track of your iPhone or iPad or use a handy iOS app to keep track of the device itself. Just hook it up to your precious belongings and you’ll know where they are via vibrations or an alarm. You can also use “Child Mode” to record what a child was wearing in case you lose him/her in a crowd. Additionally, there’s a patent-pending Safe Zone feature that lets you create alarm-free locations so you don’t accidentally set it off when at home or the office.

We had chance to try the hipKey out in person, and were impressed by its small and discreet size. Made out of anodized aluminium, it’s incredibly pocket-friendly and only has a couple of buttons so the controls are easy to comprehend. The alarm goes as loud as 90db and the vibrations seems pretty easy to detect. We only had a second or two to try the app out, but that appeared quite intuitive as well. It’s difficult to say whether this will be that useful in real life, but we’ll need to test it out for an extended period to find that out. According to a hippih spokesperson, the hipKey will be available from the Apple store in the US starting January 15th for $90 each.

Continue reading hippih’s Bluetooth-powered hipKey keeps your iPhone close, your precious things closer (hands-on)

Filed under: Cellphones

Comments

Source: hippih

We normally don’t bother to write about iPhone cases here at Engadget, but this one seemed pretty neat. Snappgrip is a case that turns your iPhone into a point-and-shoot camera — partly for kitsch’s sake, but mostly to make one-handed shots easier to pull off. The design is simple: it’s just a plastic shell with a shutter button, a dial for controlling shutter speed and a hand grip — the sort you’d normally find on a compact camera.

To use it, you’ll need to download the free iPhone or Android app. Interestingly, though, the company is releasing its SDK to developers, so in theory you’ll one day be able to use this case with other camera apps. Another quid pro quo: the case only fits the iPhone 4, iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III for now, though the company is considering ways to make the case universally compatible. Snappgrip is priced at $99, but it’s not shipping just yet (the Kickstarter campaign, linked below, is still going strong). For now, we’ve got a quickie hands-on video waiting just past the break.

Continue reading Hands-on with Snappgrip, a case that turns your phone into a point-and-shoot

Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Peripherals, Mobile

Comments

Source: Snappgrip (Kickstarter)

Here’s a cool little surprise from the Pepcom floor: the Zagg Origin is a two-in-one speaker system. The smaller of the two fits in the palm of your hand, communicating with your tablet or smartphone via Bluetooth. It’s got some physical buttons on top and an auxiliary port, power button and mini-USB slot on its rear. It also vibrates like crazy when it plays. Drop into the larger dock desktop speaker and the music starts playing through that via the aforementioned vibes. Pretty cool, really. It’s gonna run you around $250 when it launches in roughly seven weeks. Watch video of the origin in action after the break.

Continue reading Zagg Origin is two speakers in one (video)

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Peripherals

Comments

Nikon‘s D5200 DSLR has been floating around outside the US since November, but it’s only today that the camera company has confirmed a launch for US shutterbugs. Set to hit shelves later this month, the $899.95 DX-format shooter will be offered in black, bronze, or black – all with rather fetching metallic finishes – each offering 24.1-megapixel stills, Full HD video recording, and optional wireless.

There’s also a new GUI on a tilting, rotating 3-inch LCD preview screen, which runs at 921k dots and has 170-degree viewing angles. Nikon also preloads a number of special effects, which can be applied to both stills and video; the range includes selective colors, a “miniature effect” faux-tilt-shift, night vision, and more. HDR stills are also supported.

Nikon D5200 overview:

Elsewhere, there’s a 39-point AF system with auto scene recognition, a 100-6400 ISO range (expandable to 25,600), and 5fps burst photography mode. Inside is Nikon’s EXPEED 3 image processing engine.

Slap on the WU-1a Wireless Mobile Adapter, meanwhile, and you can remotely control the D5200 from an iPhone, iPad, or Android device. It also supports reviewing photos stored on the camera’s memory card, with up to 49 foot range.

The Nikon D5200 goes on sale in the US later this month, priced at five cents short of $900. The WU-1a Wireless Mobile Adapter is priced at $74.96.

Nikon D5200 hits US in late-January: We go hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.