Hasta La Gadget!

Yesterday Texas Instruments introduced a couple of new chipsets (fuel gauge an charger ICs) designed to improve the charging speed and life expectancy of single-cell Li-ion batteries. The technology, called MaxLife, is expected to provide an improvement of up to 30 percent in battery service life and faster charging times. Cell impedance is carefully monitored by the fuel gauge chip while the charger IC uses a model of battery degradation to charge the cell in the most effective way. Both chips are connected via an I2C bus to form an autonomous battery management system which, according to the company, is safer and more thermally efficient than existing solutions. The two chipsets (2.5A and 4.5A) are now available along with a development kit, so it’s only a matter of time until this technology lands into handsets and other devices that use single-cell Li-ion batteries. Check out the details after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Mobile

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As a recovering food addict, I’ve been told on numerous occasions that washboard abs are created in the kitchen, not in the gym. That’s why we were intrigued to take a look at Nutrino, an iOS app that promises a “virtual nutritionist” service to help slice away the adipose from our stomach. We spent some time putting the software through its paces, and if you’re thinking of making the leap, head on past the break to learn more.

Filed under: Software, Mobile, Apple

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Source: Nutrino

OK, so the tangle of wires behind my desk is getting pretty ridiculous. Luckily, I’ve got it confined in a corner, so it’s not going to take over my place any time soon, but something like Unlace might just banish the cable squid to Davy Jones’ Locker forever.

Unlaces are designed to manage your excess cable with ease. The colorful, rubbery, and twistable lace will allow you to neatly bundle  cords, cables, and any other loose ends. They are made out of reusable silicone material, and look like colorful shoelaces. Unlaces will be available in 5″ and 10″ varieties.

You’ll have to pledge $20(USD) on Kickstarter to get a set of four 5″ Unlaces. $33 buys you eight of the 5″, while $40 or more gets you as set of eight 10″ Unlaces. With $9,860 pledged of a $10,000-goal, and 25 days of funding left, the project will surely be fully funded.

[via Ubergizmo]

Do you use an extra battery grip for your DSLR? Since they can be kind of bulky anyhow, Irish photographer Dave Hunt managed to squeeze a fully-functioning Raspberry Pi SBC inside his detachable battery grip, and programmed it so that it would push the images he takes to his iPad for easy viewing. Sounds pretty awesome to me.

It’s very useful to have a general purpose computer attached to your digital camera. The pros do it all the time when they do shoots indoors. This setup allows you to check out the photos you have just taken on a portable high resolution screen, an iPad. Dave managed to get this working for his Canon 5D Mark II camera, using the Raspberry Pi, a Wi-Fi dongle and  a Perl script to push the images.

In addition to sending images to the iPad, the on-board computer could be used for everything from remote operation, to rapid image format conversion, to automatically timing time-lapse sequences. If you’ve got the skills, and get  your hands on a Raspberry Pi, then you can the mod for yourself. Dave explains in detail how he went about his hack on his blog.

[via Make:]