Category Archives: Newsworthy

Devices Running on WiFi Power

Mobile devices are now radically smaller and more powerful than those available in the last decade were. They are also able to tackle more technology-related tasks compared to their erstwhile brethren. However, as their capability grows, they need to consume more power. With the Internet-of-Things and wearable technologies gaining increasing recognition from users, the need to keep them ‘on’ all the time is raising the topic of the best methods to power them.

Imagine that you have multiple sensors embedded around your home, tracking temperature changes by the minute and governing your thermostat to help conserve energy. How nice it would be if all the sensors operated without batteries. For then, you could rest assured that they, in tandem with the thermostat, will be properly monitoring the energy consumption. With battery-operated sensors, you will need to check on the status of each sensor frequently to prevent the system going haywire.

Now, engineers have developed a new communication system that does not require batteries to operate it. Instead, it uses existing Wi-Fi infrastructure and radio frequency signals to provide Internet connectivity to devices. Very soon, your battery-less wristwatch or other wearable devices will be able to communicate directly with other gadgets for storing information about your daily activities on your online profiles.

Earlier research by a group of engineers at the University of Washington had shown that it is possible for low-power devices to run off wireless waves such as those belonging to radio and TV. Their most recent work has taken them a step further. Now these devices, apart from operating without batteries, can send their signals to laptops or smartphones, using only wireless waves to generate the required power.

According to Shyam Gollakota, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, this is an essential step for Internet of Things to really take off. Potentially billions of battery-free devices will need connectivity when embedded in everyday objects. The research can now provide WiFi connectivity to devices and they claim their process consumes several orders of magnitude less power than that typically required for WiFi connectivity.

A tag made by the researchers listens for WiFi signals that a local router exchanges with a laptop or a smartphone. An antenna on the tag selectively reflects or absorbs the signal to encode it. The activity produces tiny changes in the signal strength of the radio waves that other devices can detect and decode.

The method allows central devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones the ability to communicate with other low-power devices and sensors. The central devices exchange data with sensors that lie within a range of about two meters and do so at the rate of one kilobit per second. For example, a pair of smart socks could relay information about your jog to the jogging app on your phone. Although there is a chance for the radio signals to be buried in noise, the system works because the devices know the specific pattern that they need to look for.

That allows low-power Internet of Things to communicate easily with a large swarm of devices around them because of the prevalence of WiFi.

Using Raspberry Pi for Dog Training

Dog lovers and those who keep dogs as pets know that every dog has its own personality and like us humans, they too, often succumb to temptations. Some canines just cannot resist chewing those delicious new sandals, while others must investigate the leftover food scraps on the dining table. And, as working people cannot monitor their pet’s behavior the whole day, Dave Young took up a project involving lasers and the single board computer, the Raspberry Pi or RBPi, to help their pet keep its nose out of food scraps.

Dave Young’s Laser Dog Watcher consists of a laser tripwire, which silently alerts the RBPi as soon as the dog trips the invisible beam. The RBPi then takes a snap of the situation and plays an audio clip to dissuade the dog from its intentions. The project borrows the laser tripwire from an earlier design of a silent doorbell that Dave had installed at his home.

The laser tripwire system is of a simple reflection type. Both the laser source and its detector are in the same enclosure on one side of the room. On the other side is a small mirror placed to reflect the laser light back to the photo-resistive detector. Anything interrupting the beam also trips the detector, which sends out a signal. As ambient light plays an important role when detecting interruptions of the laser beam, Dave added a threshold level adjustment. In addition, to make it easier for the laser to hit the detector, he added a Fresnel lens in front of it.

The tripwire system is wirelessly linked to the RBPi. For this, Dave used an XBee module, series 1 by Digi, who has a starter kit for users. The integrated AD converter on the module transmits the detected light level digitally, which serves two purposes. Setting the threshold level for detection becomes simpler and there is no noise involved as during an analog transmission.

The XBee interface transmits the digital value to the receiver as a PWM signal. The XBee receiver filters this PWM signal to produce a DC voltage level. You need a second AD converter to translate the DC voltage level to a digital value. Although this method of converting the signal twice is somewhat cumbersome, the XBee module makes it very easy to create the wireless link.

XBee provides their XCTU setup utility, which helps in setting up the XBee radio transmitter and receiver. The starter kit also includes an XBee USB Adapter board that connects to the RBPi, which may need FTDI VCP or Virtual Com Port drivers.

When there is a break in the laser beam, the XBee radio alerts the RBPi, which then triggers its GPIO to play an audio file as well as takes a photo with the Pi camera. The audio file changes so that the dog does not get accustomed to the same reprimand each time it tries to break the rules. According to Dave, the camera is not essential, but it serves to detect false alarms and to record the surprised look on the dog’s face.

SOLI: The Final Interface is Your Hands

Finally, it is time to say good-bye to buttons and touchscreens. You need only wave your hands in thin air for controlling your gadgets. This game changer is a breakthrough from Google and is its project Soli. Soli makes it a thing of past to hit incorrect keys with your thumbs and you can conveniently forget swiping screens. The new gesture technology from Google is very precise and allows working on the smallest of displays.

Soli has small chips generating invisible radar to recognize finger movements. The chips are small enough so that they can be embedded into wearables and other devices. The deciphered finger movements are then translated into commands that computers can understand.

The system identifies delicate finger movements using the radar coming from tiny microchips. The system can use gestures to create touchpads, virtual dials and more as shown in the video above. Although there are camera-based sensors, such as Leap Motion, to capture gestures, they are cumbersome to set up requiring special hardware.

The inventor of this technology is Mr. Poupyrev, who heads the team of designers and developers at Google’s ATAP or Advanced Technology and Projects Lab in San Francisco. According to the Russian inventor, the beauty of Project Soli is the chip that can be embedded into just about anything and the use of invisible radar emanating from it.

Typically, police use the smallest radar for speed traps and even these are the size of a shoebox. The team had to struggle hard to shrink that radar to fit it inside a microchip. Although it took them 10 months, Mr. Poupyrev and his team were able to shrink all the components of radar down to millimeter size. They worked with Infineon, the German chipmaker and were inspired by the advances made in Wi-Gig, the next generation communication protocol for Wi-Fi.

Soli is a simple technology and the lack of cameras makes it easy to put wherever you want – in a toy, watch, wearable computer, car, furniture or anywhere. It is useful whenever people want to connect with devices. For example, Soli technology makes it possible to interact with objects in games making use of VR or virtual reality.

Since Soli makes it possible to replace a physical device, it works perfectly for Virtual Reality, as the field of vision of the user in VR is limited. The microchip uses radar to recognize movements of fingers. The chip radiates a broad beam radar for recognizing movement, distance and velocity. The radar uses the 60GHz spectrum and captures about 10,000 frames per second. The chip then translates the movements into commands that computers can understand.

Once Project Soli becomes reality, in the future we will be able to control devices such as fitness trackers and smart-watches only by our finger movements and will not require smart-phones as of now. Very soon, you may simply be able to snap your fingers to switch on the lights in your room and to vary its intensity by twirling your fingers.

Hear Only What You Wish To: Doppler ear buds

When there is a need for solitude, peace and quiet, some resort to earmuffs. Although good for cutting off or reducing the loudest of noises in your neighborhood, earmuffs cannot help you to hear the sounds of the world to your liking – either you hear nothing or you hear it all – there is no in-between.

Now Doppler Labs has an ear bud that allows you to choose how you would like to hear the sounds surrounding you – with a volume knob. The ear buds are no hearing aids and neither are they a pair of headphones. Once paired to the iPhone, you have a way to customize your hearing. You turn a volume control up or down until the sounds of the ever-louder world match your liking.

Wearing the Doppler ear buds can make your commute a little easier or make the concert sound as good in section 220 as in row 1. Doppler is presenting a long-term vision of its “hearables” technology that it expects everyone will eventually use in their ears, throughout the day.

According to Doppler, the world is becoming louder by the day. However, the ear buds control what you allow into your ears. You have a volume control and an equalizer for your ears. Control the loudness of the sounds you hear, crank up the bass or even mute sounds selectively, if you do not want to hear something – a baby crying, the screech of the subway, anything. As Fritz Lanman, the executive director of Doppler expresses, it is amazing what a volume control in your ear can do.

Doppler’s companion app on the iPhone has a dial graduated in decibels. Spin it in one direction to increase the loudness and reduce everything to a whisper by spinning it back the other way. The Effects section has buttons to help you choose the ambience. You can make sounds echo several times or you can choose a reverberation just as you were on stage in Carnegie Hall.

In fact, the Doppler companion app helps you to add many effects to sound entering your ears. There is provision for mixing different frequencies. You can make the songs flange, echo or add fuzz. The integrated noise-cancellation allows turning off most sounds – there is a special Baby Suppress button. Doppler has designed this morbid-sounding mode for muting the sound of crying babies.

This is not the first time people have attempted to augment hearing as something beyond hearing aids. A hundred years ago, the inventor of the first headphones, Nathaniel Baldwin made it as an amplifier and suppressor. Others have done considerable research on this subject.

Doppler has turned all this research into something you can wear. However, nobody likes to wear hearing aids, and Doppler thinks the key to making their ear buds acceptable to people is by making it absolutely clear what these things can and cannot do. According to Doppler, the ear buds are a niche product, mostly for music lovers, allowing them to tweak a concert to their liking. They are not for 24-hour wearing and not for making phone calls.

This Drone Avoids Obstacles When It Sees Them

If you thought drones could only fly and had to be manually guided around obstacles, the information you have is about five years old. Within the last few years, drones available to the average consumer have progressed by leaps and bounds. Most drones possess an onboard computer system that allows them to navigate autonomously. They can follow along with their owner or lead a path defined by GPS waypoints, capturing alluring aerial footages on the way.

Up until now, the drones that we came across were blind to their surroundings. They were able to capture photos, but if a ski lift or a big tree got in their path, the drones did not have the capability to change course to avoid it. With the First Guidance System from DJI, all that is now relegated to history.

The First Guidance System comes with a combination of stereo cameras and ultrasonic sensors. They allow the drone to detect objects as far away as 65 feet or 20 meters and take recourse to keeping itself at a preconfigured distance. This robust sense and avoid technology not only helps to integrate drones into everyday life, but also enables ambitious projects such as the Prime Air of Amazon.

Just as the robotic driverless car does, drones can now move about towns and cities, capturing new footages, delivering packages or even handing out parking tickets. According to DJI, research teams are using their guidance system for some unique applications. For example, Fudan University at Shanghai has created an aerial solution with Intel processors for aerial detection of illegally parked cars.

A new Matrice 100 drone from DJI powers the guidance system. DJI has made the system as a developer-friendly craft that users can modify for specific tasks across different industries, even acting as a testbed for experimental work. DJI is pushing this not only at the hardware manufacturers, but also as a platform for the entire drone industry.

On the drone, you will find additional expansion bays. These allow you to add components and customize the payload, allowing it to fly with any device of your choice. For example, you can put communication tools, computing boards, sensors, cameras and more into the sky. This allows you to complete your complex jobs from a birds-eye view, while the drone gathers data.

For example, using devices from DJI or third parties, you can connect and fly the drone and transmit data to ground in real time. With dual parallel CAN ports, the Matrice 100 connects DJI devices such as the Guidance sensor systems, while Dual parallel UART ports allow connecting third party components.

You can extend the flying time of your drone by up to 40 minutes with the help of an additional battery. The adjustable arm angle for each of the four arms allows greater yaw torque and response. The rigid, strong and lightweight carbon fiber frame of the Matrice 100 offers unmatched reliability and reduces stiffness. Soft vibration-absorbing material, lining the arms, eliminates nearly all feedback from the powerful motors. That keeps all critical components stable while allowing unparalleled accuracy.

Transparent Harvester of Solar Energy

Common belief is anything that harvests solar energy must be non-transparent. Popular logic is if sunlight is allowed to pass freely through the collector, it cannot lead to energy production. Although this may be partly true for the visible spectrum of light from the sun, it must also be considered that the sun gives out radiations beyond the band of light visible to the human eye.

Therefore, even see-through solar concentrators can successfully harvest energy from sunlight. Now, a team of Michigan State University researchers has proven this by creating a transparent solar concentrator. They claim to be able to turn any window into a photovoltaic solar cell. Not only windows, any sheet of glass, including the screen of a smartphone, can be turned into a harvester of solar energy. All the while, the panel remains truly transparent.

Earlier, transparent solar cells were restricted to tinted glass or compromised the visibility. This did not become popular, as people felt rather uncomfortable sitting behind colored glass making for colorful environments. In contrast, the new solar cell from the Michigan State University is completed transparent.

At MSU, researchers used TSLC or Transparent Luminescent Solar Concentrators. These employ organic salts for absorbing wavelengths of light normally invisible to the human eye, such as the infrared and the ultraviolet light. The researchers can tune the amount and composition of the organic salts to pick up only the near-infrared and the ultraviolet wavelengths leaving the visible spectrum untouched. The organic salts make the captured wavelengths glow at another wavelength – the infrared.

The TSLC then guides the infrared light to the edge of the panel, where it encounters thin strips of photovoltaic cells, which converts it to electricity. The organic salts do not absorb or emit any light in the visible spectrum and the panel looks extraordinarily transparent to the human eye.

The process is non-intrusive and opens doors to several opportunities of deploying solar energy creatively. Tall buildings with lots of windows can benefit tremendously with this technology, as can any mobile device demanding high aesthetic quality. The biggest benefit is you can have a solar harvesting surface and need not even know that it is present.

At present, the energy producing efficiency of TSLC is rather low, of the order of 1 percent, and additional work is needed to improve its performance. However, researchers are confident they will eventually increase the efficiency to above 5 percent. In comparison, non-transparent luminescent concentrators offer efficiencies of up to 7 percent.

In July 2014, the journal of Advanced Optical Materials carried an article describing the transparent solar cells. Apart from the lead researcher Richard Lunt, Yimu Zhao, Benjamin Levine and Garrett Meek are other members of the research team working on transparent solar cells at MSU.

Lunt has cofounded a Silicon Valley start-up – Ubiquitous Energy – for commercializing the transparent solar cell. The researchers have named the technology ClearView Power. They plan to integrate it directly on surfaces of mobiles, creating an auxiliary power source. They also want to promote this as a power-producing invisible coating for windows.

A Smart Fridge Tells You What It Wants

Imagine you are at the grocery store and wondering what you need for the next week – if you could only peep inside your fridge now, shopping could be easier. With the new smart fridge from General Electric in your kitchen, you could use a smartphone and ask the fridge what it lacks. The smart fridge will tell you exactly how much beer, soda, milk, and even how many eggs or separate vegetables it is left with. Actually, GE ran a contest taking ideas from users that could be turned into serviceable and manufacturable accessories. They announced the winners at the CES 2015 at Las Vegas. MakerBot Industries, LLC in Brooklyn, NY, is offering not only a MakerBot Replicator, but also a 3D Printer that allows engineers, traditional product designers and even consumers to prototype their ideas rapidly. Successful designs will be manufactured at FirstBuild at their microfactory in a fraction of the time it normally takes.

GE’s ChillHub is the first major home appliance that consumers can base their prototypes on to make their own accessories for a smart refrigerator. The ChillHub can tell your smartphone how much milk is currently left, because it has a milk weighing arrangement that your phone can query when you are at the grocery store. Besides the milk weighing arrangement, the ChillHub has several USB hubs allowing you to add your own plethora of smart accessories and sensors to let your smartphone see what else you need.

For proof of concept, GE and MakerBot, in collaboration with Thingiverse, came up with the Icebox Challenge, which had about 200 entries. The first-prize winning entry was an Odor-eating Hotshot. It uses a standard box of baking soda, but maximizes its odor-canceling capabilities, keeping track of its presence in the refrigerator and alerting users when to replace it.

The second prize was a bottle holder that helps the user organize different beverages while doubling as a chip-clip that keeps bagged snacks fresh. The third prize was the Butter Pig that dispenses standard butter sticks to simplify cooking in the kitchen, measuring of recipes and making toast.

The ChillHub is suitable for adding third-party accessories because of its eight USB ports. The ports are capable of delivering up to 2A each. That makes it very easy to add accessories that can be accessed from the Internet via their built-in Wi-Fi. GE calls the ChillHub architecture a community-generated product, which is based on an open-source iOS app. This app allows users to easily access the accessories plugged into the USB ports. Other fridge owners can hack their own appliance and make DIY upgrades using the FirstBuild.

FirstBuild community members conceived the design. They used 3D printers as a means of prototyping accessories quickly. The first accessory to be designed was the Milky Weigh that tells how much milk it holds. You can buy the complete Milky Weigh from FirstBuild, or if you are more adventurous, download the entire design and 3D print the components. The Green Bean circuit board from FirstBuild provides the electronics that actually weighs the milk for Milky Weigh.

A Slice of the Raspberry Pi

The Compute Module of the credit card sized popular single board computer, RBPi or the Raspberry Pi, is not an end-user product. Manufacturers can use the device when they require an ARM-based platform to build their devices on and sell. Therefore, computing hobbyists will find it difficult to get their hands on the Module if they want to evaluate it.

The RBPi itself is readily available to anyone who wants to buy and use it for projects. However, this Compute Module is not sold as such to hobbyists and for evaluating the Compute Module, it is necessary to get hold of a real product based upon it.

Five Ninjas, some people from the RBPi Foundation and the Pi-friendly accessories seller Pimoroni has a compact media player based on this Compute Module. Their product – Slice – was the result of inspiration based on the original Apple TV.

The first Apple TV was based on the x86 and was silver colored. This was eminently hackable, unlike the later iOS running black box that Apple made. People ripped out the custom Mac OS X installed, replacing it with a Linux desktop. They then added a more open, flexible media center, which ran XBMC.

The FiveNinjas Slice Media Player turned out to be more powerful than the modified x86 version of the Apple TV. The first few Slices have just left the Sheffield assembly plant of Pimoroni. Each has a custom motherboard with a single Compute Module in a DIMM-slot.

The Slice looks like a small metal box that has a translucent plastic spacer running all round the middle. The metal of the box is anodized aluminum in one of choice of three colors – red, gunmetal and black. The entire device feels and looks very stylish. Although you cannot see inside the box through the spacer, Slice puts out a very cool light through it. The light comes from Slice’s 25 NeoPixels. These are individually addressable RGB LEDs, with each containing an in-package controller.

The Slice uses these LEDs to create a rainbow of various color sequences. These sequences are triggered as the user interacts with the Slice using its remote control. While Apple had a slimline aluminum remote, Slice has a somewhat thicker one made of plastic.

Slice has 4GB of flash, which allows it to run any Operating System without a hard disk. It actually runs OpenElec, which is a simplified Linux distro capable of booting straight into Kodi, the media application. Therefore, users can simply play video and music files on their NAS or share from their computers.

Internally, Slice has a SATA connector mounted on the underside of the motherboard. Users can put in a small 2.5 inches disk drive and fasten it on to the motherboard within the case. There are four USB ports and users can hook up Slice to their computers to mount as an external drive automatically.

Currently, there is no app to control the display of colors from the LEDs. However, one is in development and will be available soon. The Compute Module uses a powerful 900MHz Broadcom SoC with a graphics core.

Technology Allows Writing in Air

Fujitsu has made what they claim to be a lightweight and compact wearable ring-type device offering handwriting functionality and capability of reading near-field communication tags. You can wear it on your index finger, and the ring has several sensors such as a gyroscope, an accelerometer and a magnetic sensor to help with text input, apart from wireless communication functionality and an NFC tag reader. The smart ring can identify the movement the user makes with his or her fingertips as they write in the air. To begin the air-writing process, the wearer has to press an operation button on the ring with the thumb. That makes the operation single-handed.

Fujitsu had already developed a glove-style of wearable device, last year. The current device, however, compresses the entire functionality into a ring-type instrument weighing less than 10-grams, suitable for wearing on a single finger. The tiny instrument has power-saving features and operates on a single button-cell battery.

The technology developed by Fujitsu successfully corrects letterform tracings. This feature improves the accuracy of character recognition, which the user traces in air with his finger. Its success rate is 95% and the capability includes Chinese characters and numbers. The user has only to tap a finger to get documentation and instructions for working on a device with the help of the built-n NFC tag reader.

The technology from the Fujitsu Laboratories is sophisticated enough to recognize automatically unwanted connections between the strokes of a letterform when the wearer is writing a longhand trace. It corrects the data accordingly, removing the unwanted connections and this improves the legibility and text-recognition rate tremendously.

With modern advances making smart devices more miniature, along with cloud environments and efficient communication technology, there is increasing interest in HMDs or Head Mounting Devices. These and other wearable devices are very useful for people engaged in maintenance and other tasks in buildings and factories. The operator can have both hands free because of the ICT or information and communication technology used in these wearable.

Therefore, operators are no longer required to hold devices in their hands to receive information in the field. Consequently, there are high expectations from the use of such wearable devices in fieldwork that allow operators to keep their hands free to use at all times.

According to Fujitsu, the smart ring-type wearable device is targeted for use in the working world rather than at homes. At present, the company is carrying out real-world tests on the device and they have a goal of practical implementation in 2015.

Not that Fujitsu is alone in developing such finger-sized wearable technology. Others are also present in this field. For example, Logbar Inc., operating from San Francisco and Tokyo, started a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 and was able to raise close to $900,000. They have developed their Ring, which is a wearable input device capable of enabling users to text and control home appliances. Additionally, it can help the wearer complete financial transactions as well. Unlike the Fujitsu device, which is suitable for workplaces, the Ring of Logbar is meant for consumer use at home – it is not yet available for purchase, though.

Integrated Motors Simplify Motion Control

With machines getting more robust, smaller, less expensive and more reliable, engineers are facing the challenges of designing newer types of motion control. One way of addressing such motion control challenges, without being an expert in mechatronics is to use integrated motion control systems. Typically, these solutions combine the motor, the drive and the system components within a single unit. The system components include the intelligence or motion controller and input outputs all onboard. The use of an integrated solution allows the designer to focus more on the development of the machine and less on solving compatibility issues between various system components. The integrated motion system usually has all the components within a complete unit and sized for proper use. The decision to use an integrated motion system or an integrated motor usually depends on several factors. Major among them are requirements based on machine size, cost, reliability, modularity and distributed control.

With integrated motors, engineers can reduce the amount of space a machine needs. This is mainly the result of consolidation of components resulting in elimination of cabling. For example, an integrated motor may replace a drive and motor housed in separate enclosures, eliminating one of the enclosures. The panel space required reduces significantly for an integrated motor, while for a multi-axis system the real estate reduction can be substantial. However, an existing machine design must contain adequate space to house the integrated motor as this type of motor is larger than conventional motors.

Using integrated motors results in definite cost savings in contrast to using conventional components. One of the major saving in expenses comes from the absence of cabling that is no longer required with integrated motors. For example, the conventional drive may be located in a centralized cabinet with the motor a distance away on a long conveying machine. This arrangement needs considerable power cabling and feedback wiring between the motor and the drive. With the integrated motor, the drive being directly on the motor, much of the cabling is eliminated contributing to cost reduction.

With improvements in motor technology, the concern with reliability in integrated motors is outdated. The major point of concern earlier was heat buildup and dissipation. With reduced components making up the system, the reliability of integrated motors has improved because of the lower number of wire connections used. Better construction technology has improved the efficiency, decreasing the heat generated and the need for dissipation.

Industrial automation today requires modular machines. That essentially means smaller machines focusing on singular tasks combined to form a bigger system responsible for multiple functions. The smaller machines may operate independent of each other. This arrangement is beneficial because it allows engineers to change on modular section and transform the system into another customized machine. The modular concept is beneficial in shipping individual modules to the factory floor as the motor and drive of the integrated motor is placed directly in the machine.

As more and more industrial control is through PLC or Programmable Logic Controls, motor operations and synchronization through digital data signals is the norm. Since each integrated motor has its own controller, a distributed control system provides faster response and greater accuracies.