Android-Powered Shoes For Visually Impaired!
by sahab on Jan.17, 2012, under Android
In a path-breaking innovation, an IT engineer from Rajasthan Technical University, Anirudh Sharma, has designed a unique footwear for the visually impaired. The shoes will be connected to an Android device that will help navigate them using Google Maps and the phone’s in-built GPS.
Called Le Chal (‘Take me there’ in Hindi), the new pair of Android-powered shoes offers non-obtrusive navigation for the visually impaired. The bra‌inchild of Anirudh Sharma was showcased at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab Design and Innovation Workshop 2011.
According to a report by MediaNama, Le Chal comes equipped with vibrators, proximity sensors and a Bluetooth pad which is connected to an Android device. The Android phone then calculates directions and real-time location using Google Maps and the phone’s in-built GPS and compass module.
According to Sharma, voice instructions can be distracting and wearable gear is obtrusive and attracts unnecessary attention. He says that the system has been designed to make it non-obtrusive for the users. The shoes have been tested at a Bengaluru-based blind school.
It works simply like this. For using the shoes, one needs to speak the end location before the start of the journey. The Android app then works on defining the route map, calculating turn by turn directions, which are sent to the shoe wirelessly via Bluetooth, mentions the report.
Then there are different vibrators within the shoes placed at different positions which get activated to offer feedback to the user depending on the turn she/he needs to take. In short, the technology works by turning navigation data into haptic feedback.
It certainly is going to be a major breakthrough in technology, and a boon for the visually impaired around the world.
Open-source motherboard runs full Linux OS – Only 89$
by sahab on Jan.14, 2012, under RHEL5, Ubuntu
An open-source hardware group on October 2011 announced an $89 credit-card sized motherboard based on an ARM processor that could be used for robotics, gaming and medical devices.
BeagleBoard’s BeagleBone development board is targeted at the open-source hardware community, which includes hobbyists and engineers writing code for hardware with open-source specifications. Some BeagleBoard projects include bringing Linux-based Android and Ubuntu operating systems to its hardware.
The BeagleBone runs a full version of Linux and a full-featured web server, BeagleBoard said in a statement. The board is based on Texas Instruments’ $5 Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor, which can deliver 720MHz of performance. TI announced the processor on Monday.
The board may not be for use in smartphones, tablets or PCs, said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat. It is mostly for embedded systems running specific applications, and could also be used in audio-visual systems and projectors.
One device developed around the board is the Smart Pill Box, which is a device that lets off an alarm at a specific time to remind Alzheimer’s patients to take medicine.
The open-source boards are cheap to implement, and a lot of development is based on the ARM processor and Linux OS, McGregor said. Decades of development around Linux for open-source hardware has created some easy-to-implement applications for devices.
Despite some experimentation, open-source hardware may not reach smartphones and tablets soon, McGregor said. Hardware requirements for those devices are much more demanding and dynamic, and devices makers prefer to implement their own chip designs. But the possibilities are exciting, and some of the latest chips from companies like Qualcomm include the latest graphics and communication capabilities, McGregor said.
Other open-source projects include OpenCores, which hosts open-source processing cores, the microcontroller-based Arduino, and Bug Labs, which offers hardware for devices such as wireless devices and cameras.
The BeagleBone measures 3.4 inches by 2.1 inches (8.6 centimeters by 5.3 centimeters). It has Gigabit Ethernet, 3D graphics, USB 2.0 and microSD controllers.