Optical sensor

Suppose you just love the sage green color of your new desk blotter, and think “If only I could instantly make my whole office this color.” Well, now you can ... sort of. The designers over at ThinkGeek have created a gizmo called Huey the Color Copying Chameleon Lamp, that automatically “reads” any color that it’s placed upon, then glows in that color.  Read More

After five years of construction, an international team has put the finishing touches on the University of Wisconsin’s IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Located in Antarctica, the observatory is looking specifically for high-energy neutrinos, which are created in violent cosmic events such as super novae and gamma ray bursts. As neutrinos collide with water molecules in the pitch black, ultra-clear ice, a blue flash of light results, which is detected by the sensors. Ever since neutrinos were discovered in 1956, scientists have hoped to decipher the information these astronomical messengers carry about distant cosmic events and the completion of the observatory marks an important step towards tracing their origins.  Read More

As a PC user, I must admit to having suffered from a little Mac envy when Apple let loose its Magic Mouse. So I was pleased when Microsoft announced its new Arc Touch mouse, at least initially. Now Speedlink is about to introduce its CUE multi-touch mouse for PC users where the upper surface translates swipes, strokes and touches into onscreen actions. It also benefits from a high precision optical sensor and connects wirelessly to a compact nano receiver from up to 26 feet away.  Read More

After two decades of planning, the world’s first kilometer-scale neutrino observatory should finally be completed by this December. Named IceCube, it will consist of an array of 5,160 optical sensors embedded within one cubic kilometer of the Antarctic ice shelf – to put the accomplishment in perspective, one of the next-largest such observatories is just 40 cubic meters in size. Its main purpose will be to try to establish, once and for all, the source of cosmic rays.  Read More

Mobile devices such as smartphones are truly amazing in what they can do, but are often frustrating to use - many people don’t particularly enjoy poking at tiny buttons, or obscuring the onscreen display with their own fingers. Newly-developed technology, however, is addressing these annoyances. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute have found a way of turning mobile devices into their own mice.  Read More

The gestural interface used by Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report was based on work by MIT Media Lab’s Hiroshi Ishii, who has already commercialized similar large-scale gestural interface systems. However, such systems comprise many expensive cameras or require the user to wear tracking devices on their fingers. To develop a similar yet cost effective gestural interface system that is within reach of many more people other researchers at MIT have instead been working to develop screens with embedded optical sensors to track the movement of the user’s fingers that could quickly make touch screens seem outdated.  Read More

Sharp Corporation is releasing a new notebook PC with an innovative optical sensor built into an LCD touch pad – which the company claims is a world first – at the end of the month. While Sharp’s Mebius PC-NJ70A netbook will only be released initially in Japan, the 4-inch track pad, which recognizes input by pen or touch, clearly signals the direction notebooks are headed. According to Sharp, a pen can be used to input drawings and text, while finger gestures on the LCD pad can enlarge, shrink or rotate items on the notebook screen – all in addition to the conventional ways a mouse is used. Users can sign their name to a photo before emailing it, for instance; or they can use two fingers to zoom in and out of internet websites to adjust them for the best view.  Read More