Hasta La Gadget!

With gadgets like the Oculus Rift and Google Glass, it’s looking like the future of displays is going to be a war for space on our faces. Here’s one more promising invention that may make you wish you had several pairs of eyes and foreheads. castAR glasses can not only beam stereographic 3D to your eyes a la Oculus Rift, they can also project 3D video to the real world.

castAR is the invention of Technical Illusions, a company setup by former Valve employees Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson. The two are videogame industry veterans with decades of software and hardware expertise between them. Their device can display hologram-like videos and images in 3D using two micro-projectors and a retro-reflective sheet.

Aside from acting as a display, the sheet is also required for motion tracking. A camera in the middle of the glasses tracks infrared markers on the sheet to deduce the wearer’s head position and orientation. The wearer’s perspective is properly adjusted as he moves around the sheet, as if you were looking at a physical object from different angles.

The wand shown several times in the video is a controller designed to work with the glasses. It has buttons, a trigger and a joystick, and it can also track its own position. As you saw in the video the controller is used to interact with the projected images, increasing the illusion that there really is something in front of you.

What I find most exciting are the RFID add-ons. You can get an RFID tracking grid that can track RFID tags. The tags can do anything from summoning a figurine into the game – similar to Skylanders – or displaying stats. But there’s also an add-on with called an RFID Base. The base is essentially a tiny computer that can control other hardware. For example, as Technical Illusions mentions in its Kickstarter page, you could have an RFID Base with red LEDs and a tiny smoke machine. Stick a dragon figurine on top of that base and your game can trigger the base to become a glowing, smoke-belching monster. If that doesn’t make you support castAR I don’t know what will.

Pledge at least $189 (USD) on Kickstarter to get the castAR glasses plus the retro-reflective sheet.

[via Reddit]

I know that there is this huge debate going on right now (and has been for quite some time already) concerning guns and gun control laws, but this is not what we are here to talk about today. For those of you who own firearms, you know how dangerous it can be if it falls into the wrong hands. Perhaps it is time you forget about the drawer by your bedside table, and rely on the Gun Box to keep your trusty firearm. The Gun Box prides itself in being the first gun safe which relies on RFID as well as a biometric fingerprint scanner in order to keep its contents securely locked away, without sacrificing on speed when you need to whip it out in a jiffy.

Safety and convenience comes together with the Gun Box, as it allows you to obtain rapid access to your firearm via fingerprint ID, unique RFID ring or bracelet, or even a combination of both. Other than that, there is also a special locking system so that little ones are unable to gain access to it when you are not around. The Gun Box is made out of an aircraft strength aluminum alloy shell, alert notifications whenever the box is open, moved or tampered with, GPS tracking whenever the Gun Box is on the move, and even a battery backup which lets it last for a few weeks. Right now, the Gun Box needs $100,000 on Indiegogo to become a reality.

Gun Box Helps Stow Away Your Firearms Safely original content from Ubergizmo.

E-ZPass is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to paying tolls. Those plastic funnels you toss coins into are a close second. But E-ZPass has a bonus feature. It can be used to track you everywhere you go.

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So, you think that you have seen all there is to it about tattoos, barring someone doing something stupid with theirs? Well, here is a tattoo that your mom would probably like – simply because it is a tattoo that cannot be seen by the naked eye, meaning it is like those secret messages of old, where you craft them out using lime or lemon juice only to read them near a source of light and heat such as a candle, except that this particular tattoo will not rely on lime juice, but rather, require a tiny RFID chip to be implanted within the body. This would allow only a compatible smartphone to be able to “read” this RFID tattoo.

Anthony Antonellis is the person with an embedded RFID chip within his hand, where the chip itself is carefully stashed away into a glass capsule, sporting 1KB of storage space and remains completely invisible to the naked eye. Just what kind of tattoos do you think would rank right up there with the coolest of them, except that your particular choice would come with a slant of technology thrown into the mix? Unfortunately, I’d hate the thought of having something sewn within, how about you?

Tattoo Visible To Smartphones original content from Ubergizmo.

Some say NFC is dead, but GEAK from Shanghai wants to prove them wrong. Announced alongside the GEAK Watch earlier today was this GEAK Ring, a tiny NFC-enabled wearable device that stores your identity. The ring’s pitched as an intuitive way to unlock your phone — just hold it with the hand that’s wearing the ring, and it’ll unlock without having to type in the password; plus it’ll stay awake as long as it’s held in the same hand. Another feature is that since the ring has your contact details stored (presumably rewritable), you can also use it to share your contact card with other NFC-enabled devices. But of course, given the risk of NFC cloning, you should treat GEAK’s solution as a convenience rather than a more secure method.

At launch, this ring will only be compatible with the GEAK Eye and GEAK Mars quad-core phones that were also announced today, but it’ll support other devices from the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi and Oppo starting in November. GEAK will be taking pre-orders from August 8th, and it’ll cost Chinese buyers ¥199 or about $30 each. It’ll sure go nicely alongside that Google ring.

Filed under: Wearables, Mobile

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Via: Engadget Chinese

Source: GEAK (Chinese)