Hasta La Gadget!

There’s plenty of sensor gear around for hobbyists to play with, but not so many polished products for the monitoring-obsessed. Cao Gadgets is attempting to fill that niche with its functionally named Wireless Sensor Tags — small devices which monitor movement and temperature, notifying you if anything’s amiss. A magnetometer registers movement by changes in its orientation, and can inform you of door openings or similar disturbances, while the temperature triggers are based on upper or lower thresholds. The $15 sensors (or $12 if you want three or more) have a battery life that should last several years depending on their setup, but there is one catch — you also need the Tag Manager hub ($50), which plugs into your router via Ethernet. It keeps in frequent contact with any subordinates in its 200-foot range, and if after several attempts it finds one MIA, a warning can be sent in case any of your home guards have walked or fallen asleep. The tags also have inbuilt beepers which can be pinged to track down any rogue possessions they’re partnered with, like your keys.

A lot of thought has been put into micromanaging the tags, which are customizable through web-based, Android or iOS apps, and will send out alerts via email, Twitter, or push notifications on slates and phones (text-to-speech is available if you’re too lazy to read). If you’re into your data, you can also access trigger statistics from the software, complete with graphs. The home monitoring kit is available now, and instead of crashing your browser with too many embeds, we’ve decided to point you to the source below for the half-dozen demo vids.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household, Wireless

Wireless Sensor Tags alert you to movement and temperature changes, fit on your keyring originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 22:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Cao Gadgets  | Email this | Comments

It looks like smartphone manufacturers have stopped racing ahead in the megapixel wars, instead focusing on improved sensors to deliver better images from mobile devices. Sony has been pressing ahead with such sensor developments, with its latest Exmor RS smartphone camera range further improving image quality. Sony will offer three versions of the sensor, with two eight megapixel models and a 13-megapixel variant.

Sony will be using new f/2.2 aperture lenses for some for improved depth-of-field, and the company has also improved auto focus features for video recording. In addition, videos will be able to take advantage of HDR, a feature that has been reserved for still images on smartphones so far. That should allow footage to capture a full range of lighting scenarios, with smartphones struggling to dynamically adjust to dramatic changes in the past.

The company is still working on further sensor enhancements, focusing on improved image quality and sensor behaviour while keeping the overall size down. Sony says that the first new Exmor sensor will be available in October, but it lack HDR video and RGBW exposure features. The other two sensors with those features will be reportedly be available in March and May 2013.

Manufacturers like Apple and Samsung will most likely make use of the new sensors once they hit the market next year. They’re particularly appealing due to the reduced size (up to 40% over previous sensors), which would save precious space inside a smartphone that could make room for additional components or battery capacity, all while bringing better image quality.

[via Engadget/HEXUS]

Sony Exmor RS smartphone sensors include HDR video is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sure, you spend plenty of time talking to your plants, but have you ever made them sing? In partnership with Berlin-based Studio NAND, Walt Disney’s experience development arm, coined Disney Research, has found a way to take human-plant interaction to an almost freakish level. The project’s called Botanicus Interacticus, and centers around a custom-built capacitive sensor module, which pipes a very low current through an otherwise ordinary plant, then senses when and where you touch. Assuming your body is grounded, the device uses more than 200 frequencies to determine exactly where you’ve grabbed hold of a stem. Then, depending on how it may be programed, the sensor can trigger any combination of feedback, ranging from a notification that your child is attempting to climb that massive oak in the yard again, to an interactive melody that varies based on where your hand falls along the plant.

Because this is Disney Research, the company would most likely use the new tech in an interactive theme park attraction, though there’s currently no plan to do much more than demo Botanicus Interacticus for SIGGRAPH attendees. This week’s demonstration is giving the creators an opportunity to gather feedback as they try out their project on the general public. There’s four different stations on hand, ranging from a stick of bamboo that offers the full gamut of sensitivity, including the exact location of touch, to an orchid that can sense an electric field disruption even as you approach for contact. While interactive plants may not have a role in everyday life, Botanicus Interacticus is certainly a clever implementation of capacitive touch. You can see it action just past the break.

Continue reading Disney Research’s Botanicus Interacticus adds capacitive touch to ordinary plants, we go hands-on

Filed under: Household, Peripherals

Disney Research’s Botanicus Interacticus adds capacitive touch to ordinary plants, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Aug 2012 14:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Disney Research  | Email this | Comments

As much as N-Trig is an old hand at supporting styluses, it’s had to focus on tablets and other larger devices due to technology limits: the HTC Flyer is about as small as the company has gone to date. A new version of N-Trig’s DuoSense chipset family could be the ticket to going to much smaller sizes. The new 4000 series condenses both pen input and multi-touch finger gestures into a combination of one chip and one sensor, letting any entrepreneurial device maker stuff the two control methods into a handheld device with as little as a 5-inch display. Naturally, the chip line scales all the way to 15.6-inch panels for creatives poking at the screens of laptops and larger Ultrabooks. We’re told that both Android and Windows slates will get N-Trig’s tinier touch tricks before the end of the year — whether or not that includes phablets with the same girth as the Galaxy Note or Optimus Vu, however, is left to our wild imaginings.

Continue reading N-Trig pen tech whittled down to single DuoSense chips and sensors, shrinks scribblings to travel size

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs

N-Trig pen tech whittled down to single DuoSense chips and sensors, shrinks scribblings to travel size originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 02:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  N-Trig  | Email this | Comments

At this year’s Uplinq conference, Qualcomm hit Android developers with some exciting news. In the coming months, the chip maker will deliver a Snapdragon software development kit (SDK) that will provide devs with access to the “next-generation technology and features” embedded in its processors. Through APIs, the kit will allow application architects to leverage facial processing, burst camera capture, surround sound recording, echo cancellation, sensor gestures, low power geofencing and indoor location capabilities. Initially, the SDK will only be available for the S4 8960 wafer, but Qualcomm hopes to include more models over time. Head past the break to have a gander at the full press release.

Continue reading Qualcomm to deliver Snapdragon SDK to Android developers

Qualcomm to deliver Snapdragon SDK to Android developers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 11:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments