As with Movea's Gyration Air Music Remote, the company's latest input peripheral can also work sans a surface. The aptly-named Gyration Air Mouse proudly boasts MotionSense technology that enables it to work both in-air and on desktop, meaning that you really can just wave your mouse around like you just don't care (and have it do something meaningful). The RF-based unit weighs in at under 4-ounces and is designed with professionals in mind, particularly those turned on by the idea of using the in-air motion tracking to wow clients when showing off that amazingly mundane PowerPoint presentation. It should be out this November for a penny under $100, and you can glance over the full release after the break.
USB Mosquito Stick Claims You'll Be Malaria-Free On a Laptop Safari. Using an ultrasonic force field, this USB stick vows to protect you from mosquitoes during all those times when you find yourself using a laptop in outdoor situations. It probably doesn't work, like most sound based repellents. This is what OFF spray is for people
A Swedish programmer, Hans Andersson, has used a Lego Mindstorms NXT kit to develop a robot to solve Sudoku puzzles. The robot first scans the puzzle and uses an optical sensor to map out the puzzle's pre-set numbers and blank squares. The robot scans one line at a time, inching forward a little after each line is scanned.The blurry scanned image is then converted to a black and white binary image to improve the sharpness of the picture. A threshold value calculated by Otsu's Method is used to determine whether each pixel in the image is white or black.
The Otsu Method algorithm classes pixels as either foreground or background, and then determines the optimal threshold that minimizes the intra-class variance. Pixels below the threshold are set to black, and those above are set to white. A thinning algorithm is then used to convert the resulting image of each digit to 1-pixel wide lines. The digits are then examined for features such as their width, and the number and direction of tips on the digit. The digit six, for example, has one tip, which points to the right. Following this procedure for each digit, the robot identifies all the pre-set numbers in the puzzle. Once the puzzle is mapped, the robot solves it and fills in the blank squares. A recursive backtracking algorithm would normally be used to solve puzzles such as Sudoku, crosswords, or other puzzles in which the solution has several candidates. The method carries out a systematic examination of all possible solutions, and abandons and does not re-visit any that are eliminated. The Lego Mindstorms processor is too slow to use a backtracking algorithm and it does not allow for recursive functions, so Andersson had to make sure the calculations were optimized. The result is a little robot that can solve Sudoku puzzles and get them right every time, and in only a few minutes.
Nintendo has come up with yet another idea for an accessory to add to its list of Wii peripherals. This time it's a soft football-shaped controller that is said to simulate the feel and touch of a real ball when playing football simulation games such as the NFL game
I still can't believe Apple hasn't approved Bluetooth keyboard drivers for the iPhone, but that hasn't stopped user-hacks, or products lining up to be ready. This latest effort modifies actual Apple Bluetooth keyboards, and adds app icons to the keys.
The F-keys have stenciled icons for the standard iPhone tasks (Mail, Safari, etc), and the keyboard letters have logos for some of the most popular iPhone apps. It actually doesn't look too bad, but there's no way to customize the icons.
Garmin's cyclist-minded GPS devices have sure come a long way from their earlier, bulkier days, and it looks like the company has now produced one of its sleekest units to date in the form of its new Edge 500 GPS. Like most such devices, this one is primarily intended to track your cycling progress rather than lead you to your destination, and it promises to give you precise data on things like speed, distance, time, calories burned, and even climb and descent information, which is further bolstered by a built-in barometric altimeter to pinpoint changes in elevation. The unit can also sync up with various third-party devices that make use of ANT+ technology, and it can naturally be paired with a Garmin heart rate monitor to keep a close watch on your vitals. Look for the standalone unit to set you back about $250, while the bundle with a heart rate monitor and speed/cadence sensor bumps things up to $350.
Designed by Danny Luo, this embossing Braille labelmaker may look like a flashlight, but in reality it's a innovative tool for the sight-impaired: speak into the wide end and the labelmaker will spit out labels with embossed Braille characters
The 25mm x 50mm labels produced by this printer are intended to simplify the identification of similarly shaped or sized objects. Understandably, the designer appears to focus on the potential applications in identifying prescription medication bottles in particular. Being fortunate enough to only require minor vision correction, I can't even imagine how someone could identify medications without sight: the containers are nearly identical and there are plenty of pills that would feel the same. While this concept could save lives by preventing accidental overdoses, the applications seem limitless:
Draganfly's new unmanned aerial photography device is out, the DraganFlyer X4. It is a four-rotor UAV that measures only 30.5-inches across and since it ships with your choice of either a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580, Watec WAT-902H2 Ultimate (for shooting in low light), FLIR Photon TAU (infrared), or the Highg Res 480 Board Camera (analog motion video with an 8GB DVR), we imagine that this thing ain't going to be cheap. That said, if you are a well-heeled creepy stalker, southern border vigilante, or even someone with legitimate military / industrial business, there are plenty of features to make it worth a second look, including: computerized stabilization, altitude hold (maintains its position in the air without user input), and an automatic landing feature that kicks in if the control link is lost. But most importantly for the airborne auteur, this guy sports a wireless video downlink that sends the viewfinder signal that can be displayed either on the device's handheld controller or a pair of video goggles, allowing real-time manipulation of zoom, tilt, and shutter settings. Get a closer look at the thing after the break.
We'd never considered a career in biochemistry until we saw this wild beast of a chemical microprocessor. Microfluidic chips, used to test chemical reactions and properties, have been known to be smaller, but they've never before been quite this powerful. The result of a joint study between California State University, UCLA and China's Wuhan University, the "integrated microfluidic device" is capable of performing 1,024 in situ chemical reactions at a time, making the researcher's life, oh, about 1,024 times easier. Most importantly though, costly enzymes previously used for a single test can now be split up into hundreds and tested simultaneously, which should pave the way for exponentially faster and easier medical research. It's not clear when these will be widely available, but we're sure PhDs around the world are trying to order one as we speak.[Via medGadget]
This is the Smart Measure Cup. It's a simple, great idea—a measuring cup that displays precise volume on a backlit LCD complete with unit conversion. So great, in fact, that it's been rebranded and picked up for manufacture.[Yanko Design]
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute have developed a small device that can be used to check the freshness of fruit, telling the interested parties whether it's ripe or not. Based on previous technologies which measure, for example car emissions, the device measures the volatile gases emitted by the fruit and analyzes its makeup to determine the state of freshness. The team already has a working prototype, and sees the device, which would cost somewhere in the thousands of dollars range, as having widespread application for businesses that supply food to grocery stores. So far the device has only successfully been used to test the freshness of fruit, but researchers see possible future applications in testing meat as well.
