Hasta La Gadget!

Remember those mind-melting Recon Instruments goggles that we caught wind of late last year? Admit it — you never, ever expected those things to actually make it to market. Despite your pessimism, it seems as if those very specs are indeed making a beeline to the consumer realm, with Zeal Optics jumping in, working a bit of magic and relabeling ’em Transcend. Deemed the planet’s first GPS and sensor-laden ski goggles, these things are purportedly capable of logging speed, altitude, temperature and time details, and the side-mounted toggle switches will enable you to view said data in real time (or not, if you’re paying attention to the 50 foot drop ahead of you). Peek the read link for further details on the $350+ wearables (demoed after the break), and get ready to hit the slopes with a whole new mindset this October.

[Thanks, Christopher]

Continue reading Zeal Optics bringing GPS, sensor-laden Transcend ski goggles to market

Filed under: GPS, Wearables

Zeal Optics bringing GPS, sensor-laden Transcend ski goggles to market originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Controller-type devices baked into wearables have been around since the late 17th century (though we can’t seem to recall one in particular that was made before Nintendo’s Power Glove), but frankly, we haven’t seen a whole lot of innovation in this department over the past few years. Deanmark’s AirMouse is hoping to change all of that, but if we didn’t know any better, we’d say Microsoft kind of called this concept first. Anywho, the strap-on mouse — which doesn’t seem to boast any sort of price or release date — attaches on one’s wrist and fingers in order to place sensors on areas where you’d normally mouse. Naturally, the company claims that this approach helps fend of repetitive stress injuries and also enables a new level of multitasking, but until doctors start gluing these things to our hands at birth, we get the feeling that most folks will simply stick to what they know when it comes to cursor pushing.

Deanmark’s AirMouse looks more like a ragged glove, less like an input peripheral originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look, we know that a sensor announcement falls on the dull side of magical, but without them there wouldn’t be any new cameras now would there? So listen in when we tell you about the 14.6 megapixel CMOS sensor from OmniVision capable of shooting stills or 1080p video at 60 fps (with some pixel binning). The 1/2.33-inch OV14810 sensor features an active array of 4,416 x 3,312 backside illuminated pixels capable of 15fps at full resolution. Omnivision is also sampling its new OV14825 for mobile applications. Both should start appearing in still / video cams and mobile phones shortly after they hit mass production in Q2 of the year twenty-ten.

Omnivision illuminates the dark side with new 14.6 megapixel CMOS sensor originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Folks have long been using piezoelectric devices to harvest energy in everything from dance floors to parking lots, but a group of European researchers have now shown off some novel uses for the technology at the recent International Electron Devices Meeting that could see even more of the self-sufficient devices put to use. Their big breakthrough is that they’ve managed to shrink a piezoelectric device down to “micromachine” size, which was apparently possible in part as a result of using aluminum nitride instead of lead zirconate titanate as the piezoelectric material, thereby making the devices easier to manufacture. Their first such device is a wireless temperature sensor, which is not only extremely tiny, but is able to function autonomously by harvesting energy from vibrations and transmit temperature information to a base station at 15 second intervals. Of course, the researchers say that is just the beginning, and they see similar devices eventually being used in everything from tire-pressure monitoring systems to predictive maintenance of any moving or rotating machine parts.

Researchers develop tiny, autonomous piezoelectric energy harvester originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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They’re short on details, but the folks at Cambridge Consultants might just be onto something with this new “Suma sensor system” of theirs. Basically it translates the deformation of its soft material into 3D data that can be used in a video game to “unleash the full capabilities of both the human hand and the user’s imagination.” Sounds a tad far fetched, but the exciting part is that this “Suma skin” control material can replace the traditional casing of a regular gaming controller for less than a buck in parts, meaning that with (relatively) little effort we could see tactile squeezing, gripping and other sorts of finger-friendly input worked into console gaming without having to bid farewell to the form factors we know and love. Cambridge Consultants doesn’t mention robotics, but we could also see this sort of material being quite the cost-effective, sensor-laden skin replacement. Just as long as nobody tries to get us to control Ezio with that little stress-ball pictured above.

Continue reading Cambridge Consultants Suma sensor is designed to add ‘3D’ input to traditional control schemes

Cambridge Consultants Suma sensor is designed to add ‘3D’ input to traditional control schemes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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