ALL-IN-ONE: Ingenic Newton board can be used to create wearable NFC devices
Chinese embedded CPU provider Ingenic Semiconductor has unveiled a MIPS-based developer board that can be used to create wearable, healthcare and industrial devices that include a wide range of environmental sensors and wireless communications interfaces.
The Ingenic Newton is a single board similar in size to an SD card. It includes a MIPS CPU and memory plus a humidity and temperature module; a three axis gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer; an ECG bio-sensor; and a 4-in-1 wireless module that supports WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and BLE, FM radio and NFC. The platform supports both Android and Linux.
“The three-axis gyroscope, accelerometer [and] magnetometer can track your movement and help the CPU compute how many miles you’ve walked, for example,” MIPS technology owner Imagination Technologies has told NFC World.
“The pressure, humidity and temperature sensor can give you an idea of the weather environment you’re in and it helps people who are [sensitive] to these factors be aware of potential health hazards.”
“Finally, the bio-signal detection sensor can monitor your heart rate and notify you, your relatives or your family doctor if you’re having any potential health issues.”
“By integrating all these components on a single PCB, device manufactures save costs — since they have one component that can do everything they need — and reduce area,” the company explained. “This platform can be integrated in various devices together with other components, and create devices that are much more aware of their surrounding and can communicate easily with the user.”
Source: NFC World
Open Source Wearscript puts Javascript on Google Glass, with many new, and some unexpected, input choices.
Earlier this week, Brandyn White, a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, and Scott Greenwald, a PhD candidate at MIT, led a workshop at the MIT Media Lab to showcase an open source project called WearScript, a Javascript environment that runs on Google Glass. The category of wearables is still evolving. Besides activity trackers and smartwatches, the killer wearable app is yet to be discovered because wearables don’t have the lean back or lean forward human-machine interface (HMI) of tablets and smartphones. Wearscript lets developers experiment with new user interface (UI) concepts and input devices to push beyond the HMI limits of wearables.
The overblown reports of Google Glass privacy distract from the really important Google Glass discussion – how Glass micro apps can compress the time between user intent and action. Micro apps are smaller than apps and are ephemeral because they are used in an instant and designed to disappear from the user’s perception once completing their tasks. Because of the Glass wearable form factor, micro apps deviate from the LCD square and touchscreen/keyboard design of smartphone, tablet, and PC apps, and are intended to be hands-free and responsive in the moment. Well-designed Glass apps employ its UI to let the user do something that they could not otherwise do with another device. Glass’s notifications are a good example of this; want to get breaking news or preview important email without interruption from a phone or PC? Tilt your head up slightly and capture it in a glance, but if you want to read the news or give a detailed response to an email – better to pick up a smartphone, tablet or PC. The best consumer-facing Google Glass experiences highlight how apps can leverage this micro app programmable wearable form factor.
Early on during the MIT Media Lab workshop, White demonstrated how Glass’s UI extends beyond its touchpad, winks, and head movements by adding a homemade eye tracker to Glass as an input device. The camera and controller were dissected from a $25 PC video camera and attached to the Glass frame with a 3D-printed mount. A few modifications were made, such as replacing the obtrusively bright LEDs with infrared LEDs, and a cable was added with a little soldering. The whole process takes about 15 minutes for someone with component soldering skills. With this eye tracker and a few lines of Wearscript, the researchers demonstrated a new interface by playing Super Mario on Google Glass with just eye movements.
To this audience of software engineers, wearable enthusiasts, students, and hardware hackers, repurposing an inexpensive device with some hacking and soldering is not unusual. But the impact of the demonstration set the tone for rethinking Glass apps with Wearscript and unconventional Glass input devices.
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Source: Network World
Intel and wearables. Two names that you best get used to seeing together, as the aforementioned company is diving into the wearables sector in a major way. As part of the broader Android Wear rollout announced this week, Intel has made a point to emphasize its role in the coming explosion of wearables. The company has stated that it’s “excited to be a part of Android Wear,” which will bring a fork of Android to an entire sector that’s poised for huge growth in the years ahead.
Intel isn’t revealing any products just yet, but it — along with Broadcom, Mediatek, and Qualcomm — are going to be powering some of the products that you see emerge over the next while. Watches, head-worn devices, and items we haven’t yet conceived are likely going to be running atop of Google’s Android Wear platform, and Intel hopes to be the circuitry behind some of it. As desktop and laptop sales slow, Intel has a very real need to replace that revenue with new streams.
Breaking into the tablet, phone, and wearable sectors makes complete sense, but it remains to be seen what kind of margins exist for wearables. At any rate, it’s great to see a name like Intel pushing the sector as a whole forward. For any serious innovation to occur, we’re going to need broad, industry-wide recognition of a movement. With wearables, we’re certainly seeing it.
Intel isn’t revealing any products just yet, but it — along with Broadcom, Mediatek, and Qualcomm — are going to be powering some of the products that you see emerge over the next while. Watches, head-worn devices, and items we haven’t yet conceived are likely going to be running atop of Google’s Android Wear platform, and Intel hopes to be the circuitry behind some of it. As desktop and laptop sales slow, Intel has a very real need to replace that revenue with new streams.
Breaking into the tablet, phone, and wearable sectors makes complete sense, but it remains to be seen what kind of margins exist for wearables. At any rate, it’s great to see a name like Intel pushing the sector as a whole forward. For any serious innovation to occur, we’re going to need broad, industry-wide recognition of a movement. With wearables, we’re certainly seeing it.
Source: Hot Hardware
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