GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

If you have kids, you’re going to love the Squishy Circuits Project: it involves cooking and electronics, although not at the same time.

Squishy Circuits is a great sets of recipes from Samuel Johnson and Dr. AnnMarie Thomas at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. Essentially you will make two batches of Play-Doh, one conductive and one non-conductive, and preferably different colors. The dough can then be formed into any kind of circuit and, with the addition of some wires poking into the dough and some batteries, motors and light-bulbs, you can have yourself some sticky, squishy, educational fun.

The recipes are almost exactly the same, both based on flour, water and oil. The insulating dough has added sugar and granulated alum in the mix to keep the electrons from flowing through, and its water must be distilled. Otherwise, you already have everything you need in the pantry.

I wonder just how complex the circuits can be? My first experiment, after testing the properties of the two batches of dough, would be a swiss-roll capacitor. Imagine how useful that would be: if your phone runs out of energy, you could recharge it. If you run out of energy, you could just eat it. Yummy. I’d better just check on the toxicity of that alum first, though. I remember something about that from crystal-growing back when I was a kid…

OK, I checked, and we’re good to go: Alum is only toxic to humans in doses of around an ounce. This recipe uses a teaspoon, or just 0.167 fluid-ounces. Now we just need some non-conductive cocoa-powder for some really tasty science.

Squishy Circuits Project Page [University of St. Thomas via OhGizmo]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If highways worked like 3-D TVs, you wouldn’t be able to drive Fords on GM roads and vice versa.

It sounds crazy, but that’s the state of affairs with 3-D active shutter glasses. The glasses that work with your Sony television, for instance, won’t work for watching Monday night football at a friend’s place on his Panasonic 3-D TV.

Blame the proprietary communication protocols that TV makers use to synchronize the glasses and TV sets. The result is that 3-D glasses are engineered so they will work only with the brand of TV with which they’re shipped.

“There is a lot of confusion about 3-D glasses,” says David Chechelashvili, who heads global retail and distribution at XpanD. “3-D TVs are an event-oriented social experience. You can’t have that if everyone has different glasses that won’t work together.”

The good news is that the consumer electronics companies are finding a way to fix it. Companies such as XpanD and Monster are offering “universal” 3-D glasses — a single pair of glasses that they promise will work with most 3-D TV set.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry group, is finalizing standards for the emitters on 3-D TVs so all sets can use a common signal protocol. The hope is that it will lead to a standardization of the technology on the 3-D glasses and make the glasses interchangeable.

“Right now we hear from retailers and consumers that interoperability among glasses are a problem,” says Brian Markwalter, vice-president of research and standards at CEA. “We need it to not get worse than it is.”

Markwalter says CEA hopes to have the standards in place by November so consumers could see interchangeable 3-D glasses in stores by end of next year.

With movies like Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, Hollywood has helped 3-D technology make a comeback.

Though Nintendo and Fuji have announced 3-D gadgets that don’t require glasses, the technology is effective only for small screens. The Nintendo 3DS has a 3.5-inch screen as does Fuji’s newly introduced 3-D camera.

Larger 3-D displays still require viewers to wear special glasses. It goes to the heart of how 3-D displays work. 3-D screens flash two sets of images, one for each eye. 3-D glasses separate the images for the left and right eye so our brain can combine the two and perceive depth.

3-D glasses are currently available as active shutter–where a battery-powered glass has shutters that open and close rapidly alternating between the two eyes. That movement is synchronized to transmit the wanted image and block out the unwanted one. There are also passive glasses where polarized filters help direct the images to each eye.

In North America, movie theaters use passive polarized glasses but, for consumers at home, companies such as Sony, Vizio, Samsung, LG, Sharp and Panasonic are betting on active shutter glasses. The problem lies in the synchronization between the glasses and the TV set, which each manufacturer handles through a different set of signals.

“It’s like a language and everyone uses their own,” says Chechelashvili.

Retailers are also complaining about the lack of compatibility among glasses. As more 3-D TVs arrive on store shelves, retailers will be forced to carry multiple lines of accessories, each exclusive to a product. Imagine stepping into a Best Buy and trying to find the right pair of 3-D glasses to watch the demo of a 3-D TV.

To solve these problems, companies such as XpanD and Monster have created their version of the Babel fish: a pair of universal 3-D glasses that promises to work with any 3-D TV set. These glasses sense the infra-red pulses emitted by the TVs and time the shutters on the glass to sync with that.

But it is a trick more than a complete solution. In addition to signal synchronization, there are also color incompatibilities: TV makers have specific color characteristics and the glasses that come with each 3-D set are tinted to be compatible.

For instance, Samsungs and Mitsubishis 3D glasses have a greenish tint, while Panasonic and Sony skew amber in color, explainsHD Guru.

It means universal glasses won’t offer the same quality of image as the 3-D glass handed out by the TV maker.

That’s why industry group CEA hopes to step in with a fix.

CEA would focus on emitter standards, the source of the signals in 3-D TVs, says Markwalter.

“In an ideal world, emitters would migrate to this common specification, which would make for simpler glasses,” he says. “We would then let the legacy stuff phase out of the market.”

Photo: (ripkas/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Cellphone battery dead? No problem: Just borrow a charger from a friend. Oh, wait — you can’t, because your friend doesn’t have the same phone as you, and his charger won’t work with your phone.

That annoyance will end next year, for Europeans at least. Thanks to the efforts of the European Commission, most cellphones sold in Europe will have a one-size-fits-all charger starting in 2011. So far, 10 major cellphone makers, including Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Research In Motion, have signed on to the agreement.

American users will have to wait. Without a government agency setting a deadline, it is up to handset makers to make the switch to a single standard. All consumers can do is let their old chargers gather dust in a drawer somewhere, while hoping manufacturers will eventually converge on a standardized charger.

“For the FCC, this is probably number 5,000 on their list and it is legislative priority number 10,000 at this point,” says Joe Banos, chief operating officer for Wilson Electronics, which makes cellphone boosters and antennas. “We believe the U.S. will ultimately follow Europe here, but the question is when.”

Today each cellphone ships with its own charger. Different companies use different connectors — and often different models from the same company do too, making it difficult for users to borrow a charger. And when it’s time to toss the phone, the charger goes into the bin too.

A universal charger means consumers don’t have to get a new charger with every mobile phone. As a bonus, it will be easier to borrow a charger when in need.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews