lasers
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Beamz teams up with Virtual DJ on interactive music system, we go lasers-on (video)
Beamz has been firing lasers in the name of gesture-based performance for a few years. Today, it's announced it's working with popular music-mixing software Virtual DJ to provide tighter integration between the device and the program. The controller is the same four-beamed multi-button affair we've seen before, but now with a custom version of the aforementioned DJ application to call its own, and make the set-up a cinch. On screen you'll see two representations of the Beamz controller (instead of decks) with instant visual feedback to let you know which beam is mapped to what. You can configure four different triggers at one time, controlling cue points, looping and so on. To add functionality, you can then use the large buttons at the base of the device to rotate through different mappings. The emphasis, of course, is on performance here with nary a rotary nor fader in sight (we imagine you'd be using your other controller for that, right?). The software and hardware combo are being bundled together as a deal, and if you want in, you can do so right away for $200. Not sure if it'll fit in your workflow? Perhaps head past the break, and see if that video doesn't change your mind.
US Navy to deploy ship-mounted laser in 2014, blasts drones in the meantime (video)
Lasers have been flaunted by the US Navy before, but now it's announced that 2014 will see the very first solid-state laser deployed aboard a ship, two years ahead of schedule. The USS Ponce, a vessel used as an amphibious transport dock stationed in the Persian Gulf, will get the honor of hosting the prototype Laser Weapon System (LaWS). Not only can the hardware set boats and airborne drones ablaze, but it can also emit a burst to "dazzle" an opponent's sensors without inflicting physical harm. Sure, it cost roughly $32 million to construct, but the price is expected to fall when it hits wider production, and Chief of Naval Research Rear Admiral Matthew Klunder estimates that it each shot rings up at under $1. It may not be the missile-obliterating free-electron laser that the Navy's been lusting for, but we're sure it doesn't matter much to drones at the end of the beam. Hit the jump to for a video of the contraption in action.
US Navy to fund development of vehicle-mounted, drone-shooting lasers
Lasers, particularly those that set boats ablaze and incinerate incoming missiles, have long been on the Navy's mind. Today, the Office of Naval Research revealed its latest energy weapon craving: vehicle-mounted lasers that shoot down drones. Dubbed Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy On-The-Move, the project is offering private outfits up to $400,000 each to develop such a system that blasts at full power for 120 seconds and juices back up to 80 percent after a 20 minute charge. The beam is required to pack a punch of at least 25 kilowatts, while the ability to ratchet up to 50 kilowatts is optional. Given that kind of power, Wired points out that making such a solution fit in a Humvee is going to be a feat -- especially when the Navy says it can't weigh more than 2,000 pounds and must fit entirely within a vehicle's cargo area. Have blueprints for a jeep-mountable laser squirreled away in your basement hobby shop? You'll have to send your application in by 2 PM on April 26th to qualify for the federal cash. [Image credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery, Flickr]
Engineer builds gingerbread house using CAD and lasers, aging droids approve
It's not that often we see the worlds of baking and technology mix, but when Johan von Konow went about making a traditional gingerbread house for the holidays, he added a laser to the recipe. The engineer and tinkerer first went about designing an accurate, miniature 3D representation of his summer house in a CAD program, with the help of his wife. He then printed outlines of the necessary building blocks onto sheets of baked gingerbread, and used a 50-watt laser engraver to cut them out and score icing guides for the final touches later on. Burnt edges rendered the confectionary inedible, but as its final destination was no longer stomachs, raw lasagna sheets were added for structural support, and hot glue used to bind it all together. If you've got all the kit and are feeling inspired by the picture above, the design layout and project walkthrough are available at the source link below. Hansel and Gretel needn't be worried this time around -- the tech used creating this particular gingerbread house has attracted a different kind of aged tenant.
NASA accidentally improves weather forecasting with lunar dust-measuring lasers
Anyone that's ever tried to plan an outdoor activity in advance knows that weather forecasting is not an exact science, but the perpetual sky-watchers at NASA may have inadvertently found a way to improve these guesstimations. They have been testing a laser system for measuring lunar dust and soil kicked up by rocket exhausts, and while using precipitation as a substitute to calibrate the laser, they found they could measure the average size of raindrops passing through it. This value is estimated in current forecasting models, so plugging in some accurate numbers should make those predictions more reliable. The original mission hasn't been forgotten, though. Particles whipped up by landing rockets on the moon's surface could damage what was left behind by the Apollo missions, ruining its scientific and historic value. One of the laser sensors may find its way onto a craft vying for Google's X Prize, with the results used to determine where vessels can touch down whilst keeping a safe distance from Apollo landing sites. Although an accidental discovery, the system's other potential career in weather forecasting will also continue to be explored. Now, if only there was a way to make it rain and speed up the testing.
Caltech laser accelerometer research may bring fine-tuned position tracking, grocery ads
One way that sensors can track your position without using an array of satellites is by measuring your acceleration as you move around -- but unless you're piloting a jumbo jet, current devices aren't very accurate. Researchers at Caltech hope to change all that with a new, ultra-sensitive accelerometer they developed, which uses laser light to detect motion changes. The scientists managed to shrink a so-called large-scale interferometer down to micro-scale sizes, creating a device "thousands of times faster than the most sensitive sensors used today." That could allow a smartphone with such a micro-sensor to detect your exact position even while inside a grocery store, and flash "ads and coupons for hot dog buns" while you're in the bread aisle, according to Caltech. All that sounds good, but we can perhaps think of more inspiring uses for the new tech.
Alt-week 9.29.12: 3D pictures of the moon, 4D clocks and laser-controlled worms
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. Dimensions, they're like buses. You wait for ages, and then three come along at once. And then another one right after that. While that might be about where the analogy ends, this week sees us off to the moon, where we then leap from the third, right into the fourth. Once there, we'll learn how we could eventually be controlled by lasers, before getting up close and personal with a 300 million-year old bug. Sound like some sort of psychedelic dream? Better than that, this is alt-week.
Liquidware team crafts laser tripwire that tweets intruder alerts, keeps fake sharks at bay (video)
Laser tripwire security systems can be expensive propositions that don't always work as planned -- just ask Raytheon, which saw its $100 million Perimeter Intrusion Detection System for JFK International Airport undermined by one wayward jet skier. Taking that as a form of dare, Justin Huynh and teammates at Liquidware have devised a much cheaper (if also much smaller) tripwire of their own. Any interruption of a laser pointer's beam is caught by an Arduino light sensor that promptly sends the alert to an Android-running BeagleBoard xM; if a toy like Bruce the shark dares cross the line, the BeagleBoard sends a Twitter message to let the authorities, or at least Huynh, clamp down on the trespasser. The invention won't replace Raytheon's handiwork anytime soon, although Huynh notes that additional or more powerful sensors could theoretically catch real, muscle-bound sharks and not just their plastic counterparts. The supply checklist and source code are waiting on the company's project page below, so those who'd like to ward off miniature invasions can get started today.
NPL, Imperial College create room-temperature maser, promise more sensitive beams
Masers, or microwave lasers, have rarely been as viable as their regular counterparts; they need temperatures near absolute zero, exotic vacuum chambers or strong magnets just to run at all, which safely rules out carrying a maser as a pocket pointer. The National Physical Laboratory and Imperial College London might put that gap in practicality to bed after developing a maser that can run at room temperatures. Instead of using ruby to boost the microwave strength, the scientists rely on a less pronounceable p-terphenyl crystal treated with pentacene that can handle ordinary amounts of heat. There's still much work left in refining the technology: it has yet to stay active for sustained periods, only works in a narrow bandwidth and chews through an ample amount of power. Once it's given the appropriate polish, however, the extra sensitivity of the improved maser could be a boon for medical scanning, bomb disposal or even future space communication that could punch through the atmosphere.
Diamond hones DOE X-ray laser howitzer to razor-sharp precision
The US Department of Energy's SLAC accelerator lab already has a pretty useful X-ray laser -- the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). But, recent modifications to the device have scientists drooling over its new found potential. Using a thin wafer of diamond, the Stanford-run lab filtered the beam to a lone frequency, then amplified it in a process called "self-seeding." That's given the world's most powerful X-ray laser even more punch by tossing out unneeded wavelengths which were reducing its intensity. The tweaks allow scientists across many fields to finesse and image matter at the atomic level, giving them more power to study and change it. According to the lab, researchers who came to observe the experiment from other X-ray laser facilities "were grinning from ear to ear" at the possibility of integrating the tech into their own labs. The SLAC team claims they could still add 10 times more punch to the LCLS with further optimization, putting the laser in a class by itself -- X-ray-wise, anyway.
Shader Printer uses heat-sensitive 'paint' that can be erased with low temperatures (hands-on video)
Lovin' the bold look of those new Nikes? If you're up to date on the athletic shoe scene, you may notice that sneaker designs can give way long before your soles do. A new decaling technique could enable you to "erase" labels and other artworks overnight without a trace, however, letting you change up your wardrobe without shelling out more cash. A prototype device, called Shader Printer, uses a laser to heat (at 50 degrees Celsius, 120 degrees Fahrenheit) a surface coated with a bi-stable color-changing material. When the laser reaches the "ink," it creates a visible design, that can then be removed by leaving the object in a -10 degree Celsius (14 degree Fahrenheit) freezer overnight. The laser and freezer simply apply standard heat and cold, so you could theoretically add and remove designs using any source. For the purposes of a SIGGRAPH demo, the team, which includes members from the Japan Science and Technology Agency, Keio University, the University of Tokyo and MIT, used a hair dryer to apply heat to a coated plastic doll in only a few seconds -- that source doesn't exactly offer the precision of a laser, but it works much more quickly. Then, they sprayed the surface with -50-degree Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit) compressed air, which burned off the rather sloppy pattern in a flash. There were much more attractive prints on hand as well, including an iPhone cover and a sneaker with the SIGGRAPH logo, along with a similar plastic doll with clearly defined eyes. We also had a chance to peek at the custom laser rig, which currently takes about 10 minutes to apply a small design, but could be much quicker in the future with a higher-powered laser on board. The hair dryer / canned air combo offers a much more efficient way of demoing the tech, however, as you'll see in our hands-on video after the break.
Acer breeds LEDs with lasers, new hybrid projector is born
Acer usually graces our pages for its pico projector range, but the company's taken a leaf out of the high-end book for its latest non-portable model, the K750 LED-laser hybrid. The world's first combo projector spits out 1080p, just as you would expect, at a contrast ratio of up to 100,000:1. Acer claims the color brightness, saturation and fidelity are significantly better than mercury lamps, and appears to be leaning towards the business and education markets, citing the K750's instant on / off capability to sway the productive types. If you fancy one of these in your house, however, better start saving your cash -- AVForums claims it'll be available in the UK later this month bearing a price tag of around £1,700 (approximately $2,650).
NIF sets record with 500 TW laser shot, lab-based nuclear fusion not far behind
In an effort to recreate the fusion reaction that occurs in start formation, the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, CA has been building up to some extremely powerful laser shots. Back in March, researchers fired off 411 terawatts, and we know that kind of power doesn't come cheap. NIF's latest test shot, fired July 5th, set a new record with 192 lasers producing more than 500 trillion watts of peak power and 1.85 MJ of ultraviolet laser light. Mind you, that's more than a thousand times more energy than the United States uses at any given moment, not to mention a hundred times more power than other lasers can fire consistently. More record-setting shots are sure to come, and in addition to enabling research on harnessing nuclear fusion, NIF's mega-lasers are helping inform the design of new laser facilities being built in China, Japan, Russia, France and the UK.
36.7 million FPS camera revolutionized cancer screening, next comes combat sports
We're quite familiar with the fun you can have when you've got a high speed camera in your possession. But, even Phantom's pricey and impressive 2,800 FPS cameras have nothing on the latest project out of UCLA. Engineers at the school have rigged up a microscope cam that uses serial time-encoded amplified microscopy (STEAM) to capture clips of individual cells at 36.7 million FPS. Let that sink in for a moment -- that's a "shutter" speed of 27 picoseconds. The school actually pioneered the method years ago, which uses ultra-fast laser pulses to generate images of cells as they speed by. The camera is capable of processing 100,000 cells a second, allowing doctors to spot cancerous anomalies that might have otherwise gone undetected. Now we just hope they can supersize the tech and sell it to HBO... boxing KOs can never be played back slow enough.
Snapshot: Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers (PC)
There are so many games out there we couldn't possibly review them all. Welcome to Snapshot, where we highlight games that might fall outside our usual coverage but are still something we think you should know about. Today: Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers for PC. Some games teach us about the perils of war, how physics work or what we can look forward to in a future of space exploration, aliens and super-intelligent robots. But some games provide insight into something even more mystical, even more special and remarkably less intelligent than those robots: ourselves. Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers is one of those games.And it has high-powered laser action. Like, a lot of high-powered laser action.
CCNY, UC Berkeley develop lasers that could rewrite quantum chips, spin those atoms right round
Computers are normally limited by the fixed nature of their chipsets: once the silicon is out of the factory, its capabilities are forever locked in. The City College of New York and University of California Berkeley have jointly developed a technique that could break chips free of these prisons and speed along quantum computing. They found that hitting gallium arsenide with a laser light pattern aligns the spins of the atoms under the rays, creating a spintronic circuit that can re-map at a moment's notice. The laser could be vital to quantum computers, which can depend heavily or exclusively on spintronics to work: a simple shine could get electrons storing a much wider range of numbers and consequently handling many more calculations at once. Research is only just now becoming public, however; even though gallium arsenide is common in modern technology, we'll need to be patient before we find quantum PCs at the local big-box retail chain. Despite this, we could still be looking at an early step in a shift from computers with many single-purpose components to the abstracted, all-powerful quantum machines we've held in our science fiction dreams.
LIPC weapon combines lasers and lightning, proves soldiers are a bunch of nerds
The problem with laser weapons is this -- they need a lot, a lot of power. Seriously. Some of those big, plane-mounted prototypes choke down enough juice to power a whole city. Not so with the Laser-Induced Plasma Channel weapon being developed by researchers at Picatinny Arsenal. While still using plenty of electricity, this more moderately specced laser is just powerful enough to strip electrons off the air molecules around it generating a thin filament of plasma. Its not the high-intensity laser pulse that does the damage, though. Instead, the channel of plasma is used as a conduit for a high-voltage blast of electricity. That laser-assisted bolt of lightning could disable vehicles, people and even IEDs. There are plenty of obstacles, including making the weapon rugged enough for battlefield use and reliable enough to keep the plasma channel from leading the blast of electricity back into the laser and damaging it. Now, if only we could find the video that still above was taken from.
iFixit reveals Nook Simple Touch With GlowLight's magic -- with lasers
Turns out the secret to the new Nook's patent pending magic glow isn't so magic after all. Nope, it utilizes the wonder of diffraction. Yep, the driving force behind this marriage-saving device is science! Says iFixit in its latest teardown, The display assembly contains the front glass, digitizer, and array of GlowLight LEDs, all fused together into one component. The glass over the E-ink screen takes the light from the eight LEDs and evenly distributes it across the screen. How did the site discover the pending patentness after peeling back the e-reader's layers? Why, lasers, of course, beaming one through the aforementioned glass, which diffracted the green light before it hit a wall, proving once and for all that science can be fun. And ripping gadgets apart, naturally.
Laser VR: Projector + computer vision + laser pointer = fun!
On paper, Laser VR sounds like one of the worst product ideas ever: you need to buy an iPhone, a laser pointer, and a Pico projector just to get started, but darn if we here at TUAW aren't drooling over the prospect. An iPhone provides both the graphics generation piece, which is piped through a cable to a small projection system (low end projection systems now start around US$125), and the computer vision system that aligns itself to the projected image and interprets the laser pointer position for gaming. As the following proof-of-concept video shows, while niche, the prospect of gaming on your wall could be super-cool.
Researchers power microbots made of bubbles with lasers
They may not be "robots" as most have come to expect, but these so-called microrobots developed by a team of researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa do have at least one thing in common with many of their mechanical counterparts: lasers. As IEEE Spectrum reports, the bots themselves are actually nothing more than bubbles of air in a saline solution, but they become "microrobots" when the laser is added to the equation, which serves as an engine of sorts and allows the researchers to control both the speed and direction of the bubbles. That, they say, could allow the bots to be used for a variety of tasks, including assembling microstructures and then disappearing without a trace when the bubble is popped. Head on past the break for a video of what they're already capable of.
