Hasta La Gadget!

Washing clothes shouldn’t be rocket science, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that when you look at the controls of modern washing machines. So when cloud services company Berg set out to create a prototype for an Internet-connected washing machine, they didn’t want to smarten it up just so it can tweet which socks you prefer. Berg knew that smart doesn’t mean needlessly complex.

Berg’s Cloudwash prototype is built on four premises. The first one is that, for all the intricate settings on conventional washing machines, most users only ever use a handful of them. That’s why Cloudwash only has a few, easy to understand physical controls.

The first set of options lets you choose from your three most used wash settings. You’ll then use its companion app if you want or need to tweak these settings. Which brings us to Berg’s second premise: the early examples of smart appliances are not really smart.

Berg noticed that the current crop of Internet-connected appliances mainly have two ways of distributing controls or options. Some smart appliances have all of their controls thrown to a mobile app, rendering the appliance nearly useless if you don’t have a mobile device on hand. On the other end are appliances that come with a touchscreen or mobile device tacked on, with few if any remote controls.

Berg opted for a middle ground. The Cloudwash app has all of the controls and options so you can control everything remotely if you wish, but the most used controls are also on the machine itself.

Berg’s third premise is that Internet-connected appliances should be able to adapt to your lifestyle. That should be part of why they’re called “smart.” Thus the second set of controls on Cloudwash lets you delay the washing machine’s final rinse.

This can also be adjusted through the mobile app, so you don’t have to hurry home to take out your clothes before they get wrinkled. It’s about making the machine adjust to you and not the other way around.

The third set of options includes a button to toggle notifications, but the other two buttons are more interesting. They’re manifestations of Berg’s fourth premise: subsidized washing machines might become a thing, just like what Nestle did to coffee machines with Nespresso.

See, you can set the two buttons to either send a reminder on your phone that your conditioner or detergent is running low. Or you can use them to make one-click purchases. Berg thinks that online retailers like Amazon or laundry product manufacturers may be willing to give away free machines or at least subsidize them to reel in customers.

Check out Berg’s case study on the Cloudwash for more information. I think its mobile app is a bit over designed and cluttered – there’s a freaking washing machine calendar, and it still uses vague washing machine terminology. I also don’t want a future where my appliances are cheap but will only work with a certain brand of detergent or brand of popcorn (because what else will it ultimately lead to?). But I do love the attempts to make machines more user-friendly and flexible.

[via Gigaom]

Fujitsu has rolled out a prototype tablet that has a cool bit of tech inside. The tablet has haptic sensory technology inside that allows you to feel images on the screen. Users are able to feel smooth or rough textures depending on what is displayed on the screen.

The tablet uses ultrasonic vibrations to create a cushion of high-pressure air between the finger and the screen. That air acts like a cushion and makes the screen feel very smooth. Depending on what image is on the screen, the vibrations can be rapidly cycled to create the feeling of a rough surface.

Fujitsu is showing the tech off at Mobile World Congress 2014 with several images that do things like allow the user to feel the skin of an alligator, pluck virtual strings on a harp, or feel the sensation of opening a combination lock.

Google’s 200 Project Tango developer devices may only have just revealed their 3D-sensing smartphone abilities, but one company already tinkering with the sensor-packed handsets has shown off exactly what sort … Continue reading

If you’re in danger of overspending every time you reach for your wallet, then the iBag might just be the thing you need. It’s an interactive wallet of sorts that seals itself shut in order to prevent its owner from spending money on non-essential stuff.

The iBag is dubbed as a “smart purse” that comes built with an Arduino processor and a real-time clock. The clock comes into factor as the bag uses that as the basis for sealing shut: at times when the shopper has been deemed to overspend, the bag can no longer be opened.

Finder.com.au’s iBag prototype has been designed to physically deter shoppers from accessing their wallets. The purse is also equipped with a GPS chip and LED lights that flash when a shopper gets too close to his or her favourite shops, or, as the company puts it: ‘when you’re entering a danger spending zone.’

RFID modules on the bag detect whenever the wallet leaves the purse, and a GSM module alerts someone about the shopper’s overspending habits (or tendency) as it happens.

You can find more information about the iBag here.

[via Geekologie]

3D printing can help you create prototypes or mockups quickly. Or should I say relatively quickly – it can take a 3D printer hours to print even moderately-sized objects. To speed things up, students from the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the Hasso Plattner Institute tested adding LEGO to their workflow.

Researchers Stefanie Mueller, Tobias Mohr, Kerstin Guenther, Johannes Frohnhofen and Patrick Baudisch call their project faBrickation. The idea is to print just the crucial parts of a prototype, then build the rest out of LEGO. To do that, they wrote a program called faBrickator, where they can open 3D models…

…and “Legofy” it at the press of a button.

Then they just mark the parts of the model that will be printed…

…and build the rest with LEGO using instructions generated by faBrickator.

They can also use faBrickator to go back to a 3D model, modify it and then print only the parts that were changed, once again saving time.

The group claims that on average, faBrickation lets them make prototypes nearly two and a half times faster than using 3D printing alone. I wonder if they can make a reverse faBrickation scanner, so laypeople can start making a “3d model” out of LEGO instead of a modeling software, scan that LEGO model then run the resulting model through faBrickation.

[via Hasso Plattner Institute via PSFK]