Day: June 9, 2020

As mask-wearing becomes the new norm around the world, researchers from the EPFL and Empa in Switzerland have come up with a way to improve at least one of the many challenges of wearing face protection with a new transparent design that no longer completely hides and obscures the wearer’s mouth.

With everyone now being encouraged to wear masks while out in public, the problems with the current designs are finally being addressed, despite health care workers and caregivers being forced to just suck it up and deal with those issues for decades now. Even thin masks can be hot, uncomfortable, and have a tendency to muffle voices, which anyone who’s ever tried to use a voice assistant while wearing one has discovered. But the biggest challenge is that disposable masks can be very impersonal, making it challenging for caregivers to comfort patients or show compassion through facial expressions, and limit communications, particularly with those dealing with hearing impairments.

Over the past few months, the occasional prototype for see-through masks has been shared online, but the designs mostly involve replacing part of a mask with clear plastic panels which reduce breathability and often quickly fog up from the wearer’s breath, rendering the solution mostly useless. Researchers from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology have spent the past two years developing a better alternative that offers near full transparency while still being breathable and protective.

The result of their combined efforts is the HelloMasks, which are made from organic biomass-based materials. So, in addition to being transparent, they’ll also be recyclable and biodegradable given the masks’ need to be removed and disposed of after a certain amount of time for them to remain effective. Using a manufacturing process called electrospinning where an electrical charge is used to create ultra-thin threads, the new polymer the researchers’ developed features fibers spaced just 100 nanometers apart which is the same as conventional disposable masks that allow air particles to pass through but block bacteria and viruses.

The new mask design isn’t remaining just a research project, thankfully. The research teams created a startup company to market the technology, and are currently in the process of developing the manufacturing processes needed to create the transparent masks en masse. They’re optimistic the masks could be available as soon as early 2021, and while they’ll first be offered to medical and health care professionals, as production increases they could eventually be made available to the general public as well.

A popular painting app for the Nintendo DS and 3DS that relied on each handheld’s stylus is finally coming to the Switch. But instead of forcing users to paint with their fingers, Colors Live will include a stylus that cleverly uses the Switch’s headphone jack for pressure sensitivity and a better painting experience.

The Switch’s touch screen means that styluses are already available for the console, but they simply emulate the capacitive effect of a human finger and don’t facilitate other advanced functions like shortcut buttons or pressure sensing. Those features require additional technologies that Nintendo presumably skipped to keep the Switch’s price tag down, but they’re also features that can improve the digital doodling experience, as anyone who’s ever sketched or painted using a Wacom tablet or the Apple Pencil can attest.

For the Nintendo Switch version of his Colors! painting app, Jens Andersson wanted to introduce an improved experience given the system’s power, and its large screen. So the app is being bundled with a new stylus accessory that doesn’t rely on Bluetooth and doesn’t require batteries or even charging. The SonarPen instead features a half-meter cable on the end that plugs into the Switch’s headphone jack. The painting app sends an 8,000 hertz tone through the cable to the tip of the stylus, and when the SonarPen makes contact with the Switch’s screen that tone is dampened as pressure is applied. A microphone inside the stylus records the altered tone and sends it back to the Switch through the headphone cable where the Colors Live app translates the changes in volume into varying levels of pressure being applied.

The SonarPen might not be as sensitive as a Wacom stylus or the Apple Pencil, but it’s also nowhere near as expensive as both of those accessories are. Colors Live for the Switch is currently being crowdfunded through Kickstarter (as Nintendo didn’t think the hardware + software combo was a good fit for its eShop) and the bundle will set you back about $41 for the app and the SonarPen together. Assuming you’ve already got a Switch, that’s probably the cheapest way to dabble in digital artistry.

The usual crowdfunding risks apply here, but over the years Andersson has delivered countless versions of his art app to various platforms, and it’s always been well-reviewed. Colors Live for the Switch does add hardware challenges to the mix with the SonarPen—there’s always the chance snags or hiccups in production could delay the estimated August 2020 delivery, and Nintendo still has to complete its certification process for the app to be allowed on the console. But the campaign has already blown past its funding goal, so as long as you’ve got the patience to weather a potential delay, this seems like another innovative way to expand what your Switch can do.