Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Here’s yet another video camera that will appeal to the amateur and even professional spies of the world. The Wise Eye EVO570 is a standalone camera unit that actually broadcasts its video signal on the GPRS cellular network allowing anyone to monitor the video feed with a cellphone or PDA. It even has 2-way audio communication allowing you to hear what’s going on in the video or talk to the people you’re seeing.

What’s particularly interesting is that the camera also includes 2 16-bit PCMCIA slots on the back. One can be used with a PCMCIA flash card reader for capturing hours of footage while the other actually contains the PCMCIA wireless modem. This allows the default GPRS modem to be easily upgraded to an EDGE or even 3G modem later on.

Making it even more useful as a standalone unit though is the camera’s low power consumption which allows it to be powered and recharged with solar panels instead of needing an AC power source. Unfortunately I have no idea what the availability or pricing for the EVO570 is but you can safely assume it doesn’t come cheap.

[ Wise Eye EVO570 ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you fancy yourself a pretty dedicated sports fan but at the same time don’t have access to radio, TV, the internet or even a telephone to keep up on what’s happening with your favorite teams don’t worry, there’s still another way. The SportsCast Scoreboards come in either NFL or MLB versions and wirelessly download updated scores, schedules and standings via a satellite signal without the need for a monthly subscription.

Unfortunately those free updates actually only arrive every 15 minutes so if you were hoping for a real-time, play-by-play break down of the game you might want to spend a few dollars on a radio instead. (NHL & NBA fans will also need to look elsewhere it seems.) But if you eat, live and breath sports having one of these in every room of your house will ensure you’re always on top of what’s happening. (Give or take 15 minutes that is.)

The SportsCast MLB & NFL Wireless Scoreboards are both available from Brookstone for $99 each.

[ SportsCast Wireless Scoreboards ] VIA [ Crave ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While tire pressure monitoring systems are by no means new this DIY kit from Suzhou State Auto Electronic Co. (S&T) allows even the cheapest of rides to gain this functionality without having to take a trip to the local garage. The system consists of 4 easy to install valve caps that wirelessly transmit the tire pressure data to a dashboard mounted unit that displays the info in real time.

The ‘wireless master’ as the dashboard unit is called can be plugged into your vehicle’s power or can operate on its own thanks to rechargeable batteries that should last about a week between charges. Besides displaying the current tire pressure the system can also be used to automatically alert you to problems like when tire pressure is too low, too high or even if the pressure is rapidly decreasing which would indicate a soon-to-be flat tire.

But at about $150 for a system that just displays the pressure I would stick with the simple pocket gauge in the glove box and regular checks of the vehicle’s tires.

[ S&T Tire Pressure Monitoring System ]

By Evan Ackerman

Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have successfully demonstrated a method of using body heat to power electronic circuitry. They’ve combined thermoelectric generators that can extract a tiny voltage from the few degrees of temperature difference between your body and the environment with ultra low-power circuits that can operate (theoretically) at as little as 50 millivolts. This technology is just beyond the concept stage in that the researchers have a working wireless transmitter that operates on 200 millivolts extracted from the heat in your hand. 200 millivolts isn’t going to run anything especially practical (besides this awesome wristwatch), but as with all technologies of this nature, just getting it off the drawing board and incarnated physically is a huge amount of progress. But I’m not worried: I could totally power a supercomputer with my heat, baby. Yeah.

Commenting on this post has been disabled due to spam, and crappy spam at that. Screw you, spammers.

[ Fraunhofer Research News ] VIA [ Engadget ]

By Ryan Nill

PIX Visual Pendant uses 117 LEDs to constantly annoy bystanders with flashing image chains. It can display animations, images, texts, emotions and more. Using the included PIX editor software you can design and edit different graphics that you want your PIX to showcase. Then, you can share your painstakingly crafted PIX image macros with other users via email and MMS. PIX also has a social aspect, hosting a site where you can meet and trade IDs; apparently, when two PIX get close to each other (as fools wearing large, LED based badges are wont to do) they play synchronized images. It’s like myspace meets public forum meets tamagotchi. PIX retails for £39.00.

Hit the Korean site for a bit more info. Here: XenoFreaks.

[ kjglobal ] VIA [ uberGizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you live and die by what happens with the stock markets every day then you’re probably going to want to keep tabs on what’s going on no matter where you are. So what’s most interesting about this wireless Stock Market Reporter is that it can track the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the NASDAQ and the Standard And Poor’s 500 Index in real time, anywhere in the US without the need for a computer or net connection. Apparently it relies on the same information paging network that doctors and emergency personnel use which not surprisingly is well known for its reliability and signal strength.

At only 5 inches square the Stock Market Reporter’s LCD screen displays all three indices across the top and by pushing a button each index can be individually graphed on the bottom. It’s powered by 3 AAA batteries and includes a stand, a wall mounting hole and even a magnet on the back for attaching to a fridge or filing cabinet.

It’s currently available from Hammacher Schlemmer for $129.95.

[ Wireless Stock Market Reporter ]

By Evan Ackerman

Belkin seems to be about to come out with something quite useful: dual purpose wireless USB adapters. The dongles should support USB 2.0 transfer speeds (hypothetically up to 480 mbps) and play nice with future wireless USB products. Hopefully, you’ll be able to plug one of these into your computer and the other one into a standard USB compliant device and create a wireless USB connection that’s transparent to your computer, thus bypassing a whole tangle of cables and the 5 meter USB cable length limit. There’s no information on the specific wireless method that the adapters employ or what their effective range is. Oh, and the dual purpose bit? Supposedly, you’ll be able to plug two Belkin dongles into the USB ports of two different computers and create an instant wireless network. That sounds so easy, it can’t be possible.

Although these haven’t been officially announced by Belkin yet, according to Everything USB, they’ll have an MSRP of $179.99 and support both Windows XP (SP2) and Vista.

VIA [ Everything USB ]

By Evan Ackerman

ThinkGeek is now selling a zBoost cell phone signal booster, designed to boost a 1 bar cell signal up to 5 bars over an area of 1500 square feet (equating to about 2 or 3 rooms over a few floors, depending on where the unit is mounted). Installation involves plugging the antenna into the base unit… And that’s it, the thing just boosts away. It’ll work on CDMA, GSM, TDMA AMPS, GPRS, EDGE, 1xRTT, and EVDO. In other words, all networks except Nextel. Conceivably, if you’re doing a lot of downloading with your brand new iPhone, it’ll make a difference in your data transfer rates, and if you’ve got an iPhone, $249.99 more is just a drop in the bucket.

So why am I not getting one of these? It’s not the price tag, or the fact that I don’t have an iPhone (not that I’m bitter about that or anything). No, I like having crappy reception. That way, I can preface all my calls with “I might lose you, my reception is pretty bad here,” and then when I ‘accidentally’ walk away from my window and the call gets dropped and go I play computer games instead, I don’t have to feel the least bit guilty.

[ Cellphone Signal Extender ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While Lexmark has never really taken any ‘best in class’ awards when it comes to printers their hardware is relatively cheap which is what a lot of people look for. So it’s no surprise that the company is one of the first to provide a truly affordable model with built-in wifi for wirelessly sharing the printer among multiple computers.

The Z1420 uses 802.11g which should make it compatible with the average home wireless network but it also has a USB connection for hooking directly to a wifi-less computer when needed. It can print up to 24 ppm in black and 18 ppm in color but when printing at the max resolution of 4800×1200 on glossy paper don’t expect it to be quite as fast. And from what I can tell it also uses a single color cartridge which kind of sucks since the whole thing needs to be replaced when one of the colors runs out.

But if you need a cheap wireless printer you probably can’t beat the Z1420’s $79.99 price tag.

[ Lexmark Z1420 ] VIA [ Chip Chick ]

By Andrew Liszewski

We’ve written about devolo dLAN products before because quite frankly the company makes some interesting network accessories. You see instead of rewiring your house with network cable the dLAN system allow you to use your existing electrical wiring for transmitting data. One of their latest products now uses that dLAN technology to extend your network even further via wifi.

The wireless starter kit includes the standard dLAN ethernet adapter which connects to your computer and then plugs into a nearby power socket. The kit also includes the dLAN wireless extender which can be plugged into a power socket in any room of your house creating a wifi hotspot and extending an existing one. The company claims the dLAN system allows for up to 85 Mbit/s transfer rate via the power circuit and up to 54 Mbit/s via the wireless LAN so while it’s not the fastest network solution out there it is the easiest as far as I’m concerned and more than adequate for sharing an internet connection.

The dLAN Wireless Extender Starter Kit is available for about $275 while additional dLAN Wireless Extenders run about $200 each.

[ devolo dLAN Wireless Extender Starter Kit ] VIA [ Tech Digest ]