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NVIDIA's $99 Jetson Nano is an AI computer for DIY enthusiasts
Sophisticated AI generally isn't an option for homebrew devices when the mini computers can rarely handle much more than the basics. NVIDIA thinks it can do better -- it's unveiling an entry-level AI computer, the Jetson Nano, that's aimed at "developers, makers and enthusiasts." NVIDIA claims that the Nano's 128-core Maxwell-based GPU and quad-core ARM A57 processor can deliver 472 gigaflops of processing power for neural networks, high-res sensors and other robotics features while still consuming a miserly 5W. On the surface, at least, it could hit the sweet spot if you're looking to build your own robot or smart speaker.
Valve gives its Knuckles finger tracker better battery life
Valve has debuted the latest Knuckles EV3 VR finger tracking controller with subtle improvements that show it's nearly ready for a consumer release. The biggest update to the latest developer kit is in the area of battery life; improved sensor efficiency means it'll go for up to eight hours, up over two hours from the EV2 kit released earlier this year.
Razer's second OSVR devkit is now available for pre-order
If you've been looking for a lower-cost alternative to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive that doesn't skimp on hardware, you're in luck. Razer has officially started taking pre-orders for the OSVR HDK2: its second generation Open-Source Virtual Reality hardware development kit. The company announced this upgrade last month at E3. It features a higher resolution 2,160 x 1,200 low-persistence OLED 441 PPI display, a winder, 110-degree field of view and a 90Hz refresh-rate -- specs on par with what you'll find in other commercial VR headsets.
HTC, Valve offer free Vive VR dev kits to select developers
Valve, the company that spawned Steam, Team Fortress 2, Portal and Half-Life, will hand out dev kits of its Vive virtual reality headset to select developers at no cost, company spokesperson Doug Lombardi tells Ars Technica. Valve plans to launch a new site next week where developers, big and small, can sign up to potentially score an early version of the Vive. There are no firm guidelines determining which studios will actually get a dev kit, the site reports, and it's unclear how many are up for grabs in this freebie round.
Qualcomm offers developer support for virtual reality and digital eyewear
Smartwatches may be the most popular wearable products right now, but facewear is certainly on the up and up. Devices like Samsung's Gear VR and the Epson Moverio glasses are either already on the market or will be coming in the very near future, but what good are these devices if developers have limited access to them? Qualcomm's working on a solution of its own by releasing a developer kit for digital eyewear, and companies like Samsung, Epson and others are on board. The new platform, called the Vuforia SDK for Digital Eyewear, is supposed to aid developers in building hybrid virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) apps that are capable of recognizing objects and images that are within your field of view; the company hopes this ability to lay interactive 3D content over the rest of the world will result in handy apps for gaming, education and shopping. The kit will be available this fall as a beta that will only be available to a small group of developers, and the company hasn't specified when it'll be open to everyone else.
Oculus ends Rift dev kit sales citing parts supply issues
As forewarned, Oculus VR is officially ending sales of its first-run development kit. "We're quickly running out of stock for the Rift development kit, so we've shut down sales in most regions," a note from Oculus says. Specifically, the issue comes from certain pieces of the headset "no longer being manufactured." That said, those headsets are more than a little long in the tooth at this point: both the HD version and the Crystal Cove prototype take giant leaps past the first dev unit, to say nothing of Valve's prototype. Oculus isn't offering anything official in terms of word on new dev kits (beyond what the company's CTO told us last year), but we expect many devs already have some form of new hardware from the fast-growing VR company.
PSA: Xbox One is not backwards compatible in dev mode
Enabling developer mode on your Xbox One can lead to bad news bears, so doing so is generally ill-advised. Dev mode also doesn't suddenly make your Xbox One backwards compatible, no matter what some picture you saw on the Internet tells you. An image that has been circulating around the Interwebz - which we've posted below the break - claims that by following six simple steps, your Xbox One will allow you to play Xbox 360 games. In reality, following these six simple steps is more likely to result in allowing your Xbox One to play the part of "paperweight" in your new one-man/woman play, "O! Technology." Should you follow the steps listed below, the Xbox One will get caught in an infinite boot cycle, thus rendering it inoperable.
Microsoft advises consumers against enabling dev mode on Xbox One
Though Microsoft has said every retail Xbox One can be used as a game development kit, the company is recommending against consumers enabling an early developer mode on their consoles through the settings menu. In a statement to Engadget, Microsoft says the sequence of buttons that unlocks additional menu options in retail consoles does not necessarily turn the Xbox One into a developer's console. "Changing the settings in this menu is only intended for developers for Xbox One, and this alone does not turn the console into a development kit. We strongly advise consumers against changing these settings as it could result in their Xbox One becoming unusable. Customers who have put their consoles into this developer setting can revert by restoring factory defaults under Settings / System, select Restore Factory Defaults." Microsoft has previously stated we'll see the first self-published Xbox One games, through the ID@Xbox program, sometime early next year. The ID@Xbox program will support any and all payment models available on Xbox One, including free-to-play, premium pricing and micro-transactions.
Sony PS4 dev kit FCC filing shows off extra ports, 2.75GHz max clock frequency
Sony proudly showed off its PlayStation 4 hardware for the first time at E3, and now we're getting a peek at what developers are working with this generation thanks to the FCC. The DUH-D1000AA prototype Development Kit for PS4 is listed in these documents, tested for its Bluetooth and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi radios. As one would expect, the diagrams show it eschews the sleek design of the consumer model for extra cooling, a shape made for rack mounts plus extra indicator lights and ports. Also of note is a "max clock frequency" listing of 2.75GHz, and although we don't know how fast the game system will run by default, it's interesting to hear what all that silicon may be capable of (as a commenter points out below, that may relate to the system's 8GB of GDDR5 RAM) while maintaining a temperature between 5 and 35 degrees celsius. Hit the link below to check out the documents for yourself, after seeing this and the system's controller become a part of the FCC's database all we're left waiting for is Mark Cerny's baby.
Next-gen Kinect for Windows opens dev kit applications, costs $400
Microsoft's new version of Kinect for Xbox One is also headed to the world of PCs, like its previous incarnation. The new Kinect for Windows sensor won't be available publicly until some point in 2014, but developers can apply for an early, $400 development kit starting right now (due before July 31st at 9AM PT), Microsoft announced today. In that $400, developers (if accepted) will get early SDK access, a pre-release "alpha" version of the device, a final retail version (at launch), and private access to both APIs and the Kinect for Windows engineering team (in private forums and webcasts). Should you get in, you'll find out more come this August.
GameStick dev unit found at GDC 2013, we go eyes-on
GameStick is here ... er, sort of. The development units are at least here at GDC 2013, quietly hanging out behind a nondescript computer monitor running a few Android games paired with a Nyko wireless controller. That's right, it wasn't running with the proprietary GameStick controller, but a third-party wireless -- we'll go hands-on with the company's internally built controller later this evening, and thusly we didn't want to offer a half-impression with the third-party units available on the show floor. Stay tuned for more, and take a gander at the gallery below for now.%Gallery-184131%
BlackBerry 10 developer toolkit released in beta, adds Native and WebWorks SDKs for app-building flexibility
Will BlackBerry 10 be the hallowed OS that heals Waterloo's recent wounds or yet another RIM-shot to highlight its foibles? Only the fickle tide of consumer interest will certainly tell. But while the success and awareness of that new platform undoubtedly rests on the company's shoulders, a great deal of it also hinges upon crucial developer support. To spur things along in that latter department, RIM's released its developer toolkit in beta today. The tools, launched ahead of forthcoming BB 10 devices and the nascent ecosystem that they'll depend upon, are designed for flexibility, allowing third parties to choose between the Native SDK with its OS-specific APIs or the WebWorks SDK for HTML5 and CSS. The company's even gotten a head-start and partnered with the likes of Gameloft, which has already committed to optimizing 11 of its software titles for use on the platform. There's still a long road to US recovery ahead for the ailing BlackBerry brand, so let's hope this latest call-to-arms isn't lost on the dev community. Click on past the break for the official PR.
Microsoft lowers hardware requirements, opens Marketplace to 23 more countries
If there was a theme for today's Nokia keynote, and, by extension, Microsoft's plans for Windows Phone, it's that the OS is being targeted toward lower-spec phones worldwide. The SDK update that'll soon roll out to developers will include an emulator for developers to ensure their apps work on devices like the Lumia 610 that only has 256MB RAM. The company's promising that nearly all apps will work on the cheaper hardware, promising that fragmentation will be kept to a minimum. Any app that runs poorly on the slimmer hardware will be flagged as unsuitable in the Marketplace. Speaking of which, Microsoft has announced it'll be rolling it out to a further 23 countries shortly including China, the UAE and much of Eastern Europe -- increasing the total market reach by up to 60 percent.
SparkFun announces $80 Electric Sheep development board for Android accessories
Looking for an alternative to the Google-approved Android Development Kit? Then you now have another fairly inexpensive option to consider courtesy of SparkFun. It's officially announced its new Electric Sheep development board, which costs just $80 and will let you build your own Android accessories using the Open Accessory protocol. That means it and any accessories built with it will work just fine with your Nexus One, although there's of course no guarantees it'll work with, say, a future Nexus-6 model -- we hear those might be a bit unpredictable. Press release is after the break, and you can find some additional specifics and an order button at the source link below.
Wii U dev kits to be updated to latest prototyping hardware in the coming weeks
Nintendo couldn't have put all those glorious names of third party developers up alongside its Wii U announcement earlier this month without giving those companies at least a glimpse at the actual hardware they'd have to code on. Sega Europe's Gary Dunn was among those to have tinkered with a development kit before we even knew what the Wii U would be called, but he says that Nintendo intends to refresh that hardware to the latest prototype model at some point before the end of July. According to Gary, coding for the new system is pretty straightforward, and though he wouldn't get into specifics about performance, he does expect more details to emerge once Nintendo starts distributing the latest version of the Wii U dev platform. Asked about how it compares to the Xbox 360 and PS3, Sega's dev leader simply said the new Nintendo console is "different."
NVIDIA Kal-El reference tablet hands-on (video)
As if showing up in two of the first four reference devices for Windows on ARM wasn't enough of an achievement for NVIDIA's quad-core Kal-El superchip, it decided to visit us in person here at Computex to demonstrate its splendid graphical prowess. Running Android 3.1 on a 10-inch, 1280 x 800 screen, it gave us a first-hand look at the Glow Ball demo that wowed us in video form just a couple of days ago. What we saw on the dev tablet before us was no less impressive; lighting was being rendered in real time and scattered over a multiplicity of surfaces, while the cloth simulation was, to use a terrible pun, silky smooth. NVIDIA also ran us through a sightseeing tour of the Unreal Development Kit and Lost Planet 2, noting that the PC game took only a couple of months to port over to work on the Kal-El architecture. Unfortunately, no new details were forthcoming about when Kal-El devices might be coming or what developers we should expect to see coding games and other content to exploit the platform's evidently mighty capabilities. For now, we'll just have to sate ourselves with the video after the break. %Gallery-125085%
Globalscale D2 Plug offers HD video, 3D graphics in little Linux / Android machine
So it's not going to replace your big-boy PC anytime soon, but Globalscale's latest plug computer, the D2 Plug, does deliver some decidedly desktop-like traits. The latest lilliputian Linux / Android kit touts Marvell's PXA510, a 1GHz ARMv7 processor that supports 1080p video playback and 3D graphics. According to its makers, the D2 Plug runs on two watts and features 1GB of DDR3 memory, 8GB of NAND flash, an SD card slot, eSATA port and multiple points of connectivity, including two USB 2.o ports, gigabit ethernet, HDMI, and VGA. It measures a mere 6.7 x 3.22 x 1.3 inches, and sports a $249 price tag -- not exactly a small price, but there are plenty of other mini PCs in the sea.
US Army developing Android-based smartphone framework and apps
The US Army is calling upon Android app developers to help make military life a little less stressful -- and, perhaps, a lot safer. Under a new Army framework known as the Mobile/Handheld Computing Environment (CE), third-party developers will be able to create and submit tactical Android apps, using the military's CE Product Developer's Kit. The framework, originally prototyped by the folks over at MITRE, represents the latest phase in the Army's ongoing campaign to incorporate smartphone technology on the battlefield. Any app operating under the CE system will be interoperable across all command systems, and, as you'd expect, will be tightly secured. The kit won't be released to developers until July, but the Army has already begun tinkering with its baseline suite of Mission Command apps, which includes tools designed to facilitate mapping, blue force tracking, and Tactical Ground Reporting. On the hardware side of the equation, the Army is planning to deploy a new handheld known as the Joint Battle Command-Platform, or JBC-P. The two-pound JBC-P is essentially a military-friendly smartphone designed to run on a variety of existing radio networks, while supporting the full suite of forthcoming apps. The JBC-P will be tested this October, and will likely be issued on a wider basis in 2013.
Intel Thunderbolt dev kits coming this quarter, hopefully ushering in more 10Gbps-capable devices
Intel has just announced it will soon be making development kits available for its new Thunderbolt interconnect. The cable that can carry 10Gbps (in both directions!) has so far only seen itself installed in Apple's MacBook Pro computers, but storage and other peripheral manufacturers are starting to unveil their lightning-scorched offerings this week at NAB and this announcement is sure to give Thunderbolt an extra spur of momentum. What's going to be intriguing going forward is to see whether manufacturers take it up instead of USB 3.0 or install the DisplayPort lookalike alongside the latest and greatest from the USB camp. If you ask us, we can never have enough high-speed interconnects... how does SuperSpeed Thunderbolt sound?
Xbox Development Kit arrives with 'significantly reduced price,' Sidecar attachment
What's this, you ask? The next generation of Xbox 360 development, that's what. With a shockingly small amount of fanfare, Microsoft has ushered in a striking new Xbox Development Kit, which is purportedly designed to increase efficiency and reduce cost for Xbox 360 dev teams. Aside from boasting an undisclosed uptick in RAM, built-in flash memory, a more capacious hard drive and a slimmer form factor, this XDK will also be sold at a "significantly reduced price from its predecessor." 'Course, the folks in Redmond aren't saying what exactly that sticker will look like, but those interested in taking the plunge regardless will also have the option to license a Sidecar attachment that enables debugging and disc emulation. We're told that said accessory can be shared among multiple XDK consoles, and in turn, it should lower the overall price to create, test, debug, and release an Xbox 360 or Xbox Live Arcade game. It's still a guessing game when it comes to an actual launch date, but it'll become "the standard kit" when new orders are fulfilled in the future. Feel free to peruse the gallery below if you're interested, and toss out a wild guess as to what that Sidecar will go for on eBay during the next century. Aim high, bub! %Gallery-120383%
