February 20, 2006
Issue 5 of NYC2123 Out
I keep posting whenever a new issue of NYC2123 comes out because the visuals are just so stunning. It's like a cybernetic sin city. Reading NYC2123 just makes you wish it was one of those blockbuster movies. It's amazing this stuff is free really.
[ Link ]
February 17, 2006
igargoyle Needs You!
I'm dealing with some personal stuff related to work, and I apoligize for not posting for the last two days. I'm actually short on links to write about, so I really encourage you to email me any suggestions. I'll of course give you credit, and link to your website.
In other news, igargoyle is a bit of a victim of it's own success. Davy was busy writing away at Sacrafice Throw, but was contacted by an influential igargoyle reader about turning it into a screenplay. Congrats Davy, but dammit I want to read the next part!!
February 14, 2006
Life on an LED Shirt
Leah has sewn 140 LEDs onto the shirt in a tight grid pattern, using a needle and conductive thread. Each row connects back to the AVR Microcontroller that runs the show. Coded with the language C, this computer chip performs the rules of life and updates the display. If you want to learn how to make your own fabric based light-grid, Leah has full instructions on her site.Nwanua joined in on the project by adding more interactivity with his drawing device. He created software for his PDA (Palm Zire) that interfaces with the user and the shirt. Infrared light transmits the data, one bit at a time, to the shirt's reciever. He wrote his part in C with help from prc-tools, a free-to-use communication protocol that lets the PDA's infrared port talk to the crystal-less, funky-time clock in the reciever.
See the videos of this in action here and here.
Previous link: LED Tank Top
[ via we make money not art ]
February 13, 2006
Learning Retinal Implant System
(IMI), a Zug, Switzerland-based company just announced a learning retinal implant system, which has been successfuly implanted in two humans already. The implant is designed to "replace signal-processing functions of a healthy retina and provides input to the retinal nerve cells (the ganglion cells) that, in turn, provide input to the optic nerve and the brain", and at at 50-electrodes, the device is far beyond 16-electrode predecesors.
The system comprises on an implant, also called "The Retinal Stimulator", a pair of spectacles that contain a camera and a transmitter, and a wearable computer worn at the patient's waist that processes the input from the camera to replace the information processing function of the formall healthy retina.
The use of a high-speed digital signal processor allows the provision of "intelligent information" to the implant (and the nerve cells) by using tuneable software to approximate the information processing normally carried out by the healthy retina. The entire process enables patients to optimize their visual perception during the learning phase. Indeed, using the patient's feedback on perception as an input for the tuning of The Pocket Processor is the unique, patent-protected feature of the System and constitutes the 'learning' capability of the Learning Retinal Implant System.
February 11, 2006
New Cochlear Implant in Development
A new cochlear implant is in development. This is particularly good news for patients in four or five years as it means less invasive surgery, which means a lower chance of damage to the patient's ear canal.
The University of Michigan team has developed a cochlear implant from thin-film electrodes that can stimulate the auditory nerve directly. This design allows a much simpler insertion method for surgeons and will definitely prove to be a boon for the hard of hearing. Currently being tested on guinea pigs and cats, this new implant is manufactured in a similar process to integrated circuits, allowing them to be made in batches.
In addition, the implant can hit more nerves, allowing lower frequencies to be activated by the implant:
"The range of frequencies that can be stimulated depends on how far into the cochlea the implant can go, with the lower frequencies located further up toward the apex of the spiral canal," Wise said. In current technology, each implant has anywhere from 16 to 22 stimulating sites along its length. By contrast, the U-M implant will host up to 128 stimulating sites."More sites mean greater tonal range and better frequency perception," Wise said, "and the implant's flexibility will minimize damage to existing hearing."
February 10, 2006
40/40 Vision
As a person who wears glasses, I find laser surgery facinating from a scientify point of view, but why stop there? Why not improve your vision? Sure you could create an eyetap with a zooming camera for your eyes, but a company called PixelOptics is trying to do one better, and they say they will be able to double the quality of a person's eyesight.
That company, PixelOptics of Roanoke, Virginia, just won a $3.5 million Department of Defense grant to refine its "supervision" technology, which Blum claims could double the quality of a person's eyesight. "Theoretically, this should be able to double the distance that a person can see clearly," he says.At the heart of PixelOptics' technology are tiny, electronically-controlled pixels embedded within a traditional eyeglass lens. Technicians scan the eyeball with an aberrometer -- a device that measures aberrations that can impede vision -- and then the pixels are programmed to correct the irregularities.
Update:
This is probably not the best title since 40/40 vision doesn't actually mean that you have double the quality of vision that a 20/20 person. What would be technically accurate would be 20/10 vision. Read the comments for more information.
Super Tiny Color Camera
- Requires only a 1/16" hole to look through
- Camera measures less than 1/3" square
- 380 lines, 1.5 lux
- 1/4" color CMOS chip
- 9-12V DC power @ 35mA
- Pinhole lens with ~55 FOV
- Includes Plug and Play Cables
- 1 year warranty and 30 day MBG
[ Link via del.icio.us ]
February 09, 2006
Enryu DESTROYS ALL HUMANS
Holy fuck batman, this robot is gigantic!
Shit is getting crucial over in Japan now that they have this ED2000 mofo rolling the streets. Hyper rescue robot "T-52 Enryu" (rescue dragon) from Tmsuk first appeared in March 2004 but now he’s wandering the highways and byways saving stranded motorists from having to eat each other like sashimi. It is 11.3 ft high and with a weight of 11,020 lbs. On February 1, 2006, Enryu showed his POWER in snowy environments and in a test rescued a dummy buried under snow in his car. Enryu can lift 1102 lbs. with one hand and double that with both hands, but then where will he hold his coffee?
Okay so I'm starting my xmas list for next year officially right now. Can you imagine riding on the back of this thing? Mooohahahaha... I pwn n00bs like this robot crushes cars! *smash* *smash*
February 08, 2006
First Person R/C Flying
R/C flying is fun, but wouldn't it be a lot better if you could see from the perspective of your helicopter or airplane? Using a miniture camera, some wireless equipment, and an EyeTop, you can do just that for just $425 total. Imagine building this with the R/C paintball tank or an R/C submarine!
[ Link via del.icio.us ]
Deja View Your Car
Accidents happen all the time, but often the evidence amounts to he said, she said. Jay Dugger took this as a bit of a challenge and mounted a Deja View unit to his car. The unit, which is designed to be worn as a point of view camera, records all the time, and will save clips from 30 seconds ago when you press the button. While he hasn't rigged the button to save clips when the airbags are deployed, he is able to quickly capture video if someone tries to run him off the road or gets in a small fender bender.
February 07, 2006
Record Your Entire Day
Vitorio Miliano writes:
Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2, $150 (direct)
Viosport Adventure Cam II, $200 (direct)
8GB Seagate CF Microdrive, $210 (amazon)For under $600 you have nearly everything you need. Add a battery pack
for the Recorder 2, add a GPS tracker to log your position throughout
the day, and you're still under a thousand dollars (US).At the end of the day you have 14 hours of 1mbps 640x480 30fps MPEG-4
video and audio, plus GPS tracks. 8GB is little enough data you can fit
it on one dual-layer or double-sided writable DVD, one disc per day.For better quality (2mbps) video, get two Microdrives and swap midday,
but you'll need two DVDs per day for all that data.Don't want to risk your day to rotational media? Get a pair of 4GB
CompactFlash cards and an external photo storage HD (HD + cardreader in
on unit) like the Vosonic or Mediagear units, swap the 4GB cards after
three or four hours each, and dump it to the HD while the other one is
recording live. 4GB CF are ~$200 each, and the HD will be another $200.
Or, just get four 4GB CF cards for 16 hours on solid state media.
The Neuros Recorder looks pretty good. The register did a review of it here, which shows the unit as well as sample images captured with it.
AdventureCam is another project that uses the Neuro to do point of view camera capture. This technique with the Neuros Recorder seems like a seriously good solution if you don't care about doing any kind of processing while you're capturing your video.
[ via the wear-hard mailing list ]
February 06, 2006
Technical details on Spy Gear Night Vision Goggles
The Spy Gear Night Vision Goggles generated quite a lot of interest in the wearable community since it's basically a very low cost (~$50 USD) eyetap / wearable display. I originally posted about this back in September, but the wear-hard mailing list went down, keeping the wear-hackers from communicating with each other.
The four-wire ribbon cable between the camera and the display board appears to carry the following signals:Brown: Video Signal
Red & Orange: +5 volts
Yellow: GroundI removed the brown wire completely and attached halves of a video cable with RCA connectors on the ends. The shield of the video cable went to the ends of the yellow wire (ground) in the display, and the
center conductor was soldered in place where the brown wire (video signal)
used to be.This way, I can use a RCA cable butt connector to hook the camera and display back together, or seperate them and put a computer in the middle.
Everything works, in that I can get video output from the camera on my Commodore 64 monitor and can send a picture to the display from a spare video camera. There is one small snag, though.
The entire device is built UPSIDE DOWN in relation to the wearer's head! The video comes out of the camera with top and bottom reversed. The cyberdisplay is installed upside down, so everything looks right side up.
I think this was done so that the ribbon cable for the cyberdisplay would point into the body of the device rather than off to the other side.
[ Quote from Abe on the wear-hard mailing list ]
Update
I just got off the phone with the PR Manager for Wild Planet, the company that produces these. Unfortunately they are no longer producing them, and they do not know of any companies that have them in stock. This is a bit of a blow as I personally was looking to buy one of these. Hopefully they'll come around at some point and start making these again. -nym
February 02, 2006
The Raft: Snow Crash
In the book, Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson describes this mile wide floating city made up of boats tied together around a giant aircraft carrier. The city would move around the world, and refugees would attach and detach themselves from the mass. This above picture is one artist's concept of the raft.
The concept is a massive raft city comprised of lashed together boats, ships, tankers, junks and whatnot. It isn't fully realized, but i liked the color and the lighting n this one. Enjoy.
I've always loved the concept of a floating city made up of nomads and technomads alike. This illustration is great, but it doesn't quite hit home for me. Someone else had this comment:
The color and lighting ARE great. It really does conjure up Stephenson's wonderful descriptions. My only critcism is that it doesn't feel quite as dirty and claustrophobic as his writing suggests; the scene seems a bit too ideal and saccharin. Good stuff :)
Even as I google this now, I can't find many results for the raft. There is Freedom Ship, an attempt to make a floating city in the form of a giant cruise ship, but nothing as chaotic as Stevenson describes in his novel. I once hosted a site that talked more about this idea at http://mind.blazingfast.net/TheRaft, but it seems that google nor the wayback machine are able to help me reclaim that page.
If you haven't read Snow Crash already, I really recommend it. You can find the descriptions of the raft on pages 118, 370, 387, 404. If you're interested in the concept of the raft, you probably should also check out this wiki page on the topic of floating cities. They even have a mailing list at floating-cities-request@sculptors.com.
[ Link ]
February 01, 2006
Zanier "Head-GX" Heated Gloves
Skiing and snowboarding can be really cold, and even with gloves, those fingers can get pretty chilly. The Zanier Head-GX gloves aim to prevent that by using tiny battery powered heaters at the end of your fingertips.
Each glove is powered by a rechargeable 4 oz. lithium battery that can be configured in a trio of heat settings at are 86º, 98.6º, and 131º. Battery life is expected to run up to 10, 4.5 and 2 hours respectively.
Only thing is, these are going to run you just over the cost of a G3 iPod at $250USD. Not exactly a bargan.