Wiring
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Tesla Model S software update guards against faulty wiring
Amidst a recent spate of Model S fires, Tesla has upgraded the software on the EV to prevent unsafe charging, according to a tweet from Tesla S owner @ddenboer. If input power fluctuations are outside a safe range, the software will automatically reduce the charging current by 25 percent -- from 40 amps to 30, for instance. The change is supposedly a response to a recent Tesla S blaze, which happened in a California garage in November. Citing investigators, Tesla said the incident wasn't caused by the EV but by an overheated wall charger in the garage, a problem that the system can apparently now detect and help mitigate. Meanwhile, per Tesla's request, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is still looking into several recent fires, two of which were caused by road debris puncturing the batteries. Though the company has already changed the warranty to cover any and all fire damage, CEO Elon Musk hopes that such an inquiry will prove that the Model S is safe.
NC State builds stretchable wires from liquid metal, keeps headphones humming (video)
More than a few of us have had that moment of panic when our headphone cords catch on an object and cut the listening short -- sometimes permanently. Researchers at North Carolina State University could help mitigate those minor musical catastrophes with wiring that stretches up to eight times its normal length. The method fills an elastic polymer tube with a liquid gallium and indium alloy that delivers the electricity. By keeping the materials separate, unlike many past attempts, the solution promises the best of both worlds: the conduction we need, and the tolerance for tugs that we want. NC State already has an eye on stretchable headphone cords, as you'll see in the video after the break, but it also sees advantages for electronic textiles that could endure further abuse. As long as the team can eventually solve a problem with leakage when there's a complete break, we'll be glad enough to leave one of our common audio mishaps in the past.
Arduino mechs learn RobotC, plot assimilation with Lego Mindstorms
Arduino boards have smoothed the creation of lots of eccentric thingamajigs, but robotics and controllers are still not for the faint of heart. Luckily, RoboMatter is coming to the rescue of would-be roboticists with a public beta version of its C-based RobotC language for Arduino. Joining Lego Mindstorm and other bots, Arduino will get RobotC's straightforward sensor and motor controls, along with a debugger and sample program library, while still keeping its native Wiring language. So, if you want to be a Kickstarter magnate , or just out-weird everyone else, rolling your own droid is now a bit easier.
Elderly Georgian lady disconnects Armenian internet for half a day... by accident
A 75-year old lady from Georgia (the country, not the state) has perpetrated an impressive feat of international sabotage in what seems to have been an accident of extremely bad luck. While foraging for copper wire near her home in the village of Ksani, the unnamed septuagenarian managed to come across a critical fiber optic cable, one responsible for serving internet connectivity to "90 percent of private and corporate internet users in Armenia" and some in her own country as well. Her swift strike at the heart of said bit-transferring pipeline resulted in all those folks being thrown offline for a solid 12 hours, while the Georgian Railway Telecom worked to find and correct the fault. In spite of her relatively benign motivations, the lady now faces three years in prison for the damage she caused. We'd say all's well that ends well, but this doesn't actually seem like a very happy ending at all.
IOGEAR GW3DKIT wireless 3D media kit banishes your components to the closet
We went hands-on with IOGEAR's wireless HD system last year at CES, and now we've managed to do the same with a prototype of the boutique brand's new GW3DKIT 3D wireless streamer. The kit consists of a 3D transmitter and receiver that each feature four HDMI inputs as well as one component, composite, VGA, and USB input. Each box also features one HDMI and USB output. Together the system is designed to stream full 1080p 60Hz HD video / 5.1 audio along with 3D content over WiFi (802.11n) from as far as 100 feet away with supposedly little latency or wireless interference. IOGEAR says to expect the system sometime in Q1 of 2011, and no official pricing is available yet, but we've been told it would be around $499 by IOGEAR's CES booth staff. If everything performs as advertised, it sounds like a great solution for you home theater minimalists out there who prefer components out of sight. We'll reserve official judgment though until we can go eyes-on with some extended tested. For more information, be sure to check out the full PR after the break.
Sony replacing handset wiring with a single copper cable
Sure, it's just boring ol' component news but you can guarantee that this advance will affect the appearance of Sony (and Sony Ericsson) products some time soon. Sony just announced the development of a "single wire interface technology" that replaces the 22 or so cables (used for power, control signals, audio, video, etc) typically found inside mobile devices (tucked away in the hinge or rotating parts) with a single copper wire cable capable of transmitting data at 940Mbps. That should translate into greater reliability while giving Sony's product teams more flexibility with their designs. Sony plans to "swiftly" implement the technology by licensing the IP to ROHM to help jointly develop the required silicon. More with less, as they say.
Soda machine controlled by iPhone app
Recent MIT comp sci grad Chris Varenhorst found a cheap soda machine on Craigslist a while back, and he decided to do what any self-respecting computer science student would do nowadays: hook it up to the Internet. He created wiring to make the machine believe it had credits whenever a circuit was connected, and then wired that to an Internet service. He also created an iPhone app that sent messages to the server, so he could press a button from anywhere and make the machine dispense a cold drink. Unfortunately, he says he would sometimes press the button while out and about, and come back to his apartment to find a warm beer sitting in the machine. He's graduated now and moving out, so Varenhorst and his roommates decided to sell the machine on eBay, with part of the funds going to charity. It sold for just $76 (not too surprising -- who really needs a soda machine sitting around their house?), but the project itself is very cool.
Ask Engadget HD: How do I hook up surround sound without cables running everywhere?
Sometimes a move can necessitate rethinking one's home theater setup, which was exactly the case for our friend Amani. A shift from a room with carpets to run wires underneath to hardwood floors has him wondering what the easiest and neatest way is to hook up the rear speakers: Ok, here is my dilemma. I used to have carpet in my main area where my TV is and surround sound is. Speaker wire would run under carpet. I just got hard wood floors installed so now there will be wires all over the place for my sound. What creative options do I have to set back up my surround sound but perhaps eliminate the wires or use wireless.connection to connect my speakers. I need help because I can't have speaker wire all over my pretty new floors! Thanks So is the best route to drill right into the walls, some kind of invisible speaker cable, or is there a good wireless speaker setup that doesn't involve falling back to a HTIB? Let us know how you solved this kind of problem and save Amani some heartache and time.
Netgear's Home Theater Internet Connection Kit spreads content on power lines
Not so fond of those wireless streaming solutions? Unable to strew Ethernet cables all across your abode for fear of an SO beating? Fret not, as Netgear's now-shipping Home Theater Internet Connection Kit has you covered. The $179.99 bundle consists of an XAVB1004 Powerline AV Ethernet switch and a single Powerline AV Ethernet Adapter (XAV101) to get you started; just connect your web-ready wares to these adapters via Ethernet, and connect said adapters to your home's vast array of power outlets. It's magic, really.[Via HotHardware]
Ultra-clean custom install leaves us ashamed of our rat's nest
As impressive as some custom installs look from the front-end, CEPro has photos of the back-end of a "masterpiece" setup that simply must be seen. If you think moving a set-top box to a remote location is excessive, you'll want to munch on some Xanax before hitting the link, because your head might a-splode. Sure, the ultra-wealthy can get the job done by cutting a nice big check, but you've got to respect this kind of fanatical attention to detail that someone mustered to both plan out and install by hand. Considering that the system has more than a dozen Crestron panels for HVAC, lighting, AV, security, water features and a train set (ultra-rich, remember?), you might even say that the effort was necessary for getting things up and running and keeping them that way.
Audiovox HDP100 HDMI-over-powerline kit tested, on sale
Generally speaking, anything over powerline has received tepid reviews at best, and sure enough, Audiovox's promising HDP100 is just more of the same. The kit seeks to shuttle HDMI signals over your existing power lines within the home, but in CNET's review lair, critics found that the signal was "slightly degraded over what it expected from a true HDMI cable (i.e. perfection), showing lower resolution and some subtle choppiness, as if it was dropping frames." Still, those with smaller TVs or less demanding eyes may find this desirable over running all sorts of cabling across your floors; if we just rang your bell, you can snap the package up now for around $399 (or less on the street).
Audiovox HDP100 sends HDMI over powerline
If you're tired of waiting to beam your HD signals across the room over thin air but still crave that tidy install devoid of snaking wires, you might want to give HDMI over powerline a try. For $400, Audiovox will hook you up with its HDP100 HD Powerlink system (apparently under the Acoustic Research brand) -- a single transmitter, receiver and accessories that will transmit HDMI and IR remote signals over the Romex already in your walls. Of course, as with all things with names ending in "over powerline," performance can vary based on things like your home's wiring, what other devices are placed on the circuit, how the HDP100 units are plugged in and maybe even the phase of the moon; but that same $400 will disappear pretty quickly if you have a pro pull some wires through the walls.
High-def audio wiring guide removes the mystery
Granted, we've already shown you how to actually take advantage of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, but if you're looking for a quick and dirty breakdown of what each audio codec means, what it can / can't do and how to wire things up with your current setup, Missing Remote's latest guide is for you. For starters, it hones in on Blu-ray audio format support -- quite relevant given the state of the format war these days -- and it continues on by explaining how to wire things up for superior results with S/PDIF, HDMI, analog, etc. There's even a special section dedicated to HTPC playback, which ought to help you folks not using a pre-fab deck. If you've been spinning your wheels of late in the wide world of multi-channel audio, have a look at the read link and see if things don't clear up.
NuVo Renovia delivers whole-home audio over powerline
Faults notwithstanding, powerline is still mighty scrumptious in theory. Evidently NuVo Technologies agrees, as it's cranking out what's possibly the planet's first whole-home audio system that relies on existing A/C wiring. The Renovia can deliver audio and metadata throughout the house by simply tapping into the power wires already within your walls, and in case you couldn't guess, it's using the HomePlug 1.0 specification in order to do so. The central hub has AM, FM and Sirius-ready tuners already on board, and owners can plug in a pair of iPod docks along with two analog sources to boot. In case that's still not enough to get your drool a-flowin', it'll also stream "virtually any digital content on the network via NuVo's Music Port module." There's no word just yet on an MSRP, but judging by NuVo's past, we'd assume that it'll be somewhere between grossly and obscenely overpriced.
XCM unveils Multi-Component Cable v2: console connections unite
We're all about keeping things nice and well kempt, and if you're the type who's sporting a house full of consoles, you know precisely how difficult a clean wiring solution is to maintain. Helping to clear out that rat's nest of cabling is XCM -- those same folks who brought us the XFPS -- which is delivering the Multi-Component Cable v2 to simply that cord conundrum. Sporting a trio of connectors, this single device can simultaneously connect to your Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3, and reportedly your dusty PS2 as well, and plugs into your TV set via component outs. As you might expect, a simple flip of the toggle switch changes the console you see on screen without you having to risk your life climbing atop the television. Currently, the device is still stuck in "preview" mode, but XCM promises to have a full list of specs and availability details ready soon, and if you can catch a video sneak peek after the jump.
How-To: Build yourself a front projection home theater
In today's How-To we get to play with other people's toys. We upgraded a home theater to a high definition front projection system. We lay it out, set it up, drill holes, nearly die in a Texas attic, and bring home the popcorn.Our project home theater already has the essentials for taking advantage of a high definition display: a progressive scan DVD player with component video output and a hi-def DISH Network satellite receiver provide a HD video source for the projector.Screen SelectionIt may seem counter intuitive, but it's helpful to consider (but not purchase) the screen before choosing a projector. Knowing the size of screen you want in your room will determine where the projector needs to be mounted, and how bright it needs to be. If you're not sure, marking out the dimensions of the screen with some blue masking tape and checking out the view from your seating area can be helpful. Click on to read the rest of this week's How-To!
