While wireless charging capability is built into the latest Nexus handsets, iPhone users looking to unplug are faced with the prospect of shelling out for a wireless-ready (and often bulky) case like the Powermat series. The iQi Mobile looks to slim down the equation with a wireless power solution that works with most iPhone soft cases.
As the name suggests, the iQi Mobile uses the Qi (pronounced “i-chee”) standard and is compatible with iPhone 5, 5C, 5S & iPod Touch (5G). It consists of a 0.5 mm thick, credit-card like receiver unit and a flexible plug for the phone's Lightning connector that allows it to be squeezed behind a standard soft case. From there it enables charging at a rate faster than USB 2.0 with any Qi compatible charging pad, including the Koolpuck charger which is being bundled with the iQi Mobile offering.
Funds are being raised to bring the iQi Mobile to market via Indiegogo where the campaign has almost quadrupled its US$30,000 goal with 18 days still left to run.
The company says early backers of the campaign will receive their iQi Mobile perks before Christmas. A full retail launch is slated for 2014 with the iQi Mobile receiver to be priced at $35 and the receiver/Koolpuck charger bundle to cost $85.
An American scientist is to unveil details of work on the brain patterns of Prof Stephen Hawking which he says could help safeguard the physicist’s ability to communicate.
Prof Philip Low said he eventually hoped to allow Prof Hawking to “write” words with his brain as an alternative to his current speech system which interprets cheek muscle movements.
Prof Low said the innovation would avert the risk of locked-in syndrome.
Intel is working on an alternative.
Prof Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963. In the 1980s he was able to use slight thumb movements to move a computer cursor to write sentences.
His condition later worsened and he had to switch to a system which detects movements in his right cheek through an infrared sensor attached to his glasses which measures changes in light.
Because the nerves in his face continue to deteriorate his rate of speech has slowed to about one word a minute prompting him to look for an alternative.
The fear is that Prof Hawking could ultimately lose the ability to communicate by body movement, leaving his brain effectively “locked in” his body.
In 2011, he allowed Prof Low to scan his brain using the iBrain device developed by the Silicon Valley-based start-up Neurovigil.
Prof Hawking will not attend the consciousness conference in his home town of Cambridge where Prof Low intends to discuss his findings, but a spokesman told the BBC: “Professor Hawking is always interested in supporting research into new technologies to help him communicate.”
Decoding brainwaves
The iBrain is a headset that records brain waves through EEG (electroencephalograph) readings – electrical activity recorded from the user’s scalp.
Prof Low said he had designed computer software which could analyse the data and detect high frequency signals that had previously been thought lost because of the skull.”
An analogy would be that as you walk away from a concert hall where there’s music from a range of instruments,” he told the BBC.”As you go further away you will stop hearing high frequency elements like the violin and viola, but still hear the trombone and the cello. Well, the further you are away from the brain the more you lose the high frequency patterns.
The iBrain device collects EEG data which it transfers to a computer
“What we have done is found them and teased them back using the algorithm so they can be used.”
Prof Low said that when Prof Hawking had thought about moving his limbs this had produced a signal which could be detected once his algorithm had been applied to the EEG data.
He said this could act as an “on-off switch” and produce speech if a bridge was built to a similar system already used by the cheek detection system.
Prof Low said further work needed to be done to see if his equipment could distinguish different types of thoughts – such as imagining moving a left hand and a right leg.
If it turns out that this is the case he said Prof Hawking could use different combinations to create different types of virtual gestures, speeding up the rate he could select words at.
To establish whether this is the case, Prof Low plans trials with other patients in the US.
Intel’s effort
The US chipmaker Intel announced, in January, that it had also started work to create a new communication system for Prof Hawking after he had asked the firm’s co-founder, Gordon Moore, if it could help him.
It is attempting to develop new 3D facial gesture recognition software to speed up the rate at which Prof Hawking can write.
“These gestures will control a new user interface that takes advantage of the multi-gesture vocabulary and advances in word prediction technologies,” a spokeswoman told the BBC.
“We are working closely with Professor Hawking to understand his needs and design the system accordingly.”
Intel began working with Prof Hawking after he wrote a letter to its co-founder Gordon Moore in 2011
Once you start automating your home with electronic locks, lights, switches, and other components, the number of apps on your phone can multiply very quickly. Worse, it seems like you should be able to easily link their behavior together yet can’t.
After all, if you want the lights to turn off when you leave the house, shouldn’t the thermostat also turn down? The Revolv home automation system and associated smart phone app aim to simplify things with one centralized control hub that promises easy setup, no additional support fees, and an evolving lineup of supported devices and features.
Using Revolv is designed to be simple. Once plugged into a central location for optimal Wi-Fi coverage, the unit automatically adds supported devices from the home network, while others need to be added manually via a walkthrough on the Revolv app.
The unit boasts seven wireless radios supporting ten different wireless protocols, with Insteon, Wi-Fi, and Z-Wave currently covered, and more including ZigBee to be rolled out later. What it doesn’t require is an Ethernet connection, creating an account, or monthly fees, with the system registering your phone simply by using the phone’s flash. Only iOS devices are currently supported, but Android, Windows Phone and others will follow.
Once devices are enabled, the fun begins. You can design different home "scenarios," such as coming home, vacation, relaxation, movie night, or bedtime, with rules being triggered by the phone’s proximity, motion sensors, or based on time. Currently the GeoSense proximity trigger is only enabled for one phone, though this will be updated early next year. However, multiple phones can control a Revolv system.
The company is also working on more complex conditional rules, as might apply in households where not everyone has a smartphone. Also planned is a feature that recognizes when people are still at home, despite the GeoSense-linked user leaving the house with their phone.
Belkin WeMo light switches and electrical outlets, Philips Hue and Insteonlightbulbs, Kwikset and Yale locks, and wireless speakers from Sonos are just a few of the devices currently supported, with a full list that is being regularly updated found on Revolv’s website.
The Revolv system is currently available for US$299.
If you’ve started to automate your home, what would you do with Revolv? Let us know in the comments.
Below is Revolv’s video pitching the “sexiness” of home automation.
Hi friends you are all know that Pranav Mistry developed a Sixth sense technology, which is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information. He reveals his Sixth Sense technology project to the world as opensource..
HARDWARE:
Camera
The camera is the key input device of the SixthSense system. The camera acts as a digital eye of the system. It basically captures the scene the user is looking at. The video stream captured by the camera is passed to mobile computing device which does the appropriate computer vision computation. The major functions of the camera can be listed as:
Captures user’s hand movements and gestures (used in reorganization of user gestures)
Captures the scene in front and objects the user is interacting with (used in object reorganization and tracking)
Takes a photo of the scene in front when the user performs a ‘framing’ gesture
Captures the scene of projected interface (used to correct the alignment, placement and look and feel of the projected interface components)
The projector is the key output device of the SixthSense system. The projector visually augments surfaces, walls and physical objects the user is interacting with by projecting digital information and graphical user interfaces. The mobile computing device provides the projector with the content to be projected. The projector unit used in prototype runs on a rechargeable battery. The major functions of the projector can be listed as:
Projects graphical user interface of the selected application onto surfaces or walls in front
Augments the physical objects the user interacting with by projecting just-in-time and related information from the Internet
The mirror reflects the projection coming out from the projector and thus helps in projecting onto the desired locations on walls or surfaces. The user manually can change the tilt of the mirror to change the location of the projection. For example in application where the user wants the projection to go on the ground instead of the surface in front, he can change the tilt of the mirror to change the projection. Thus, the mirror in the SixthSense helps in overcoming the limitation of the limited projection space of the projector.
Suggested Product: Any 1”X1” first surface mirror
Microphone
The microphone is an optional component of the SixthSense. It is required when using a paper as a computing interface. When the user wants to use a sheet of paper as an interactive surface, he or she clips the microphone to the paper. The microphone attached this way captures the sound signals of user’s touching the paper. This data is passed to computing device for processing. Later, combined with the tracking information about user’s finger, the system is able to identify precise touch events on the paper. Here, the sound signal captured by the microphone provides time information whereas the camera performs tracking. The applications enabled by this technique are explained earlier.
The SixthSense system uses a mobile computing device in user’s pocket as the processing device. The software program enabling all the features of the system runs on this computing device. This device can be a mobile phone or a small laptop computer. The camera, the projector and the microphone are connected to this device using wired or wireless connection. The detail of the software program that runs on this device is provided in next section. The mobile computing device is also connected to the Internet via 3G network or wireless connection.
Suggested Product: Any Windows computer
Now that you have all these pieces, you need a way to combine them. We recommend using Lego strips to form the base. The projector, camera, and mirror assembly can be directly put onto this base. You can also use Velcro to combine the products.
Suggested Hardware Components
These are the basic pieces that you should buy. You can choose any brand, and the following list are those items that worked well for us:
Front faced mirror is best, 1”X1” first surface mirror (this can be purchased from anywhere, i.e. Ebay)
Laptop Computer: Any Windows computer (this will act as the mobile computing device)
SOFTWARE:
How to run the Software Component of SixthSense
The prototype system runs on windows platform and majority of the code is written in C++ and C#. We will be uploading newer versions as it is being developed; this will also include a mobile version.
NOTE: We are moving the new code to Git this week. Meanwhile you can download it at the link below.
How many mobile electronic devices to you have now? A smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, digital camera, maybe even a smart watch? And how often is it necessary to transfer pictures, documents or videos, between your devices? The inTouch technology developed by researchers from the VTT Research Center of Finland lets a ring, bracelet, or even a smart fingernail act as a conduit to transfer information between devices simply and securely – even when the devices are owned by different people.
You have probably wished you had such a feature at some point. I was recently at an event where I was working with five friends. We had all taken pictures at the event, and now we wanted to share the pictures with each other. But we all had different devices with different operating systems. We uploaded the pictures – one at a time – to Facebook or another online service, and then downloaded them one at a time to our devices, and then again to our laptops or desktop computers once we got home. But what if there was a better way?
The team at the Smart Interaction Solutions lab at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, led by Dr. Jani Mäntyjärvi has been experimenting with different devices in different forms that can act as a “touch conduit” of information between different devices.
The basic idea is that the user wears a ring, or bracelet, watch, or even a “smart fingernail” (i.e. a small chip embedded in an artificial fingernail) that has some small amount of memory, an antenna, but no battery. The system would require the devices to have a special antenna that sends out enough energy to power the ring or other inTouch device, just like how an RFID(Radio Frequency Identification) chip works.
When the user touches their device with an inTouch ring, for example, a special icon appears. If the user wants to upload a small amount of information, like a website address, or a small picture, the data is actually stored in the ring. Then when the user touches another device equipped with the same technology, they can initiate a download from the ring back into the device.
Sending a friend a website address is a simple task of touching your smartphone on the web page, selecting the “upload” icon, and then touching the friend’s device and selecting download. The information is wirelessly transferred via the ring.
Because the ring has limited storage capacity, the cloud is used as an intermediary for larger amounts of data, such as video files. The inTouch software uploads the file to a cloud service, so the ring only has to store a link to the data. Then, once the user touches the device to which they wish to send the video file, it knows where to go to download it.
This technique does require some modifications to the devices involved – a special antenna and transmitter/receiver needs to be incorporated into each smartphone, tablet, or computer in addition to the Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth wireless technologies that may already be there.
Dr. Mäntyjärvi sees this type of wearable information conduit as enabling quite a few applications besides just simple file sharing. The ring can act as a password or security device that can unlock doors, or perhaps start your car. A bracelet could be used as an ID card to enable industrial equipment, or identify specific operators. The ring could also contain a link to a person's medical information that doctors could access in the emergency room.
The chips and antennas involved are very small, and since they have no batteries, can be placed in any number of wearable accessories, clothing, jewellery, or, as mentioned, a fashionable fake fingernail.
This person uses a fingernail-shaped chip to transfer data between a tablet and a smartphone with just a touch.
This data ring makes the connection between two devices by transferring data via a wireless antenna.
The touch device can also take the shape of a bracelet. You still have to touch the device to confirm the connection.
You can see a demonstration of the technology in the following video.
