Hasta La Gadget!

Leap Motion won a lot of buzz early on for its motion controller, which is designed to make it possible for users to interact with their computer through gestures alone. The early buzz and pre-order interest led to a lot of growth, with the company swelling to 120 employees at its peak. But disappointing reviews when the hardware actually shipped took some of the wind out of the startup’s… Read More

Waterloo-based startup Palette is building a moddable hardware controller for your computer that can turn into a complete mixing board, should you need one. It’s a hand accessory that fits the description of something I’ve actually been looking around for based on the fact that editing video without some sliders for fine-tune scrubbing is a pain, and it’s on Kickstarter now.

Co-founders Calvin Chu and Ashish Bidadi are seeking $100,000 in funding to make it a reality, and he already has over $60,000 pledged. Each starter kit unit includes one power module, one dial, one slider and one button, but you can add on more after the fact if you find you need more. They start at $99 for a basic kit, and should ship by June according to Chu if the project meets its schedule.

Modules simply snap together, requiring no advanced hardware hacking on the user’s part, and making for a completely customizable hardware interface. The usefulness for sound/video/photo editors is huge, as you could potentially assign commonly used keyboard commands to specific palette modules via the companion desktop app that ships free with any kit. It’s also handy for gamers, who want a number of commands within easy reach, and perfectly suitable for DJ work, as well as a handy accessory just for making things like using Skype easy, as in the example controller Chu built for his grandmother.

Some issues include the fact that support has to be created specifically for each application that wants to use the Palette controls, but Chu and his team are looking to offer Adobe Creative Suite support out of the box, as well as plug-ins and scripts for DJ software like Traktor and Ableton. They anticipate a community will emerge to help support the full range of available software.

Chu is a mechatronics alumni from Waterloo, the same program that brought us the MYO armband and Thalmic labs, and he’s worked for Apple, Toyota and others in the past, so he definitely seems to have the skills to back up this grand vision. One thing’s for sure: I want these, and I want them now, before I have to edit my next video the old-fashioned way.

A new Kickstarter project called the Ego! Smartmouse blends together some recent trends in computing, including hardware identity authentication and 3D motion control to come up with a unique input device that wears many hats. The Ego! is a mouse in the traditional sense, allowing you to control your desktop or laptop computer, and it also has on-board file storage, can work as an authentication device for various services, and features built-in acceleration and motion detection to work like a Wiimote for controlling games.

The Smartmouse packs its own Linux-based OS into its compact design, with a 400 MHz ARM9 processor and up to 8GB of onboard flash storage. It connects via Bluetooth, has a gyroscope, compass and optical mouse sensor in addition to its accelerometer, and also includes a built-in VGA camera, touch-sensitive surface, vibration motor and notification LEDs. It charges via micro USB, and the project creators say it’ll get a decent amount of battery life thanks to the use of low-power tech.

Created by UK-based design firm Laura Sapiens, the Ego! Smartmouse is the product of a team with strong engineering and interaction design backgrounds. CEO Matteo Modè comes from an industrial and automotive engineering background, and the founding team also includes expertise in embedded security, consumer electronics, computer vision and embedded systems.

As you can see in the demo, the Ego! looks to be equally at home on the desktop, controlling media center PCs from the couch, or working with gaming applications to provide 3D controls. It can also automate routine tasks like opening a browser and logging into an email account, and be used as a presentation tool in combination with a projector. The on-board camera makes syncing the Ego! as easy as pointing the mouse at a QR code displayed on-screen (eliminating messy discovery and pairing procedures), and in an office setting it can be used to quickly and easily transfer files between workstations.

The team is looking for £20,000 in funding, with early pre-orders starting at just £70 for a 2GB black or white version of the Ego!, including international shipping. Higher storage is available for £110 (4GB) and £120 (8GB), both of which also offer up new color options as well.

Leap Motion’s amazing-looking gesture control debuted last May, and has had developers crawling all over it ever since. Now, Asus has announced that it’s teaming up with the company to produce a range of computers using the tech—and they should be here this year. More »

If a seemingly infinitely programmable mini computer like the Raspberry Pi is just too… limiting, we’ve got good news: the Gertboard extender has started shipping. The $48 companion board reaching customers’ doorsteps converts analog to digital and back for Raspberry Pi fans developing home automation, robotics and just about anything else that needs a translation between the computing world and less intelligent objects. The one catch, as you’d sometimes expect from a homebrew project, is the need for some assembly — you’ll have to solder together Gert van Loo’s Arduino-controlled invention on your own. We imagine the DIY crowd won’t mind, though, as long as they can find the fast-selling Gertboard in the first place.

[Image credit: Stuart Green, Flickr]

Filed under: Misc

Gertboard extender for Raspberry Pi ships to advanced tinkerers originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Oct 2012 03:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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