Mr Peter Spies from Fraunhofer IIS presents human heat powered smartwatch prototype at Energy Harvesting & Storage USA exhibition, part of the IDTechEx Show! Founded in 1985, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, Germany, ranks first among the Fraunhofer Institutes concerning headcount and revenues. Fraunhofer IIS is the main inventor of mp3 and universally credited with the co-development of AAC audio coding standard. In close cooperation with partners and clients the Institute provides research and development services in the following areas: Audio and video source coding, multimedia realtime systems, digital radio broadcasting and digital cinema systems, integrated circuits and sensor systems, design automation, wireless, wired and optical networks, localization and navigation, imaging systems and industrial X-ray technology, highspeed cameras, medical sensor solutions and supply chain services. For more information see http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/ and http://www.IDTechEx.com
Author:
Fraunhofer IIS Bluetooth Smartwatch Powered by Human Wrist Thermal Harvesting
OWL WORKS 3D Prints Notre Dame Cathedral
OWL WORKS LLC. is a startup company based in San Jose, CA and Seoul, Korea presenting their latest 3D printer at IDTechEx at 3D Printing USA. They started from a small DIY group of individuals with various experiences, knowledge and skills, to deliver their product concepts to the world. Recently, they’ve introduced the Morpheus, a volume desktop resin 3D printer. For more information see http://www.morpheus3dprinter.com/ and http://www.IDTechEx.com
LinnStrument with Tangio Printed 3D Force Touch
Phi Bui of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music plays the LinnStrument at the Printed Electronics USA event, a one-of-a-kind expressive, polyphonic multi-dimensional MIDI controller. At the heart of the LinnStrument is a custom touch sensor designed by Roger Linn Design and fabricated by Tangio Printed Electronics. Like any fine musical instrument, LinnStrument must have highly consistent touch sensitivity across its surface, and this is provided by Tangio’s precise fabrication process. LinnStrument’s patent-pending multi-touch technology captures three dimensions of each finger’s movement, polyphonically. As a solution for haptic and expressive input in automotive, consumer electronics and medical devices, Tangio Printed Electronics, creates flexible 3D touch sensors that can be inside the most advanced, touch-sensing products in the world.
The core technology of Tangio’s 3D Touch sensor is that of the Force-sensing resistor. Force-sensing resistors are an evolution of membrane switch technology, based on the same user interface design principals and made using similar manufacturing techniques. The force sensor is essentially an analog, multi-position switch, while the membrane switch is simply ON/OFF. What defines a force-sensing resistor is its unique characteristic of dynamic conductance / resistance relative to the amount of pressure applied to the device. In general, the more pressure applied to the surface of the sensor, the greater the conductance / the lower the resistance.
Force-sensing resistors are used for qualitative rather than quantitative or precision measurements. They are found in a wide range of industry applications: automotive, human interface devices, toys, medical equipment, musical instruments, sporting equipment and safety equipment.
This video also features an interview with the National Research Council Canada. The National Research Council (NRC) is the Government of Canada’s organization for research and development. NRC’s Printable Electronics (PE) initiative coordinates key industrial areas – materials, ink, printing, and packaging – as a springboard for a profitable, large-scale PE sector. For more information see http://www.tangio.co, http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/solutions/collaborative/pe_index.html and http://www.IDTechEx.com
Nikola Labs RF recycling Cell Phone Case Extends Battery Life 30%
Interview with Will Zell, CEO of Nikola Labs at Energy Harvesting & Storage USA. Nikola Labs is creating innovative solutions in wireless power with the mission of powering the next generation of connected devices. Their first product is a RF self harvesting system for smartphones. Embedded in a protective case, this Nikola technology captures wasted RF from the phone and converts it into extra battery life, extending life between charges by up to 30%. This technology can integrate into many devices that transmit RF providing the value of extra battery life through RF recycling. Their second product is a wireless charging solution designed to fully re-charge devices in the same time as a power cord.
For more information see http://www.nikolalabs.co and http://www.IDTechEx.com
faytech and MetroClick present Interactive Kiosks and Industrial PCs at CES 2016
faytech shows their latest Interactive Touch Kiosks and Industrial PCs including the world’s first 84” capacitive multi-touch 4k optically bonded display, 7” industrial touch screens, interactive Shelf prototype, MetroClick, project partner and distributor of faytech in the USA have solidified their presence at CES this year.
You can contact faytech here:
sales@faytech.com
http://www.faytech.com
http://www.facebook.com/faytechtouch
http://www.twitter.com/faytechshenzhen
Best of CES 2016: Rokid Amazing Robot AI Home Assistant As A New Family Member
Rokid Smart Robot Voice Assistant running Android on Samsung Exynos5410 Octa-core ARM Cortex-A15/A7 big.LITTLE with custom amazingly beautiful Android Launcher developed by Rokid projected using an integrated Texas Instruments DLP Pico Projector. Artificial Intelligence, Voice Conversations and Voice Commands are supported. Rokid supports far-field technology for 5-6 meters voice recognition with a bunch of algorithms with their microphones, such as AEC, beam forming, VAD, and more. Third party apps for music playback and perhaps even also Uber can be integrated, it’s a Smart speaker with a microphone array it can detect where the voice is coming from, it can detect who is talking to it through voice print. Rokid implements Gesture Recognition, Face Recognition through it’s front-facing camera, Rokid has Touch sensors on each side to do things such as turning up and down the brightness and volume. The experience with Rokid is totally amazing and the features for Smartly bringing notifications and voice commands to a room, this is how the Amazon Echo of the future could look like. There might be Robot Faces which a user can customize to choose if for example it should project a real face and perhaps also use speech based on a real recorded voice.
You can contact the project manager of Rokid here:
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| Logged-in Members of ARMdevices.net ($50/year) can see the full contact information for this company from the business card here. Become a Member Now! |
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Daniel Wu, Project Manager
daniel.wu@rokid.com
Mobile: +8613136179077[/s2If]
Sony AX53 Handycam 4K Camcorder
Sony Handycam FDR-AX53 is Sony’s newest consumer 4K Camcorder with a better 4K video sensor, better optical image stabilization, better audio recording quality, better low light sensitivity compared with their previous Sony AX33 Camcorder. To be available from around March, Sony wants to make their new AX53 available for every consumer to easily record 4K video to upload to YouTube or to be edited.
Omron Wrist BPM Smartwatch takes blood pressure on the wrist
Omron is the worldwide leader in selling home blood pressure monitors for consumers to use by themselves, Omron Project Zero Upper Arm is a blood pressure monitor where everything is integrated, you put it on your arm, press start and in about 30 seconds it measures your blood pressure and synchronizes it to your smartphone or tablet. Then Omron releases their Omron Bloor Pressure Smartwatch with steps, calories burnt, distance and sleep monitoring, it can measure the blood pressure through the radial artery in the wrist, it inflates a little bit to measure the blood pressure on the wrist also within about 30 seconds by just pushing a button, making it easy to take ones blood pressure directly on the wrist! The price is going to be below $200 for release in 2016.
Huawei Mate 8, ARM Cortex-A72, Merry Christmas!
Beach review of Huawei Mate 8, the Fastest Smartphone in the world today, using HiSilicon Kirin950, the world’s first Octa-core Quad ARM Cortex-A72, Quad ARM Cortex-A53 in big.LITTLE and the world’s first device with the ARM Mali-T880 GPU. With 4000mAh it has a really long battery life, a really nice 1080p display with 2.5d “elevation/reinforcement” which may also help in performance, brightness and battery life compared to a 2K display, Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow is super smooth (Huawei being the a Marshmallow Nexus partner of Google), Google Play can be installed even though this phone is only sold in China for now, Google Play services will probably be available as soon as the International version of Mate 8 is released maybe a couple of weeks from now. It’s supports Dual-SIM card slots with LTE Cat-6 on one SIM (2G voice calls on the second SIM only) and you have to choose between the second SIM or up to 128GB MicroSD storage in that same slot. The price online in China is around $570 for the 4GB RAM with 64GB Flash version, $470 for 3GB RAM and 32GB Flash, if Huawei somehow decide to increase manufacturing capacity and to lower the retail price by $150-$200 and to make it available in every country worldwide, I think they could make this one of the most popular high end phablets of 2016. The sales and marketing strategy for this phone worldwide in 2016 is up to Huawei sales and marketing teams now. I would like it if Huawei offered a Switch to turn the whole UI into the same Nexus style UI as on a Huawei Nexus 6P, hopefully Huawei will consider offering a dual-UI switch.
$470 Huawei Mate 8, Kirin950 ARM Cortex-A72 Mali-T880 Smartphone
Here’s the world’s most powerful smartphone, running an Octa-core Hisilicon Kirin950 quad ARM Cortex-A72 and quad ARM Cortex-A53 in big.LITTLE configuration with the ARM Mali-T880 GPU and also an ARM Cortex-M7 for the sensor hub on TSMC 16nm FinFET+ node. With a 1080p 6″ display with 2.5D “elevation”, 4000mAh battery, dual-SIM LTE Cat-6, 32GB/64GB/128GB storage and 3GB/4GB RAM. Now for sale in China starting at $470 for 3GB RAM and 32GB Flash to $570 for 4GB RAM and 64GB Flash. So for about the same price as a Nexus 6P 64GB you get more RAM, more CPU, more GPU (possibly, I didn’t check performance configuration benchmarks), dual-SIM slots, MicroSD card support (you have to choose between MicroSD or the second SIM card in the same slot as far as I understand) also I hear that maybe that the 4GB/64GB version and above have worldwide LTE/HSPA+ bands and are not limited to either European/Asian or US bands (to be confirmed?) possibly that the Camera optics are the same from Sony as in the Nexus 6P, though it records only 1080p video and not 4K and the display is only a 1080p and not 2K. The battery life, usability benchmarks, connectivity speed is to be tested. This might be the best smartphone in the world today. Rumors are that Huawei plans to manufacture at least 1 Million units per month, they plan to overtake the Huawei Mate 7 sales amount that was over 7 million units over the previous year. I think that if Huawei wants to sell 70 million units of this one, they can do it if they price it $100 or $200 lower and make it available everywhere where people demand to buy it. I think that Huawei should use Google Now Nexus Style launcher as default and full Google designed UI instead of EMUI. I wonder if video output such as MHL works to use the powerful processor with an external Laptop Dock or Desktop Dock and I wish that using MicroSD and Dual-sim at the same time was possible. USB Type-C would have been more interesting.
Karen Sandler, Software Freedom Conservancy
Karen Sandler Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy offers an inside look of the state of compliance from the perspective of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a nonprofit charitable organization that is the most active in the field. In her keynote Karen gives an overview of where things are with compliance initiatives and insight into the ideological movement behind copyleft.
Martin Stadtler, Director of Linaro Enterprise Group
Working on the Boot Architecture (ACPI, UEFI), members from AMD, Qualcomm, Cavium, Alibaba, all engineers working together to make all the software boot for ARM Servers, leading projects around Open Stack, Big Data, going up the stack, finding things to optimize, such as virtualization, to have Server parity on ARM vs x86.
EYE VR professional VR 42 cameras, 24 microphones
For professional VR TV Show or Movie recordings, EYE VR camera incorporates 42 cameras and 24 microphones in a 3-axis design, that can capture of 3D 360 video, in all 3 axes of head movement.
You can read more at http://360designs.io/
Toradex shows Freescale i.MX7, Windows 10 IoT Core on ARM
Toradex shows their upcoming Freescale i.MX7 based System on Module (SOM). The module is pin compatible with the existing Toradex Colibri Modules based on i.MX6, Vybrid, PXA and Nvidia Tegra. The i.MX7 is a heterogeneous asymmetric multicore system including a Dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 and a ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller for real-time. The Toradex computer module will be available at the official i.MX7 launch early next year. Also first time in public, Toradex shows Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Core on an ARM based SOM which is designed to be used directly in volume. The module is based on a Nvidia Tegra 3 which is pin compatible with the I.MX7 and provides a fully HW accelerated DirectX driver.
Robot Development Kit using Hardkernel ODROID-C1+, VU7 display, ODROID-XU4
Bo Lechnowsky of ameriDroid.com shows the fully-programmable robot kit based on the ODROID-C1+ and controllable through the web. We then moved on to an 8-inch tablet kit for the ODROID-C1+ which includes case, multi-touch screen and battery for less than $100 due to be available this December. After this, we looked at a new 7-inch tablet-style multi-touch display from ODROID called the VU7 that allows attaching an ODROID-C1+ to the backside providing an expandable tablet-like solution for low cost. The ODROID-XU4 was discussed, an Exynos-5422 octa-core ARM Cortex-A15 at 2.0GHz and ARM Cortex-A7 at 1.4GHz ARM board with 2GB LPDDR3 on-board, USB3.0/2.0 ports and gigabit Ethernet along with removable eMMC and microSD storage options. An ODROID-C1+ was shown which is a low-cost but powerful AmLogic S805 quad-core ARM Cortex-A5 at 1.5GHz ARM board with 1GB LPDDR3 on-board with USB2.0 ports and gigabit Ethernet, also with the removable eMMC/microSD storage options. We then moved on to a display from a partner company, Withrobot.com, that showed real-time bar- and QR-code reading from three cameras simultanously through one USB3.0 port on an ODROID-XU4 and a 5MP standalone USB camera processed by OpenCV on an ODROID-XU4. In the background was an ODROID-C1+ with a HiFi Shield and a VU7 streaming high-quality audio to a stereo running Rune Audio. Volumio is also available for this platform. Both distributions are controllable by a smartphone or tablet from anywhere.
You can order these and read more about it at:
http://ameridroid.com
http://odroid.com
UICO duraTOUCH water/sweat/gloves Smartwatches and Phones
UICO duraTOUCH makes it possible to use Smartwatches and Phones in any weather, with sweaty fingers, under the rain, snow, even while wearing gloves in the winter. As people come to depend on wearable devices and use them everywhere, users want touchscreens to work under any weather condition everywhere and anytime. UICO’s duraTOUCH projected capacitive (PCAP) touch controllers enable touch sensing to work in any environment, with rain, sweat, and using gloves also. duraTOUCH out-performs traditional PCAP that is in devices like Moto360 and Samsung Gear Live. It is ideal for wearable and IoT devices with super-low power requirements like 1X charge per week with wake on touch. duraTOUCH products include duraTOUCH controllers, touchscreens, and duraTOUCH Surface, a bendable wrap-able touch sensing surface. Look for this technology in the next generation of consumer electronics and wearable devices, you will now have technology that UICO previously shipped in millions only to customers in the heavy industrial and medical markets.
Flexible Haptics in Smartwatch wristbands by Novasentis
Haptic feedback is one of the most important features of Smartwatches and other wearable devices. The Apple watch with its Taptic engine has one of the best haptic actuators in the industry but at the IDTechEx show, the folks at Novasentis were showing technology that aims to do much better. With traditional haptic technologies like LRA and ERM, they are bulky and provide just a solitary, universal buzz which vibrates the entire wearable device. Novasentis has invented a new technology based on electro mechanical polymers which is ultra thin, when they placed this in my hand, I could barely feel its weight, and the material is flexible. So instead of putting a big haptic device in the body of the wearable device, Novasentis proposes that you embed their haptic film right into the strap of the watch since is is so thin and you could have localized vibration and detect the all important patterns all around the wrist to understand different notification categories without even looking at your smartwatch display. This will enable thinner and lighter smartwatches without a big haptic engine inside. Most importantly, Novasentis material allows to offer a range of haptic feedback from very low frequency ‘taps’ to very high frequency audible ‘alarms’. Their idea is to create a haptic language and a wearable device could have as many as 10 or even 100 different haptic ‘feelings’ that a user can get used to and memorize and could get very useful information before having to turn to the display. Novasentis said that 5 OEM’s are currently designing wearable devices with their material and the company is currently raising funds to get their technology into mass production hopefully arriving soon to awesome Smartwatches and other smart device.
Flexible Smartphones soon possible using Cambrios silver nanowire ClearOhm ink
Cambrios talks about the progress that they are making to build flexible touch screens, to enable flexible smartphones and wearables coming to the market soon, flexible solar cells and flexible OLED lights also. Their material is silver nanowire based ClearOhm ink, it is like spaghetti on transparent films, these are great conductors since silver is the best conductor on the planet. The material is flexible, it is already being shipped into millions of devices made by Lenovo, HP, Toshiba, LG, Samsung, DELL and other big companies. Cambrios can enable ten finger touch in monitors and all-in-one computers with a film that is so thin and light that it can replace ITO.
ARM mbed Smartwatch reference design with 2 months battery life
ARM shows their open source hardware and software Smartwatch reference design with 2 months battery life runs mbed OS on a Silicon Labs EFM32 Giant Gecko ARM Cortex-M3 SoC and memory LCD, it also have an ARM Cortex-M0 for Bluetooth and an ARM Cortex-M4 for the fingerprint sensor. GPS, NFC, 9-axis sensor (accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer), ambient light sensor, capacitive sliders for UI scrolling, buttons and more are on the flexible PCB. The power consumption is around 70microAmps with the animation running on the memory LCD, the battery life should be about 2 month on a compact and light 160mAh battery. ARM is building open source experimental smart wearables to explore the potential of ARM in wearables and IoT, to encourage device makers to use all the latest ARM technologies in combination with innovative display technologies and sensors to to create better concepts, to better use technologies to try to contribute to and improve the internet of things and the wearables market. Some goals for better Wearables can be to last months on a battery, to connect and interact with all devices seamlessly, to enable new forms of trusted interactions and ultimately aim to fade in to the background. These advances are to be integrated into ARM’s open source mbed OS, there might be subsets of mbed OS, less is needed on the Bluetooth chip for example than on the microcontroller of the Smartwatch or other IoT device.
Developing this mbed OS Smartwatch reference design gives ARM the opportunity to get first-hand experience of the realities of building complete and complex physical products – the mechanical design, electronics, software and taking it all through the production process. ARM has taken a complete design from concept through to manufacturing a few hundred working units thus far, and learned a huge amount. This may inspire and encourage device makers to advance and innovate faster to make the Smartwatch market a success.
BBC micro:bit on ARM’s 25 year birthday
1 million 11 year olds in the UK will receive the BBC microbit when they come back to school after the Christmas holiday in January 2016, they can use it to get started with programming and hacking with hardware. BBC micro:bit runs on Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 16MHz 32bit ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller, Freescale Kinetis KL26Z – 48 MHz ARM Cortex-M0+ core, that includes a full-speed USB 2.0 On-The-Go (OTG) controller, used as a communication interface between USB and main Nordic microcontroller, Freescale MMA8652 3-axis accelerometer sensor,
Freescale MAG3110 3-axis magnetometer sensor to act as a compass and metal detector, 25 LED lights in a 5×5 array and Bluetooth technology, it is given for free to every child in year 7 or equivalent across the UK. You can read more about BBC micro:bit here.
