Hasta La Gadget!

It’s been over a year since Sony introduced the world’s first 16.41 megapixel CMOS sensor for cellphones (pictured at right), but the company’s now finally back with another entrant in the megapxiel race: a 17.7 megapixel sensor. This one delivers more than just a higher resolution, though, as it’s also Sony’s first sensor with a bandwidth of 34.8Gbps (or about five times faster than previous CMOS sensors), which promises to allow for 120 fps video at full resolution — assuming the phone’s processor and storage are able to keep up, of course. What’s more, the new sensor is also said to boast some improved consumption and, according to Nikkei, it seems that Sony is planning to use it in digital cameras in addition to cellphones, although there’s no word as to when either of those will be available.

Sony touts high-speed 17.7 megapixel CMOS sensor for cellphones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re pretty certain that once embedded wireless sensors catch on, they’ll pervade every aspect of our lives, and Green Goose is building a microcosm of that eventuality in the form of a role-playing game. The five-person SF Bay Area startup has embedded custom 915MHz radios and MEMS accelerometers in a variety of tiny transmitters which you can mount to household objects — like a water bottle, bicycle, or the toothbrush above — which report back to the receiver with your actions and thereby increase your score. Brush your teeth on time, take your vitamins, or exercise repeatedly within a couple hundred feet of the receiver, and you’ll eventually level up. (Or, optionally, muck with the sensor just right, and it’ll register points anyhow.) Presently, that level isn’t worth anything, but founder Brian Krejcarek says there are tentative plans to tie these points into a real game and an API to build the idea out, and he’s presently looking for partner companies here at the Launch Conference in San Francisco to help roll out the sensors (which cost approximately $4 each) under branded marketing initiatives of some sort. If you don’t want to wait, the company will sell starter kits starting February 28th for $24. Not bad for a head start on the future, right?

Update: VentureBeat reports that Green Goose raised $100,000 in funding at the conference. Another interesting note: ReadWriteWeb reports that the sensors were originally pitched as a money-saving tool.

Update 2: $100,000, not $100 million. Whoops.

Green Goose sensors monitor your life, you earn experience points (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How do you send an automated alert to a security guard whenever anyone tries to climb a fence, but ignore anyone simply leaning on said chain link? How can a sensor pick up the presence of a Jeep but ignore a steady flow of gigantic airliners? Damned if we know, we’re just bloggers, but a team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering figured it out, creating what’s called the Smart Fence. It’s a series of sensors plus some associated circuitry that easily handle the situations described above and do so with amazing accuracy. How amazing? Here are the results of one test:

A perfect (100%) identification of unexpected intrusion events, and an average of less than two false positives per week and zero false negatives for recognition of human footsteps. In addition, no false positives or false negatives were reported by the installed fence sensors for a duration of 45 days of unattended operation, which included several days of seasonal storms.

Yeah, pretty good. The system is being developed for use around airports and military bases and is currently being funded largely by Navy grants. Now, if only they could create a system to prevent “laser events” and airport blizzards we might be able to travel safely again.

USC Smart Fences use spatio-temporal sensor patterns to create a DRADIS for airports originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Way back in September 2009, we reported on an omnipotent war blimp from Lockheed Martin, now it looks like a similar dirigible could be hovering 20,000 feet above Afghanistan by this fall. (It’s not clear whether or not the two blimps are one and the same, but Lockheed’s craft was slated for an Afghan debut in 2011.) As part of the $211 million Blue Devil initiative, the US Air Force plans to pack the bloated beast — which sports seven times the carrying capacity of the Goodyear blimp — with up to a dozen interchangeable sensors and a supercomputer for processing data. It will then hover for stints as long as a week, collecting, assessing, and relaying important surveillance data to ground troops in a matter of seconds. It’s a tall order, but Air Force officials hope that an on-board wide-area airborne surveillance system (WAAS), which uses 96 cameras to generate nearly 275TB of data every hour, and a supercomputer hosting the equivalent of 2,000 single-core servers will fit the bill. The aircraft isn’t complete quite yet, but barring unforeseen obstacles, like a run-in with a giant needle, it should be up in the air starting October 15th. For more on Blue Devil check out our links below.

US Air Force enlists super blimp for Blue Devil surveillance initiative originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WinRumors, citing anonymous sources, reports that the official software developers kit (SDK) for Kinect is currently in the works and will be released in beta some time in the next few months. Apparently, support for the device will become a part of Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio and also be integrated into Windows 8 in a big way. These details come hot on the heels of CEO Steve Ballmer’s statement at CES that the good folks in Redmond would eventually support the device’s use on computers, but he set no timetable for the SDKs release. We can’t confirm the story, but given the level of detail in the report and the author’s confidence in the info, we won’t be surprised if Microsoft gives all you Kinect hackers something to cheer about very soon.

Kinect support for Windows in the works, SDK release this summer? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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