Archos Unveils “Connected Objects” Home Automation and IoT Systems

There has been many home automation and Internet of things projects featured on crowdfunding sites this year, and IoT products such as smartwatches, fitness bands, smart sockets, connected lights… have started to take off. Archos plans to leverage this trend with their Connect Objects offerings divided in two parts: Connected Home and Connected Self. Archos Connected Home Archos Smart Home is a system that let you monitor and control your home via your smartphone or tablet using the company’s Smart Home App and Connected Objects. The set will come with a 7″ tablet, a mini cam, a USB data cable and documentation. It’s not clear right now if others objects: motion ball, weather tag, movement tag, and smartplug, will be part of the set or need to be purchased separately. Key features of Smart Home Tablet: SoC – Rockchip RK3168 dual core Cortex A9 processor with Mali-400MP4. System Memory – […]

ICMe Cuffless Finger Blood Pressure Monitor Sends Results to your Smartphone via Bluetooth 4.0

Nihon University have developed a tiny blood pressure monitor, which you can just touch with your finger, in order to get maximum and minimum (systolic and diastolic) blood pressures,  both average and real-time values, as well as pulse rate and pulse waveform displayed on your smartphone. ICMe uses photo transistors to detect LED light reflected on a finger, and then converts pulse wave data obtained from the light to a blood pressure value. Phase Shift Method-based data processing and algorithm is used for the conversion to a blood pressure value, and results are transmitted to the phone via Bluetooth 4.0 (LE?). The device is composed of a custom main chip, LEDs, photo transistors, and a Bluetooth 4.0 module. Tech-on reports an early much larger model was exhibited last year at Medica 2013, and the new miniaturized model is currently showcased at Medica 2013, which runs from Nov 20 to 23, […]

ARM TechCon 2013 Schedule – ARM Servers, Internet of Things, Multicore, Hardware and Software Optimization and More

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2013 will take place on October 29 – 31, 2013, in Santa Clara, and the detailed schedule for the event has just been made available. In the previous years, the conference was divided into  Chip Designs day (1 day), and the other 2 days were reserved for Software & System Design, but this year it does not appear to be the case. Whether you’ll be able to attend the event or not, it’s worth having a look at what will be discussed there in order to have a better understanding of what will be the key ARM developments in the near future in terms of hardware and software. There will be around 90 sessions categorized into 15 tracks: Accelerating Hardware Development – This track explores the resources, tools, and techniques that designers can employ to quickly bring hardware to market. Topics include multicore design, ARM IP, […]

Open Source Prosthetic Arm Controlled By Muscle Movements

Gustavo Brancante is working on a very interesting project that let you control a prosthetic arm with your muscle movement using open source technology with InMoov Hand (which can be 3D printed), Arduino Uno R3, and Olimex Electrocardiography electromiography shield (SHIELD-EKG-EMG). This is called a Myo-Electric Prosthesis. Gabriel wrote a tutorial to use his “open arm” which I’ll summarize here. On the hardware front, you’ll also need a UDP compatible Wifi Shield configured as a UDP server with a fixed IP in the same LAN as the smartphone, and 57600 bps. TouchOSC (for smartphone and Workstation) is used with the following layout for calibration and feature selection. Finally load the program below to your Arduino board: Once everything is connected together, you should be able to do that: The demo looks impressive, but this is still work in progress, and next step will be to use a four channel EMG instead […]

Scanadu Scout Medical Tricorder for Android and iOS

Low cost personal medical tricorders have the potential to dramatically bring down the cost of health care, and avoid unnecessarily wasted time in hospitals, which is probably the XPRIZE Foundation has launched a competition for  medical tricorders, where the winners will get 10 millions US dollars in funding. Scanadu Scout is one of the entry, and they currently have an indiegogo campaign, already oversubscribed, for their medical grade tricorder which gather data by placing it on your forehead for 10 seconds, and display medical data transferred via Bluetopoth Low Energy (Bluetooth SMART) on your iOS and smartphone. The company did not disclose full specifications, but they still revealed the device runs 32-bit Micrium RTOS, which is already FDA approved (pre-market 510K notification and PMA approval), it supports Bluetooth 4.0 SMART, and a micro USB port is included to recharge the battery. I fired up few Google image searches to look […]

Wind River Unveils Android User Experience, Connectivity and Medical Modules.

Wind River has introduced Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android, a series of software modules to help developers jumpstart their Android development and rapidly integrate compelling features and functionalities to their devices. Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android are currently available in three software modules: User Experience: Accelerated boot time technologies including Hyper boot enabling devices to resume from RAM in less than 1 second and from Flash in 8 seconds. This technology can speed up the Android boot time by 30%. It is hardware agnostic and can run on different hardware platforms with little or no customization effort. Multi-windowing screen navigation aimed at devices with larger screens such as tablets, automotive infotainment systems, media phones, and industrial devices. The application windows are sized based on the remaining portion of the visible screen and users can minimize, resize, and arrange them as they wish. (See Picture on top) Media Center […]

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