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AI-powered instant camera turns photos into crude cartoons
Most cameras are designed to capture scenes as faithfully as possible, but don't tell that to Dan Macnish. He recently built an instant camera, Draw This, that uses a neural network to translate photos into the sort of crude cartoons you would put on your school notebooks. Macnish mapped the millions of doodles from Google's Quick, Draw! game data set to the categories the image processor can recognize. After that, it was largely a matter of assembling a Raspberry Pi-powered camera that used this know-how to produce its 'hand-drawn' pictures with a thermal printer.
Ask Engadget: is iPod Touch and Wireless Printer-based credit card processing possible?
We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget inquiry is coming to us from Dustin, who wants to turn the humble iPod Touch into a cash register for live events. If you're looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com. "We currently have 10 credit card terminals we purchased three years ago, and we're looking to replace them thanks to their horrific failure rate and replacement cost. We only use them for special events, but they account for $24 million of our credit card revenue. Ideally I'd like to replace them with iPod touches and a wireless printer, but I can't seem to find a solution that offers printing -- but it's essential to what we do. Thanks for your help!" We found that Square lets you connect to a Star Micronics receipt printer, and Intuit GoPayment accepts Bluetooth-enabled P25 Blue Bamboo printers -- so those could work for you. Of course, Ask Engadget is about sourcing the opinion of our hive-mind, so if your business has already conquered this problem, why not share what you know?
Erasable e-paper shown off, erased, shown off again (video)
Researchers at Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute are giving the world a peek at i2R, a new type of easily erasable e-paper. The technology uses a thermal printer and cholestric liquid crystals, letting users write and erase its contents up to 260 times. It can print different colored inks and could potentially be used for things like ID badges and signage. The sheets currently cost around $2 a piece to produce and should be available to us consumer types in about two years.
