Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Homesense Research Kit 2010

Homesense is a pilot program that helps people develop their own smart systems for tracking and understanding their home energy usage. Developed with input and information from real households, it includes ideas for useful tools, such as a garbage bin that appears progressively angrier the more it is used and a device that waters plants for someone too busy to do it herself. The program was devised with the support of the energy company EDF and HighWire, a computing and design program at Lancaster University, England.



Card, paper, electronics, and cables Lent by Designswarm/Really interesting Group

Jailbreak Collective iPhone Magnets

A package of iPhone-app-like magnets called App Magnets. In today's tech oriented world, our computer screens and phones are full of dimensional gel-like buttons, sliders and surfaces. This product takes an intangible "button" and turns it into a real, solid "thing" - glossy gel-like refrigerator magnets.

Some sample icons

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Capteurs Lego NXT Module de communications sans fil NXTBee

Le module NXTBee de Dexter Industrie permet d’interfacer les célèbres modules RF Digi Xbee au système Lego Mindstorms NXT afin de communiquer sur des distances allant jusqu’à 600m.

From 58,20 €

STMICROELECTRONICS - STM32W108B-SK - KIT STARTER CORTEX-M3 STM32W108

The STM32W-SK and STM32W-EXT starter and extension kits are easy to use tools for the
STM32W108xx microcontrollers. This family of microcontrollers integrates a 32-bit ARM®
Cortex™-M3 microprocessor and a 2.4 GHz, IEEE 802.15.4-compliant transceiver.

Available at FARNELL for 379,07 €

Cooking Hacks: sensors and Arduino kits

All kinds of sensors and starter kits. One standard case fits all sensors in, whatever kit. 

From 39,90 to 397,00 €

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Sparkfun: THE reference for Arduino shields

Want to start playing with sensors, but don't know where to start? This kit includes a sensor for just about every job. With everything included in this kit, you'll be able to sense acceleration, distance, compass heading, vibration, humidity, movement, ambient light, temperature, and more! These are our favorite sensors from each category.

Arduino on IDEO Labs blog

For inspiration.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Enocean Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensors

A push button multi-channel switch module : 46,64 €

Freebox Révolution by Stark

I'm curious to see real-life operation of the gyro screen when all wires are connected...



Boxee, the one box your TV needs

A box that doesn't look like a box.


DI-O wireless control

DI-O offers cheap wireless plugs readily available at Leroy Merlin for 15 to 20 €.

Browse through the many proposed scenarios.

A Glowing Light Switch System

A very interesting example of ambiant signalling through glowing material.

The Homesense project

Homesense was a research project that looked at how we might design smart homes from the bottom up, in an environment of open innovation. Using open source tools Homesense brings the open collaboration methods of online communities to physical infrastructures in the home.

Sensor icons example

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

FireText Smoke Alarm texts you in the event of a fire

LEGO Mindstorms sensors

All kind of sensors available for the LEGO Mindstorms programmable brick:

switch, light, color, temperature, ultrasounds and infrared distance sensors, EOPD proximity detector, compass, gyroscope, accelerometer, infrared, microphone, CMU camera, real-time clock, air pressure, RFID reader, dFlex, GPS, game pad



Cublets is a robot construction kit

The cubelets standard kit comes with 20 magnetic blocks that can be snapped together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. You can build robots that drive around on a tabletop, respond to light, sound, and temperature, and have surprisingly lifelike behavior. But instead of programming that behavior, you snap the cubelets together and watch the behavior emerge like with a flock of birds or a swarm of bees.

Interesting to see which cubelets are in the Standard Kit, especially Sense Blocks:
  • Action Blocks: 2 Drive, 1 Rotate, 1 Speaker, 1 Flashlight, 1 Bar Graph
  • Sense Blocks: 1 Knob, 1 Brightness, 2 Distance, 1 Temperature
  • Think/Utility Blocks: 2 Inverse, 1 Minimum, 1 Maximum, 1 Battery, 2 Passive, 2 Blocker

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

ipad2 jailbreaked... at last !

Now we can use the best animation software on the best hardware.
 
Need Flash player now, such as Frash.deb (not guaranteed for ipad2 yet).

Alternate web browser software (run Flash on external server and returns video stream... not for local use):
  • ISwifter
  • Skyfire
  • Cloud browse