Rewind: 50 gizmos and gadgets that made us say ‘wow’

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2015 was quite the year. Here are just some of the awesome devices with mainstream appeal that caught our eye over the last 12 months. 

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Buddy

The first social robot that connects, protects and interacts with each member of your family.

Bistrobot

If you give this automated machine $2, it will craft a peanut butter sandwich on white bread with your choice of honey, blackberry jam, sweet chili or chocolate sauce.

Keyboardio

Finally, there’s an open source ergonomic keyboard that gives your overworked pinkies a break and puts your thumbs to work.

Voltera V-One

Tired of delays and unnecessary expenses? Then you’ll love this laptop-sized printer that can turn design files into prototype circuit boards in minutes.

PancakeBot

Design, print and eat your own pancakes.

PicoBrew Pico

Why head out to the package store when you can brew your own fresh, personalized craft beer right at home?

Forever 21 Thread Screen

The team of BREAKFAST and Forever 21 developed a massive, one-ton machine that turns your Instagram photos into thread artwork.

DrumPants

From hip-hop to dubstep, this wearable kit lets you play music right from your body using 100+ sounds and 300+ music applications.

Prometheus

While it may look like a 3D printer, this PCB milling machine enables you to prototype circuit boards right from your desk.

Tech Tats

Chaotic Moon Studios have devised a cutting-edge tattoo kit, which allows for the monitoring of your own body activity.

Layered Fabric 3D Printer

Who needs a toy store when you can 3D print your own soft and deformable stuffed animals from layers of off-the-shelf fabric?

BeachBot

Sand castles are so 2014. This turtlish autonomous robot can create large scale art on the beach.

OpenROV Trident

Whereas most drones are made for the sky, this remote-controlled, camera-equipped ROV is meant for underwater exploration.

Reality Editor

What if reprogramming your devices was as simple as drawing lines between them? Thanks to MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group, it may soon be.

ONAGOfly

Sorry selfie sticks, your days are numbered. This palm-sized drone features GPS auto-following and a high-res camera.

BeON Home

There are smart lights, then there are out-smart lights. This system will make having a safer, smarter home as simple as screwing in a bulb.

PowerUp FPV

Your old-school paper airplane just got a whole heck of a lot cooler with a live-streaming camera.

Phree

A revolutionary pen that turns the world around you into a notepad.

The Things Network

Make your city smart with this global, crowdsourced and decentralized IoT network.

Ripple Maker

A 3D printing-inspired device that can etch art on the foam of your coffee.

FarmBot

Grow my gosh! This 2015 Hackaday Prize entry is the world’s first open source CNC farming machine.

Alpha 2

Could this humanoid robot become the newest addition to your family?

LifeQ

By tapping into the human sensor, this intelligent technology can significantly improve decision-making for anyone’s health and well-being.

Sesame

Replace your keys with your smartphone in just seconds.

UnaliWear

Like OnStar for seniors, this all-in-one, voice-controlled wearable will help keep the elderly independent, active and safe.

ShiftWear

The most adaptable shoes you’ll ever own, customized straight from your smartphone.

Flic

A wireless button that can control your favorite smart functions.

C.H.I.P.

A $9 computer. ‘nuff said.

DrinkMate Mini

Have you had a couple of drinks? Don’t worry, this tiny iPhone breathalyzer has got your BAC!

Opal

Love nugget ice? Hate buying bags? This affordable gadget is for you.

Dobot

This high-precision, Arduino-based desktop robotic arm can do pretty much anything.

RePhone

BYOD: Build your own device! Piece together your own phone and give inanimate objects the power of cellular communication.

Mycroft

Based on the Arduino and Raspberry Pi, this open source A.I. system plays media, controls lights and more.

Spinn Coffee

This appliance can whip up anything from drip coffee to espresso, depending on how fast the brewer spins.

Tempescope

Who needs weather apps when you can recreate the forecast from right inside your living room?

Makerarm

A complete personal fabrication system crammed into a single, sleek robotic arm for your desk.

Fibonacci Clock

Think reading an analog clock is tough? Tell time using glowing lights and the Fibonacci sequence.

Electroloom

Design and create seamless, ready-to-wear garments based on custom 3D geometries.

Fleye

Could this soccer ball-shaped drone be the safest flying bot to date?

Naviator

A drone that can fly and swim.

RoboHon

Sharp unveiled a new smartphone in the form of an adorable robot.

Dancing Paper

Bet you’ve never seen a bunch of origami bust a move.

jamStik+

A portable guitar that teaches you to play and lets you jam on the go.

Nexpaq

This modular case for your smartphone gives you the ability to add and remove physical modules whenever necessary.

OWOW

A new breed of instruments that can drop the beat at home, in the studio or live on stage.

Oval

What if you could play a handpan like an electronic musical instrument?

SensorWake

The world’s first olfactory alarm clock wakes you up with your favorite scents instead of sound.

Ario

This smart lamp learns your habits, syncs to your body clock and keeps you healthy through natural lighting patterns.

CMYK 4.0

If you’re looking to make your commute from home to the office a bit more efficient, then this foldable electric bike may be for you.

Musio

The world’s first artificially intelligent companion bot, designed to engage and grow with you.

LineFORM

This shape-changing soft robot can be a phone, a wristwatch, a keyboard, a lamp and more.

Cord UIs

Imagine if you could control your gadgetry using cords and cables.

Bruno

There’s finally an automated smart trashcan that not only opens with a wave of a hand but vacuums up dust and restocks itself.

Netflix

These smart socks will pause your binge-watching session when you fall asleep.

Pixelio

Goodbye, shaky hands! Transform your smartphone into a 3D scanner.

 

Luzi is a smart lamp that will improve your sleep

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Luzi isn’t just a smart lamp that helps you sleep better, it may very well be the smartest lamp ever made.

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If it’s up to one Palo Alto startup, sleepless nights may finally become a thing of the past. That’s because they have developed a new sophisticated smart lamp specifically designed to improve an individual’s quality of sleep, while giving its users bedside control of the devices around them.

The Luzi Smart Lamp is an advanced sleep system that uses the combination of therapeutic light, personalized sound and voice commands to help users ease into their nightly slumber much faster and wake up more refreshed. What’s more, its creators have put an entire control station on the nightstand, enabling its users to light up the room, tell it the time that they would like to be woken, as well as sync the tower with other smart home appliances.

In addition to a touchscreen display that doubles as an alarm and a personalized clock face that can show things such as temperature, weather reports and the date, Luzi boasts four USB ports capable of powering multiple phones and tablets, Qi and PMA-certified wireless charging capabilities, and even a charging stand for Apple Watch owners. Embedded with LEDs, the lamp can adjust between various colors from a warm, orange glow to a soft, white light. According to its creators, the accessory emulates natural daylight to keep a user’s circadian rhythm in check and assist in soothing them to sleep. Throughout the night, the system functions by maintaining the user’s ideal sleep state, whereas by morning, Luzi uses new sounds and light to gently wake the user.

“Luzi is the most advanced smart lamp ever made,” explains Joel Burke, co-founder and CEO. “Studies have found a direct correlation between the quality of one’s sleep with various health problems. Our expectation is that Luzi will help to remedy these issues and promote better sleep habits.”

Meanwhile, Luzi is equipped with a microphone that listens to voice commands and automatically detects snoring, along with built-in Bluetooth speakers to talk back and a temperature sensor for measuring the ambient temperature of a room. Designed with the Internet of Things in mind, the unit is compatible with a plethora of third party smart gadgets like Switchmate, Fitbit, LifeQ, Lockitron and Luna, which means users can interact with their connected home by voice, too.

Ready for a good night’s sleep? Head over to Luzi’s Indiegogo campaign, where the team is currently seeking $50,000. Delivery is slated for March 2016.

Ready to wear sensor hubs

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Majeed Ahmad explores the latest sensor hub offerings for wearable devices.  

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By Majeed Ahmad

Atmel has beefed up its sensor hub offerings for wearable devices with SAM D20 Cortex M0+ microcontroller core to add more functionality and further lower the power bar for battery-operated devices. The SAM D20 MCUs offer ultra-low power through a patented power-saving technique called “Event System” that allows peripherals to communicate directly with each other without involving the CPU.

Atmel is part of the group of chipmakers that use low-power MCUs for sensor management as opposed to incorporating low-power core within the application processor. According to market research firm IHS Technology, Atmel is the leading sensor hub device supplier with 32 percent market share.

Sensor hubs are semiconductor devices that carry out sensor processing tasks — like sensor fusion and sensor calibration — through an array of software algorithms and subsequently transform sensor data into app-ready information for smartphones, tablets and wearable devices. Sensor hubs combine inputs from multiple sensors and sensor types including motion sensors — such as accelerometers, magnetometers and gyroscopes — and environmental sensors that provide light level, color, temperature, pressure, humidity, and many other inputs.

Atmel has supplied MCU-centric sensor hub solutions for a number of smartphones. Take China’s fourth largest smartphone maker, Coolpad, which has been using Atmel’s low-power MCU to offload sensor management tasks from handset’s main processor. However, while still busy in supplying sensor hub chips for smartphones and tablets, Atmel is looking at the next sensor-laden frontier: wearable devices.

SAM D20 Evaluation Kit

Wearable devices are becoming the epitome of always-on sensor systems as they mirror and enhance cool smartphone apps like location and transport, activity and gesture monitoring, and voice command operation in far more portable manner. At the same time, however, always-on sensor ecosystem within connected wearables requires sensor hubs to interpret and combine multiple types of sensing—motion, sound and face—to enable context, motion and gesture solutions for devices like smartwatch.

Sensor hubs within wearable environment should be able to manage robust context awareness, motion detection, and gesture recognition demands. Wearable application developers are going to write all kinds of apps such as tap-to-walk and optical gesture. And, for sensor hubs, that means a lot more processing work and a requirement for greater accuracy.

So, the low-power demand is crucial in wearable devices given that sensor hubs would have to process a lot more sensor data at a lot lower power budget compared to smartphones and tablets. That’s why Atmel is pushing the power envelope for connected wearables through SAM D20 Cortex M0+ cores that offload the application processor from sensor-related tasks.

LifeQ’s sensor module for connected wearables

The SAM D20 devices have two software-selectable sleep modes: idle and standby. In idle mode, the CPU is stopped while all other functions can be kept running. In standby mode, all clocks and functions are stopped except those selected to continue running.

Moreover, SAM D20 microcontroller supports SleepWalking, a feature that allows the peripheral to wake up from sleep based on predefined conditions. It allows the CPU to wake up only when needed — for instance, when a threshold is crossed or a result is ready.

The SAM D20 Cortex M0+ core offers the peripheral flexibility through a serial communication module (SERCOM) that is fully software-configurable to handle I²C, USART/UART and SPI communications. Furthermore, it offers memory densities ranging from 16KB to 256KB to give designers the option to determine how much memory they will require in sleep mode to achieve better power efficiency.

Atmel’s sensor hub solutions support Android and Windows operating systems as well as real-time operating system (RTOS) software. The San Jose–based chipmaker has also partnered with sensor fusion software and application providers including Hillcrest Labs and Sensor Platforms. In fact, Hillcrest is providing sensor hub software for China’s Coolpad, which is using Atmel’s low-power MCU for sensor data management.

The company has also signed partnership deals with major sensor manufacturers — including Bosch, Intersil, Kionix, Memsic and Sensirion — to streamline and accelerate design process for OEMs and ensure quick and seamless product integration.

Atmel Sensor Hub Software from Hillcrest Labs

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This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Majeed Ahmad is a featured blogger. It first appeared there on February 4, 2015.  Majeed Ahmad is author of books Smartphone: Mobile Revolution at the Crossroads of Communications, Computing and Consumer Electronics and The Next Web of 50 Billion Devices: Mobile Internet’s Past, Present and Future. Majeed has a background in Engineering MS, former EE Times Editor in Chief (Asia), Writer for EC Magazine, Author of SmartPhone, Nokia’s SMART Phone.

 

LifeQ is tapping into the human sensor

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In today’s constantly-connected world, there is often a disconnect between raw data collection and sensor management. LifeQ has the answer.

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According to LifeQ, who made its debut back at CES 2015, the future of wearables may not actually be wearables but instead the data that they collect. The South African startup is looking to tap into the human sensor by combining two technologies to give people the ability to optimize and improve the condition of the body and live intelligently. This pair of technologies, continuous physiological monitoring and bio-mathematical modeling, provide insights around personal and population-wide health, making it possible to significantly improve decision making for anyone’s well-being.

We had the chance to catch up with LifeQ executive founder Riaan Conradie along with lead engineer Nicol Carstens to explore the ways in which its Atmel | SMART SAM4L ARM Cortex-M4-based solution will enable wearable device companies, application developers, data scientists and other experts to better monitor, understand and manage physiology, behavior and health. It’s important to note: LifeQ is not a wearables company.

At the moment, computational systems biology is a relatively new field, with only a small group of scientists studying and publishing on the topic. LifeQ’s multi-disciplinary team is pioneering this effort and has a vision of enabling every human being to really understand their own bodies and health, and make decisions based on highly personalized health records and insights.

LifeQ’s technology focuses on highlighting and improving six major verticals in one technological device for users to optimize their health and well-being including: fitness, nutrition, sleep and stress, medical, health and data mining. Given that deep analysis of data isn’t just a one-company task, it will require extensive collaborations to provide meaningful insights. Currently, the startup is partnering with a wide-range of brands to enable them to tap into the LifeQ model specific to their industry.

In fact, DailyDot reports that LifeQ ended CES 2015 with four partners who will include the company’s technology in their devices in the near future, and another 10 to 15 slated to be onboard by year-end. Among the early partners for implementation is First Alert with its Onelink smartwatch, which will take advantage of LifeQ’s ability to add functionality as it gathers more consumer data in its research cloud.

“Mobile health is following a very similar evolution to weather forecasting, going from simply going outside, through barometers to sophisticated computational forecasting,” explained Conradie. “Just like in weather forecasting, the traditional meteorological recording equipment is still needed, but it’s more about analyzing and using that data.”

Undoubtedly, LifeQ’s data pool will continue to expand as more consumers buy its partners’ wearable gadgets. As companies include these sensors into their next products, information will be sent to the cloud, and the resulting streams will be made available to app developers and device makers. Interested in learning more? Head over to the company’s official page here.