Remote controlled lawnmowers are far from a new idea. People have been cutting grass from the comfort of a lawn chair for years now. But what if you needed to clear the side of a steep hill, or obliterate some nasty weeds without ever getting up? That’s when you’ll need the intimidating half-tank half-mower called the TREX. More »
There is nothing quite like having a nice, long sleep after a particularly hard day at work, at the office, or even in the house with tons of chores left to be completed on the list. Of course, having the right kind of bed, mattress, and lighting would also affect the quality of your sleep, so it makes perfect sense to invest a lump sum of your hard earned cash into a decent bed. After all, since one spends approximately one third of one’s life in bed, a fantastic place to lie down would be worth every penny. The $199.95 Remote Controlled Adjustable Incline Mattress Wedge might be something you want to look into, as this bed wedge can be adjusted at the touch of a button.
This is the life, don’t you think so? After all, since you are already so tired, why not just enlist the help of a button to get the job done? You do not want to break your back after a day’s worth of, er, for the lack of a better word, back breaking labor. The Remote Controlled Adjustable Incline Mattress Wedge is made from durable, heavy-gauge PVC, complete with heat seal-welded double seams to deliver added strength and interior baffles for stability. It will fit between a box spring and a mattress, and the remote itself comes with a simple three-button operation which is a no brainer to operate.
[ Remote Controlled Adjustable Incline Mattress Wedge copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Controlling your home theater system used to be easy—you simply told your kid to turn the knob and presto, Honeymooners. But today’s home theater packed with feature-rich TVs, cable boxes, AV receivers, and streaming boxes—and all demanding their own remotes—there’s no way the little guy can keep up. Instead, replace your pile of remotes with an app that does everything they can do and more. More »
Philips has opened up its hue LED lighting system to external developers, allowing coders outside of the company to tap into the multicolored wireless bulbs and link them into new apps and web services. The new hue API, as well as an iOS app development kit, will allow for hue-compatible apps – such as custom color temperature systems for photographers, color alerts linked with social networks like Facebook, and more – to be released directly into the App Store. Meanwhile, Philips too is working on adding native features, some of which we can expect in the next few months.
In addition to software and web links, hue’s new-found openness will allow it to integrate more cohesively with other home automation devices. Each of the bulbs – which hide multicolor LEDs underneath the frosted glass casing – has its own ZigBee radio for mesh-networking; that not only talks to the hue ethernet base station, but can communicate with other ZigBee devices such as security kit.
It won’t be an Apple-only affair, either. Philips is starting off with the iOS toolkit, but already has a controller app for Android, and says platforms other than Apple’s will be getting APIs next. This Friday, March 15, meanwhile, Philips will sponsor a hue developer day intended to get more ideas off the ground.
As for Philips’ own functionality, the company continues to work on its official hue app. In the pipeline are smart scheduling and geo-fencing, Philips tells us, which will allow more comprehensive automation control over what lights come on automatically and when, and lighting schemes that are turned on and off whenever a user comes into proximity of the home.
We’ve more on hue in our full review.
Philips opens hue connected lighting to devs with iOS API is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
When Felix Baumgartner jumped from the edge of space, we got some crazy, crazy footage out of the deal, but it was just a little bit…dizzying. Flying a remote-controlled glider down from similar heights doesn’t take nearly as much balls, but damned if the footage isn’t just as amazing. More »
To better their ability to perfect a mix, sound engineers sit at a giant board outside of a recording studio where it’s whisper quiet. And to avoid having to keep running in and out of a studio to perfect their mic placement, someone’s slapped a microphone on a remote controlled RC toy tank that promises to make a sound engineer’s job a heck of a lot easier. More »
Quadrocopters are pretty cool — there’s no doubt about that, but a student at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Controls has taken it to a completely new level. Dario Brescianini programmed two small quadrocopters to perform stunts and balance poles, as well as toss poles to one another without a hitch.
The two quadrocopters have small plates on top in order to catch the pole (called an inverted pendulum in this case). A lot of math went into figuring out the different algorithms needed for throwing the pole to the other quadrocopter safely and efficiently. However, a motion-capture system and wireless networking throughout the room helped out with that.
Essentially, Brescianini needed to figure out the exact positions, speeds, and angles that the two quadrocopter needed in order to perform the stunt. From there, it was just a matter of pressing the big green button and watching it all unfold. Of course, though, there were many factors that were a concern initially, including how the pole behaves while airborne, which is something that Brescianini had no control over, obviously.
In the end, the experiment took a lot of trial and error, but the end result is a beautiful acrobatic dance between the two quadrocopters, balancing a long pole amongst the two. We have to say that it’s certainly impressive, and it’s way better than watching the same remote control aircrafts doing synchronized dancing.
[via Shmahat Ma]
Quadrocopters perform impressive pole acrobatic stunts is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
It’s not the first miniature car chase to leave us desperately missing our RC toys of yesteryear. But this one perfectly captures the feeling of your stereotypical Hollywood blockbuster car chase—complete with tiny sidewalk cafes for the cars to smash through. More »
There are plenty of quadcopters out there that you can buy if you want, but they tend to have one or more of the following downsides: They are expensive. They are fragile. They are difficult to fly. Just one can be a bummer, any pair is twice the drag, and all three just all out sucks. The pair of Arial tricksters Air Hogs rolled out for Toy Fair 2013 soar above those troubles. More »
Everybody loves a good paper airplane, but the problem is they only fly straight, and that’s only so much fun. Well, that about to be a problem of the past. Thanks to the Power Up 3.0, you can not only outfit your paper creations with a motor, but steer them directly from your phone. More »
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