Hasta La Gadget!

Belkin’s WeMo line of connected outlets, motion sensors and wireless switches has been a solid solution for building out a (relatively basic) home-automation system on the cheap, and now there’s a new product to add to the mix. The WeMo Insight Switch can turn lights and appliances on and off just like its older sibling, but this year’s flavor is significantly smaller and more powerful, too. The Insight adds a nifty consumption-tracking feature, letting you monitor uptime and electricity usage for connected devices. Through the bundled Android or iOS app, you can see how long your television, washing machine or space heater have been operating, and just how much they’ll cost you each month. WeMo Insight is available today for $60.

Filed under: Household

Comments

Source: Belkin

Facial recognition? Pah. Dahling, the only way to find someone in a crowd is to pick out what they’re wearing. InSight is an app being developed for Google Glass by Duke University that helps you identify your chums, even when they’ve got their back to you, by channeling its inner Joan Rivers. All your pals have to do is submit some self-portraits to the app, which then creates a spatiogram — identifying the colors, textures and patterns with which they’ve adorned themselves. That data is then pushed to Google Glass, hopefully allowing you to avoid the usual “I’m by the store, no, the other store” routine. Then again, maybe your friends will find you first — after all, you’re the one with a computer strapped to your head.

Filed under: Wearables, Software, Mobile, Google

Comments

Via: New Scientist

Source: Duke University (PDF)

Right after Curiosity’s success, NASA has announced a new Mars mission called InSight. It will be a spacecraft designed to get deep under the surface of Mars and find some its hidden secrets. It will launch in 2014. More »

The surface of Mars? Psh… been there. With the Curiosity stage well under way, our exploration of the Red Planet is about to take a dive beneath the dust. Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — InSight, for short — was just confirmed as a new NASA mission, with the space agency set to launch in March of 2016. Based on the Phoenix lander, the craft is tasked with giving us a peek beneath the planet’s surface, armed with tools that include a geodetic instrument from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will be used to calculate Mars’ rotation axis, a seismic wave sensor and a subsurface heat probe, to measure the planet’s internal temperature. The program has a $425 million budget — a bit shy of the $2.5 billion allocated for Curiosity — not including the costly launch vehicle. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that InSight will help pave the way for future human missions to Mars, and represents just one of the related projects to come. Hit up the source link below for a closer look at JPL’s latest endeavor.

Filed under: Science

NASA InSight tapped for Mars drilling mission in 2016 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Jet Propulsion Laboratory  | Email this | Comments