My Remote's a Pain in the Hand

I am starting to hate my Samsung remote a lot more than before and being a TV addict I guess the design of a TV remote is worth sweating over. I have seen many Japanese/Chinese remotes using the NEC protocol and have a far better design when it comes to small TV's. I can see that the ordinary remotes have a limited functionality and hence dont require a lot of buttons. Now ,incase of Samsung LCD TV there are whole lot of options within the TV like HDMI ,Media Play, Media Controls...etc. So, many buttons are properly spaced and have been placed on the remote control. However, the ergonomics of the device haven't been studied extensively. I believe that its time to move ahead and try and evolve a new interface for interacting with the TV.

I hence plan of making a gesture based remote control which may be used to control the menu options by a simple flick of your hand. Remote control isn't the costliest part of your home entertainment system and I plan on keeping it that way.This device will be made affordable by using a basic design and adding complexity(simplicity on the user side) through the software part of the implementation. Once done, the user simply has to use his palm gestures over this device to control hi TV. I am so excited just by the very basic implementation (or I am just sick of my remote)




Now the following are the steps that are to be taken in the same order to get to the final product.STEP 1: The first step involves taking four IR pairs and connecting them to ADC channels of a micro controller. The output values of the ADC are to be plotted against time to observe the variation of ADC o/p values as the hand passes over the sensors in different directions at different orientations. The results are to be sent a PC via serial port and the output data plotted appropriately (use MATLAB or PYTHON)


STEP 2: Now once this is done, we need to make decisions on the kind of gestures to be mapped to different remote functions (Usability Matters....Be very observant here...Don't injure the user with acrobatic hand movements).The gestures are to be stored in the form of one dimensional arrays which then become the templates against which gesture motions of the users hand are compared to decide on the IR commands to be sent.
 




STEP 3: Code to implement various IR communication protocols for the various devices to be controlled. This also involves building the actual circuit with the uC. The setting up of Clocks....etc. We may also go for a GUI to setup the various options of the uC via  a serial port or CREATE A WAY TO SETUP THESE THINGS VIA A USB-MAKING MY DEVICE USB COMPLIANT (WORTH A LOOK AS ITS BEEN A WHILE THAT I STARTED SOMETHING POWERFUL).STEP 4: Using machine learning concepts to optimize the user experience, the device should be taught to adapt to the users usage. Trying to avoid false alarms is the key to this design.

Not exactly like this but on similar lines.

What the Fish is Happening...?? Droid Meets Human

In every dual-core phone, there’s a PC trying to get out.

Does this sound unfamiliar. It did to me and on investigating (googling up) found that there is a new feature from my favorite Open Source Community-'UBUNTU' that transforms your high end smart phone into a full fledged desktop. Wow! now imagine the possibilities, I am working on some project, need to head home for the day and all I need to do is unplug the phone from the docking station and its done.Everything but the monitor (duh!) can now be taken home along with me. I still remember those days when moving a desktop from on room to another took a huge chunk of time from my precious weekend .  

So,note to self- "Don't be a foolish geek and buy a desktop,be a gadget freak and pocket a smart phone"

Take me there

Prezi, The latest Powerpoint Software

Are you bored of the same old slideshows and presentations. Since my fifth grade I have been looking 
at the same kind of presentations and just got sick of them now. It wasn't until my tenth grade that I started exploring the other possibilities of MS Powerpoint .



 After years of tweaking and twisting with the great features of MS PPT I had reached my breaking point and wanted something new. And out of nowhere, when everything seemed to be going in the same old MS PPT way, a friend of mine told me about Prezi. And boy I was impresssed. It was a zooming transition based presentation with an amazing  aura of innovation . 


Any simple presentation would appear amazing even if your words don't seem to do the trick. It's is available on the Google Chrome store (for all those avid Chrome users ) and can also be availed online via the  link below. Creating presentations with Prezi is simple and easy with a very steep learning curve. But, the only drawback is that it offers playing your presentation online . The desktop standalone version is only available for premium users which, obviously, is at a price.

PREZI     Prezi@Chrome Store

Good :

• It's Free so a +1 for that.
• It is new and creative.
• Very simple to use.
• Animations are smooth and without any freezes.
• It's a cloud based service with a decent online storage space.

Bad:

• Needs internet to view presentations.
• Standalone version is available at a price (You can try it for 30 day or so).

Ugly:

• None to say.

DARPA Project Challenge $ 50,000 to be Won

The Defense Advanced Research and Project Agency (aka DARPA) has come up with a challenge to probe the possibilities of retrieving information from shredded documents. Often troops confiscate important enemy documents from various locations in various conditions.So the challenge is to piece together the information from these shredded documents and retrieve the original information. This project also questions the flaws or vulnerabilities involved in present techniques of shredding to destroy documents containing sensitive information. DARPA has decided to offer $50000 as the cash prize for the winners. Now, that's 20-25 lac rupees for all those doing the calculations right now. I've just downloaded the first puzzle and it consisted of a high resolution image taken at 400dpi, a readme.txt file enlisting the contents, and a puzzle1.txt questionnaire. I suppose we are to fill it up and send it.


Anyways, you may register for it here 


DARPA CHALLENGE HAS BEEN SOLVED.
VIEW SOLUTIONS HERE




 DO SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL (powered by Google feedburner.So, there won't be any spam)

Compose Professional Music in Minutes

A lot of people have an extreme craving for music. Some go to the extent of making it a profession. But not all have a chance to do so. For all those who haven't got enough time, here's a wonderful software to compose professional music in minutes, 

MAGIX MUSIC MAKER. No experience required in notes or beats or any other alien terms. All you need to have is a good taste for music. MAGIX is a wonderful tool capable of creating professional music without much learning required. Yet, those who want to get serious with composing after a while (which I am sure most of you will ), the software offers piano roll to edit notes and allows to add a whole lot of plugins. I downloaded this back in 2009 and found it to be an amazing piece of software to work with not much of learning required. It is as simple as dragging and dropping and can get as complex as that required by a professional composer. On the whole, it is must for you music enthusiasts who are eager to create beautiful music. Do comment and/or +1 this post if you like it. Share your other online needs and other amazing things online- here . Will look into them asap.

Download MAGIX MUSIC MAKER here

                                                

We know, we know! It sounds so boring. ”Near field communications,” yawn. ”NFC,” another acronym, double yawn.

But something happened last week that took this technology out of the dull realm of “hey maybe we could use this on the train instead of carrying our Oyster/Myki cards,” and into the realm of potential rapid innovation and delight.

What is it?

It’s so easy: it’s just a wireless technology. It’s a simple and secure way for two smartphones or devices held close together to transmit data to each other; and it allows them to read information from smart tags embedded in posters, stickers, and other products. That’s really it.

If you need a more technically-detailed summary of NFC, we recommend this one by Ars Technica.

Google Wallet: a ”single tap” payment system for smartphones equipped with NFC technology.

“The future of commerce starts today,” Google said last week, launching Google Wallet........

CLICK HERE for more from nextness.com.au

Tiny Spheres Turn Regular Microscopes Into Nanoscopes

Ordinary microscopes can see 8 times more minutely than known physical limits if miniature glass spheres are sprinkled onto samples, according to a new study.

The cheapest and most common microscopes use white light to magnify objects, but the nature of light and the limitations of our eyes mean those microscopes can’t image things smaller than bacteria. Other microscopy techniques, which use lasers, metamaterials and electron beams to image microscopic and nanoscopic worlds, can exceed such limits. But they are difficult, time-consuming and expensive to use, and they can kill live samples.......As on Wired.com