A nerdy father of two, a husband of a beautiful and understanding wife, an engineer who loves anime and tinkering with PCs and games, but most of all, loves God.
Years after high-profile police shootings pressured departments across the country to adopt body cameras, results have been mixed. The increased accountability expected from their rollout has been marred with technical malfunctions or absent footage when officers fail to turn on their devices. Stun gun maker TASER wants to change this with a simple sensor that automatically turns on body cameras when an officer’s gun leaves its holster.
The Signal Sidearm specifically works with cameras within TASER’s Axon brand, triggering any within a 30-foot radius to start recording once a gun is drawn from a sensor-equipped holster. On one hand, it’s a great way to get simultaneous synced coverage for overlapping footage from multiple angles. On the other, if recording starts only after officers pull their firearms, there’s no account of the escalation.
Therefore, it’s likely best as a redundant trigger when partnered with the rest of Axon’s Signal sensors, which activate cameras for events like flicking on a patrol car’s light bar or opening its door. But since departments still establish their own body camera systems, there’s room for the same unintentional (or even deliberate) faulty setups that have kept them from becoming foolproof evidence gatherers.
NASA’s plans for a quiet supersonic jet, the QueSST, just became tangible: the agency and Lockheed Martin have started wind tunnel tests for the future X-plane. It’s a scale model at this stage, but it will be subjected to winds as high as Mach 1.6 (950MPH) to gauge both its aerodynamic performance as well as parts of its propulsion system. The tests should run until the middle of 2017.
Whether or not QueSST moves beyond these tests will depend on funding approval. If it does get the go ahead, though, the next step is making an honest-to-goodness aircraft poised to fly in 2020. That goal is still a long way off, but it now seems more achievable than it did a year ago.
While we were expecting Amazon to score an Oscar first for Manchester by the Sea, Netflix ended up beating out that film with a Best Documentary (Short Subject) Oscar for The White Helmets.Directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, the film centers on a group of volunteer rescue workers for the Syrian Civil Defense Force, also known as "The White Helmets," who risk their lives to help civilians in that war-torn country.
The group has saved more than 60,000 lives so far, and they’ve also been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Ava DuVernay’s The 13th, another Netflix film, was also nominated for best documentary, but it lost out to the epic-length O.J.: Made in America. As you might have guessed, The White Helmets is available to watch on Netflix now.
Starting this week, Google is bringing Google Assistant to all Android phones running Android 7.0 Nougat and 6.0 Marshmallow. That’s a cool 30% of Android devices, according to the most recent distribution numbers.Â
Google made the announcement this morning during Mobile World Congress, stating that it would arrive automatically on your phone through the latest Google Play Services update. The rollout may take some time, but many of you are about to gain access to Google Assistant very soon.
Specifically, Google says Assistant will arrive “this week to English users in the U.S., followed by English in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as German speakers in Germany.â€
Previously, Assistant was an exclusive to the Pixel phones. However, in the non-phone world, you can already find it in Google Home, in Allo, and on Android Wear 2.0.
To see Google Assistant in action, be sure to checkout the video below.
Energy storage can come from any number of sources—natural gas, wind, solar. But having the ability to store energy will allow utilities to put more intermittent renewable energy on the grid.
SDG&E
The battery storage lockers hide nearly 400,000 batteries.
SDG&E
An aerial view of the new batteries on SDG&E’s grid.
SDG&E
On Friday, Southern California utility San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) held a small press conference in Escondido to show off its brand new energy storage facility, a 30MW battery system capable of storing 120MWh of energy, which can serve 20,000 customers for four hours. SDG&E also introduced a 7.5MW battery system built in El Cajon, CA.
The two projects were built after state energy officials ordered power companies to add lithium-ion battery storage to their grids this past summer following a massive methane leak at Aliso Canyon in California that put the region in jeopardy for natural gas shortages. AES Energy Storage, a Virginia-based company that has been building utility-grade batteries since 2008, built the system for SDG&E.
The installation is currently the largest grid-tied lithium-ion battery system in the US. Tesla announced a similar 20MW, 80MWh system at the end of January in conjunction with Southern California Edison. That installation is based in Ontario, CA.
The Escondido system consists of 24 containers hiding nearly 20,000 modules that hold 20 batteries each. SDG&E said it hopes to have 330 MW of energy storage on its system by 2030.
Speaking at the event, California Public Utilities Commissioner Michael Picker said, “I didn’t expect to see these kinds of prices in batteries until 2022, 2024 …we are far in advance of where we expected to be.†The president of AE Energy Storage praised his team for bringing “two projects online in record time,†a comment that many made at the Tesla battery inauguration as well. Because of the immediacy of the potential natural gas storage last summer, both AES Energy Systems and Tesla were chosen to build new systems for utilities based on how quickly the installations could be put in place. Future battery systems are not expected to go up quite as quickly.
Energy companies have traditionally shied away from installing battery systems at their plants because they’ve tended to be expensive. But as prices for energy storage come down and states like California require more and more intermittent renewable energy on utilities’ grids, battery installations have been on an upswing.
California and Massachusetts may be the most aggressive states when it comes to pushing renewable energy and shying away from fossil fuels. This week, in fact, legislators from each state introduced bills to require energy companies serving their state move to 100 percent renewable energy in the coming decades.
In California, state senator Kevin De León (representing downtown and east Los Angeles) introduced a bill to move California to 50 percent renewable energy on the grid by 2025 and 100 percent renewable energy-based electricity by 2050. Currently, the state’s laws require it to reduce its energy-related greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2030.
The Massachusetts bill is even more aggressive. Rep. Sean Garballey, Rep. Marjorie Decker, and Sen. Jamie Eldridge proposed a bill that would move the state to 100 percent renewable sources by 2035. That bill has been sent to the state senate committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy.
Both bills would have to be approved by their states’ legislature to go into effect.
And I do mean little. It’s about as tall as a smartphone.
You get a few modes. Here’s what I’ll call “Table mode” which uses the excellent IR touch controls.
This one would be “wall mode,” which still uses the IR touch controls. Note how it’s a lot easier to block the image here.
And this is “far away from the wall mode” where you’re supposed to use gesture commands via the front facing camera. This doesn’t work yet.
Table mode is great. Here’s a few MWC attendees playing a math game. Who will buzz in first?
The Android homescreen.
The app drawer.
On the back are Micro HDMI and USB-C connectors.
BARCELONA—Not every device at Mobile World Congress is a phone or tablet—Sony is launching the “Xperia Touch” a portable short-throw laser projector that turns any surface into a touchable Android device. Sony has shown off the device at various tech conferences as a “concept,” but in Barcelona, Sony is announcing the device as a real product, albeit for the eye-popping price of €1,499 ($1,588).
The device is a 134mm × 143mm × 69 mm (5.3 × 5.6 × 2.7 inches) metal box with all the usual smartphone parts, but instead of a screen, it has a laser LCoS laser projector with auto focus. As the name implies, the Xperia Touch also supports touch controls, through a combination of an IR array and a 60fps camera,
There are a few setup configurations for the Xperia Touch—projecting on the table or wall the device is in contact with and projecting on a far-away wall. The device has auto focus, auto rotation, and auto keystoning, so basically you just orient it however you want and it will automatically configure itself to the surface—there are never any manual controls to mess with.
When the device is in contact with the surface it’s projecting on, you’ll get a 23-inch display size and 10 point multitouch handled by the IR array. The touch controls work perfectly in this mode, and things like aiming a painting app at a wall or table and “drawing” with just your finger feels really cool.
Multitouch works great in this mode, and combined with the 23-inch projection, allows you to do some things that wouldn’t work so well on the usual 10-inch tablet.  I challenged a few other MWC attendees to a game of virtual air hockey. On the other table three people were playing a fastest-finger math game where the first person to “buzz in” by tapping on the right answer won.
You can also aim the Xperia Touch at a faraway wall, like a traditional projector. In this mode Sony says the automatic calibration can handle an 80-inch projection. The 1366×768 resolution and 100-lumen brightness means it won’t be the clearest or brightest picture on Earth, though. In fact, the picture was always washed out under the lights of the convention center hosting the MWC.
The plan is for touch to work at a distance too. “Touching” a faraway projection (and thereby blocking the projection) doesn’t make much sense, and the IR array wouldn’t work anyway. So for this Sony has a front-mounted 60fps camera and a plan to implement gesture controls. It will work kind of like a Playstation Eyetoy or a simple version of an Xbox Kinect—the camera will be used to track your hand movements and translate that into touch controls.
In the demo, standing at distance away from the projector and holding a finger up would make a circle cursor appear on the screen. It basically worked like a mouse, where you could move the cursor around by moving your finger, and a pinch gesture would “click” on whatever you were hovering over. Sony says the gesture controls won’t be ready at launch, and they definitely felt unfinished during my demo. Finger tracking works but was finicky, and I could never get a click to work.
Presumably the “80-inch” projector mode in the specs is meant to use a sideways orientation, while gesture controls depend on the camera facing you, which requires an upright position. Nothing much seems to be finalized about the gesture system though, so it’s unclear what the max range or display size for gesture controls is.
The Xperia Touch also has a proximity sensor, so you can set the device to turn on whenever someone walks by. It has a 13MP camera for video calls and two-way stereo speakers. For ports, there are USB-C and HDMI Type-D—the tiny “micro” connector. There’s also NFC and Bluetooth, which will be great for hooking up a better speaker—I could barely hear the built-in version at MWC.
Inside the projector you’ll find a mid-range Android device. It has a 1.6GHz Snapdragon 650 SoC, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. The Xperia Touch is “portable” so it has some kind of battery, but even Sony is only promising “one hour in continuous video playback mode.” You’ll want to bring the power cord.
The Xperia Touch is a neat idea, and was really fun to play with, even with the chronically washed-out image. It’s hard to imagine Sony will sell too many for $1,500, though.
The new $10/£8 Raspberry Pi Zero W, now with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Raspberry Pi Foundation
Raspberry Pi Zero W cases.
Raspberry Pi Foundation
The Pi Zero W with a case, MicroSD card, and ribbon cable camera connector. Everything is sold separately, except the camera connector is bundled with the case.
Sean Gallagher
The original, $5/£4 Raspberry Pi Zero looks a lot like the new one.
Raspberry Pi Foundation
The Raspberry Pi 3.
Raspberry Pi Foundation
The newest member of the Raspberry Pi product line costs just $10 plus tax and includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability.
The “Raspberry Pi Zero W” is an updated version of the Raspberry Pi Zero. While it lacks some niceties, like Ethernet and a full-sized USB-A ports, it’s smaller than the flagship Pi and a fraction of the cost. The original Raspberry Pi Zero was released in November 2015 at a price of just $5/£4. The new Pi Zero W is almost identical to the original, but doubles the price to $10 and adds a wireless chip that supports 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (2.4GHz-only) and Bluetooth 4.0.
UK prices will be around £8 or £9, and the Zero W will be available for sale today through the foundation’s distributors, Raspberry Pi product evangelist Matt Richardson told Ars. It’s also the fifth anniversary of Raspberry Pi, which sold its first computers on February 29, 2012.
The Zero and Zero W use the same BCM2835 single-core chip that was in the original Raspberry Pi, but clocked at a higher speed of 1GHz instead of 700MHz. The Zero W uses a Cypress (formerly Broadcom) wireless chip that’s also used in the Raspberry Pi 3. When the Pi 3 was released, we were told that its maximum wireless speed was 150Mbps but that it would generally hit about 20 to 40Mbps.
“Other than adding Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, there’s no change [from the Zero to the Zero W]. We’ve added a wireless LAN and Bluetooth chipset to the board and a PCB antenna layout that we licensed from ProAnt in Sweden,” Richardson said.
The Zero and Zero W’s dimensions are 2.6″ x 1.2″ x 0.2″. The original Zero was 0.3 ounces, but the Zero W may be a tiny bit heavier. The flagship Raspberry Pi 3 Model B that costs $35/£28 (or more, depending on the retailer) has dimensions of 3.4″ x 2.3″ x 0.8″ and weighs 1.5 ounces.
The Zero W also has a new case with three interchangeable lids, one that’s solid, one with a hole for GPIO pins, and another with a hole for the camera module. There was no word on case pricing yesterday, as the Pi Foundation doesn’t control case prices the way it does with the computers themselves.
The Pi Zero includes a full-size GPIO header but maintains its slim profile because it doesn’t come with pins, which can be soldered on by the user. The Zero can handle the same types of projects as the original Pi, but its small size can be an advantage if you want to build a tiny robot (see page 24 in this issue of MagPi) or other small systems.
