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Treehouse Labs tracks objects with your iPhone via BiKN
Treehouse Labs was one of a few companies at CES hosted inside the booth of a semiconductor company, because Treehouse is using that company's chips for its own products. Treehouse's main product on display was something called "BiKN" (pronounced "beacon"), which uses relatively tiny RFID tags and near-field communications to track various objects using almost any iOS device. Because the iPhone doesn't have an RFID/NFC reader built in (yet -- someday most mobile devices may include one), you'll need an extra iPhone case that slips around the iPhone and connects to the dock connector. The other side of the system is what's called a "tag," which can be attached to your keys, a child, a pet, or anything else you want to keep track of in local space (within a few hundred feet or so). Put the tag on something, load up a tracking app on the iPhone, and you'll be able to see where the item is or ping one item with a bit of playable audio. Treehouse will be selling the case for around US$99 sometime next month, and a set of two tags can be purchased for $49. The standard BiKN kit is pretty basic and simply helps you detect and follow tagged items on the iPhone. Treehouse is looking to license the system to other companies, which means you may see BiKN technology pop up embedded in other gadgets -- possibly the iPhone itself. One of the demos at CES showed a plant that had a tag monitoring its own water level; a separate "gateway" enabled the plant to get more water when the tag said the water level was low. This kind of monitor circuit could be embedded in a device and the iPhone through an app, which means you could set up a pretty simple system of home automation. You could even do things like have multiple tags beep when they go out of range. The possibilities are fascinating, and Treehouse is working on getting this kind of technology out to anyone who is interested in using or selling it. Our iPhones and iPads are quickly becoming the center of our connected worlds, even at home; Treehouse's system is one of many ways to connect even more items to that network, making it more useful for all of us.
VIA adds Android support to embedded x86 line (video)
VIA is hardly the first hawker of x86-based chips to start bragging about its Android compatibility, but it certainly doesn't want to be left behind as the open source OS starts worming its way into more and more machines. The EITX-3002 is the first of its offerings to sport official support for Google's OS. At the heart of the Em-ITX board is your choice of a 1.2GHz NANO X2 or a 1GHz Eden X2, and a VX900H, which casn push 1080p video to dual monitors. The target devices are obviously touch-based systems like in-car entertainment computers and kiosks. To see the board in action head on after the break and, please, try to stay calm -- we all know how exciting Froyo-based kiosks are.
Insert Coin: Prototype peripherals incorporate no moving parts, multitouch functionality and freaking lasers
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line. When in doubt, strip out the moving parts and see what you wind up with. This is the idea inventor Jason Giddings is following as he turns to Kickstarter to help fund the prototype creation for a glass keyboard and mouse, both sporting multitouch functionality. The design uses the same biometric systems that currently capture fingerprints on assorted trackpads and keyboards, and uses a technique known as Frustrated Total Internal Reflection -- which incorporates a series of LEDs on the bottom of a device -- to bounce infrared light beams around the inside of the glass. This process is interrupted when a finger touches the glass, wherein a simple embedded camera captures the event, processes where the keystroke, mouse click or gesture took place and relays the signal to the computer.
Inside Secure announces NFC chips to help distinguish knockoffs from the real thing
If you can't tell if a Rolex or a knockoff Prada bag is fake, your NFC-enabled smartphone will be able to. Toking on a long-standing problem with counterfeiting, French company Inside Secure has released the Vault150 security module, a NFC-based chip that can be embedded into any product a retailer might wish to have authenticated by prospective buyers. This could become as easy as literally embedding the chip, as NFC chips require no power source, can collect RF energy from an NFC reader such as a smartphone and complete an authentication request for a potential buyer. For more intricate products where the chip might have to be buried deeper, Inside Secure has also offered several antenna options that allow the chip to be placed well within an item and still communicate with an NFC reader. In cases where a module needs to be embedded in items like a bottle of wine or pair of shoes, the chip can use a slew of voltage, frequency or temperature change sensors to sense if someone has tried to alter the chip's information and return a warning from there. Along with authentication purposes, the devices could also ping a shopper's handset (in addition to doing cool things like opening doors) when they came within a certain range of a product, informing them as to the savings they might be about to pass by. Final pricing and availability has yet to be announced and there's no guarantee that this will spot every fake, but it'll probably be better at the task than the current champ (yes, Chumlee).
Freescale joins ARM A5 and M4 cores at the hip for performance and power savings
You may have noticed a trend recently -- pairing slightly less powerful cores that sip power, with more robust ones that can chug through demanding applications. NVIDIA's Tegra 3 will be packing an underclocked fifth core, while ARM's big.LITTLE initiative matches a highly efficient 28nm A7 with the beefy A15. Now Freescale is planning to use the same trick, but you won't find its asymmetrical CPUs in your next tablet or smartphone. Its platform, which marries a Cortex M4 to a Cortex A5, isn't meant to compete with the latest Snapdragon. These chips will find homes in factories and in-dash infotainment systems which have increasingly sophisticated UIs, but don't need to push thousands of polygons. Software development tools will land before this quarter is out and the first batch of silicon will be announced in Q1 of 2012. Looks like the era of "dual-core" meaning two identical cores has officially come to an end.
Habey USA's 12-inch panel PC brings that rugged look to your home
It's a shame this steel-encased touchscreen PC from Habey USA arrived too late for our violent outburst on the Engadget Show, but at least it has some broadly agreeable specs. The PPC-6512 can reel off 1080p vids on its 12-inch screen while consuming just 30W thanks to its 1.8GHz Atom D525 and NVIDIA Ion GT218 combo. An empty 2.5-inch removable HDD tray and eSATA port give it potential as a networked storage hub, and an old-school serial port lets it handle home automation controls too. It could also be used as a comms or security terminal, as there's a 1.3MP webcam on board, vesa mounting holes and four USB 2.0 ports. Heck, we'd buy three and rig our whole house up -- were it not for the $800 price tag, the apparently limited availability on Habey USA's underloved Amazon page, and the fact that we like our terminals to show a bit of emotion. Full specs in the PR after the break.
Marvell Kinoma Play Android app hands-on preview (video)
First unveiled back in February, Kinoma is Marvell's take on a "new open app platform" targeted at everything from mobile devices to desktops to embedded handhelds. Here in New York, the company is finally showing off a live version of the software in the form of Kinoma Play, an implementation of the platform that runs atop Android 2.2 Froyo -- for the moment at least. The folks from Marvell also had a massive touchscreen loaded up with a desktop version of the software running in a simulator atop OS X for eager onlookers to fool around with. Head past the break for a quick rundown of the offering and plans to do with it, along with some juicy video footage of the stuff in action. %Gallery-126857%
NutriSmart prototype embeds RFID tags directly within food, traces your lunch from start to finish (video)
RFID tags are already used to trace everything from poker chips to hotel towels, but what if these little pellets were embedded directly within your lunch, providing everything you'd ever wanna know about that ham sandwich you're about to beast? That's the idea behind NutriSmart -- a food tracking system that revolves around edible RFID tags. Developed by Hannes Harms, a design engineering student at the Royal College of Art in London, these little markers would allow consumers to trace the entire supply chain behind every item in their cupboard, while feeding valuable nutritional information to dieters or people with particularly dangerous food allergies. Kodak, as you may recall, came up with a similar idea a few years ago, though Harms' prototype extends beyond the realm of medical monitoring. Properly equipped refrigerators, for example, would be able to alert users whenever their stock's about to expire, simply by scanning the tags. The NutriSmart concept also calls for a smart plate, which Harms describes as an "invisible diet management system." Just put your meal on the plate and an embedded reader will analyze your grub, tell you how many miles it traveled before arriving at your kitchen and transmit all of its history and caloric data to your phone, via Bluetooth. No word yet on what would happen to these tags post-digestion, though our inner 13-year-olds are giggling at the possibilities. Video after the break.
AMD announces new, more energy efficient Embedded G-Series APUs
AMD has just rolled out two new additions to its line of Embedded G-Series APUs, combining Fusion-based processing with reduced power consumption. Both the T40E and T40R rock the same 64-bit x86 Bobcat CPU cores and DirectX 11-capable GPUs we've already seen in previous G-Series incarnations, but AMD says the pair can operate using thirty-nine percent less power than its cousins. The single core T40R boasts a thermal design power (TDP) rating of just 5.5 watts, while the dual core T40E offers a TDP of 6.4 watts. The two applications are designed for compact fanless systems, including kiosks and mobile industrial devices, though Axiomtek is apparently planning on incorporating the new APUs in a new Pico-ITX consumer PC, as well. Full PR after the break.
4G netbook onslaught imminent as Verizon clears Novatel LTE radio to run on its network
Xoom owners might still be waiting for an LTE upgrade, but it does look like 4G netbooks and tablets could be hitting Verizon's network pretty soon. The carrier, known for its stringent testing standards, has cleared Novatel Wireless' E362 module to run on its network, paving the way for devices with embedded 4G radios. In addition to LTE, the module is compatible with CDMA and HSPA+ / UMTS technology -- a safety net for people outside the 55 markets (soon to be 147) where Verizon is serving up 4G service. Okay, so with no word on pricing or product launches, an onslaught isn't exactly imminent, but when it happens we'll try not to say "told you so."
AMD debuts first embedded GPU with support for OpenCL and six displays
Disappointed by the lack of support for multiple displays and OpenCL in embedded GPUs these days? Then AMD may have just made your day. It's just debuted its new "desktop level" Radeon E6760 discrete GPU, which packs both OpenCL support and Eyefinity-enhanced support for no less than six independent displays. AMD also notes that the GPU can be paired with its upcoming Llano APU for some additional graphics and parallel computing power and, while it might not wind up in many consumer devices, the company says it's ideal for everything from casino games to medical imaging. Head on past the break for the complete press release.
Switched On: Honeycomb or the highway
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. During the holiday season of 2009 when netbooks were the hot commodity, Apple lost share in the PC market. It had nothing to compete with the sunken prices and shrunken sizes of those miniature laptops. PC vendors such as ASUS and Acer, on the other hand, did well in the netbook segment, as they could call on their expertise in building inexpensive Windows notebooks. After the iPad's introduction, though, the tablets were turned. While many PC vendors loathed the low profitability of netbooks, they were now faced with competing with their own products. With the exception of HP, which shelled out billions of dollars for webOS, the iPad set PC vendors scrambling to choose which operating system might best compete. Is it Windows, the devil they know, or Android, where they have far less experience than competitors from the smartphone market? Switched On has already taken on the role that Windows might play in future tablets, but what about Honeycomb? In contrast to the original version of Android, which was in the works prior to the introduction of the iPhone, Honeycomb arrived a year after the iPad. Android licensees, particularly smartphone vendors, surely beseeched Google for a tablet-optimized version of their preferred mobile OS. But Google may also be a victim of the iPad's jujitsu.
VIA says Eden X2 is world's most power-efficient dual-core processor
Following close behind the low-power Nano X2 comes the Eden X2, or what VIA is calling "the world's most power-efficient" fanless dual-core processor. While we've yet to see any official numbers, the original Eden did 500MHz on one watt of power, so we should see similarly thrifty specs here. Aside from that, the unit houses two 64-bit cores in a 21 x 21 millimeter package, is compatible with Windows CE and Linux operating systems, and was built using a 40-nanometer manufacturing process. The Eden X2 made its debut at the World Embedded conference this week, and should make it to the real world by the end of Q2. Full PR after the break.
Pyxis 'Operating Environment' hits .NET, leaves no embedded chip unturned (video)
Almost exactly one year ago we got a little demo of Pyxis courtesy of Thomas Holtquist. It was basically a micro-OS, bringing simple application launching and other functionality to the very limited hardware of Arduino. It didn't have anything on Windows 3.1, never mind XP, but it certainly made interacting with DIY hardware a lot easier. Now Pyxis 2 is here, the so-called "Operating Environment" has been ported to the .NET Micro Framework. .NET MF is basically a version of Microsoft's .NET platform but stripped down and optimized for embedded circuits and the like, and Pyxis 2 makes app development and execution on that platform much easier. It's all demonstrated in the video below, and all the source code is ready and waiting to satisfy the needs of your development environment.
AMD announces Fusion-based Embedded G-Series platform
We've just seen what AMD's Fusion platform can do for a laptop, and it looks like we'll soon also be seeing it in a lot more devices -- AMD has just announced its new Fusion-based Embedded G-Series platform, which can be used for things like set-top boxes, in-car computers, small form factor PCs, and more. That platform include the low-power x86 "Bobcat" core we've seen all along and a "world-class" DirectX 11-capable GPU, which AMD says adds up to a level of advanced computing that simply isn't available in the embedded market today. Among the first products based on the platform to be announced are a pair of Mini-ATX boards from Fujitsu and three SFF systems from Kontron, which will be joined by a range of other products from various manufacturers that are expected to launch in the "coming weeks." Head on past the break for the complete press release, plus a video of a G-Series-based car computer that AMD was demoing at CES.
The home theater PC is dead, long live Windows Media Center
There has been a lot of discussion in the Windows Media Center community about the product's death. The theory is that Microsoft is throwing in the towel, focusing on the Xbox 360 and intends to let the best DVR software available become stale -- or worse, eliminate it from future versions of Windows altogether. After watching the Ballmer keynote at CES last week, it was hard not to get on this train as we all watched the 360, Windows Phone 7, and Windows highlighted on stage. But then something happened when the show floor opened: Windows embedded products were highlighted in private meetings and elsewhere. There was a buzz around Media Center embedded and even a price and ship date; meanwhile, home theater PCs got no love. So after years of trying, it appears that all hopes that HTPCs will ever emerge from their niche status are gone, but the same can not be said for Windows Media Center.
Windows 7 Media Center embedded TV hands-on
We didn't think much of Haier's mention in Microsoft's Windows 7 Media Center embedded press release, but on the show floor today we ran across this HDTV which was actually a full-blown Media Center including tuners and a harddrive. The details were very skimpy beyond that, with no mention of specific specs, prices or if the product would really make it to market. But the idea of an all-in-one TV and DVR running our favorite software certainly is something to get us excited about. What we didn't like ws the motion remote used for the demo which was almost impossible to navigate and had us seriously longing for our favorite Green Button.
Reycom Windows Media Center coming for $499
We love us some Windows 7 Media Center, but we recognize that using a HTPC for a DVR isn't for everyone. For some there is no replacement for a dedicated set-top box, which is why we were so excited to hear that Windows Media Center was coming to embedded devices. The problem of course is that is-coming and is-here, are completely different. A little known European company (state side anyways) hopes to change that by brining one to the US in the first quarter of this year for about $499. The bad news is that there's no CableCARD support like the Gateway one we saw earlier. There are plans to follow it up with dedicated versions for cable and telecom operators later this year, but for some reason we don't feel like they'll be too interested in it.
Gateway Media Console with CableCARD and Windows Embedded Standard 7 hands-on
Microsoft's working hard to get people believing in its Windows Embedded Standard platform as a real set-top box contender and one of its vanguard devices is the above Gateway Media Console. It's still a concept product in the Acer / Gateway labs, but what it promises to deliver makes us wish it hurries up and makes the leap to retail nice and quickly. Based around a Sandy Bridge Intel CPU, this machine runs Windows Media Center and gives you access to all the internet-connected content that you can enjoy on your Windows 7-equipped PC, but it also boasts a InfiniTV 6 CableCARD tuner that permits up to six HD broadcast TV streams at a time. Those can then be networked out throughout your house -- whether over a wireless or wired connection -- and then recorded on whatever laptops, desktops or other Windows devices you have lying around the house. The end result is that the kids can be recording a pair of channels upstairs in their bedroom while you watch the football game in the living room and your mother-in-law enjoys whatever she's into down in the basement -- all coming in from the same, single coax cable plugged into the Media Console. There's a hidden optical drive as well and Microsoft tells us this thing could range between $500 and $700 when it does eventually make its way out for sale. %Gallery-113077%
Sparkpad platform revealed by way of FCC, could make your wildest photo frame fantasies come true
A visit to Sparkpad's website gives you little more than a "coming soon" teaser, but not all is lost, friends: new filings in the FCC's database today are letting the cat out of the bag. We're still not sure exactly how this stuff is going to be sold, but Sparkpad's products are looking a bit like a Bug Labs for larger displays, seemingly allowing hobbyists and companies without massive R&D budgets to throw together Linux-based interactive products that run on photo frames ranging from 7 to 10.4 inches -- and if that's not big enough, there's also some sort of option for remotely-operated displays of 15 inches and larger. The devices can be programmed using Flash, the Lua language, or -- coming soon -- using the Android SDK, making for a pretty versatile setup. Interestingly, Sparkpad's manual points out that this is the platform used by the iGala touchscreen photo frame from a couple years back, so we're guessing that the company is just now looking at opening up the underlying platform to all comers. Anyhow, yeah -- if you've ever dreamed of programming your own DreamScreen, Sparkpad might be the way to roll.
