We’ve all heard of the ‘PSP’, Nintendo DS, and the numerous other handheld systems that dominate the mobile gaming market. There’s nothing wrong with them, some of them are pretty fun to have. But true tech-heads know better than to obsess over such childish systems, right? A real machine can’t be built by a big company like Nintendo or Sony. Put it this way; who would you rather buy an 800 dollar computer from? Circuit City, or your tech junkie friend who offered to build one for you? Exactly.
A few years back a handheld called the GP32 was released. It was practically the first of its kind. While it ended its run with nearly 30 commercial games under it’s belt, It was hacker friendly. It ran linux and everyone was welcome, no, encouraged to code for it. Imagine trying to get Sony to do that with the PSP. This diy attitude is commonly known as homebrew. The GP32 was a homebrew game system. And it developed a relatively huge following.
The GP32 couldn’t be found in many regular stores, but they could be readily purchased off of the internet. It ended up selling 30,000 units or so.
But there was dissent among the ranks at Gamepark, the company that produced the GP32. Some of the employees wanted to keep the console open source, so to speak. They thought it was important to continue to create consoles that can be easily modified and coded for. The others didn’t. So they broke apart. The ones who wanted to create hacker friendly systems became Gamepark Holdings, and the employees who wanted to create a more commercial console found themselves out of a job when Gamepark went bankrupt.
Gamepark Holdings, however, seemed to prosper with their release of the GP2X.
The GP2X was quite a beast. Like its younger brother, it had a few commercial games released and a large homebrew following. *Personal Note. I have spent more hours playing with this handheld than any other PSP, DS, or Gameboy I have ever owned.* The ability to emulate older systems like the SNES, NEO GEO, and even computers kept it apart from the rest of the gaming world. Once again, you would never find this in your local Walmart, you would have to order it off of the internet. Incidentally, it was one of the best systems I have ever owned.
A minor revision saw the GP2X with a superficial makeover and a touch screen. It was called the GP2X f-200. It added touchscreen functionality to the built in operating system and any game that the developer would support. The handheld didn’t only let you play games. It could do practically everything the PSP could do, in many cases going above and beyond. Watching videos in various formats, listening to music, looking at pictures, even reading e-books.
As the GP2X ended its run, a few new systems from Gamepark have emerged. They have the potential to be a nice little series of handhelds, but their announcement has been over shadowed by the announcement of an even more monumental system.
The Pandora.
The Pandora is about to become all that the GP2X aspired to be. The basic story is that a group of hardware and software hackers got together on the GP2X and GP32 forums and started asking people what they want to see in their next gen handhelds. They came back with tons of input. Based on that input the team started designing and building the Pandora. The highlights are in the specs.
Texas Instruments OMAP3530 processor at 600MHz (Manufacturer reports that it can be overclocked to 900MHz[7])
256MB DDR-333 SDRAM
512MB NAND FLASH memory
IVA2+ audio and video processor (based on the TMS320C64x+ DSP Core at 430MHz) using Texas Instruments’s DaVinci technology
Estimated 10 hours of runtime for video / general applications and 100 hours for music playback
Dimensions: 140×83x27mm[8](5.51×3.27×1.06 in) (nearly the same as a DS Lite)
Preorders have been made, and the first batch has sold out with no more systems being produced until 2009. Out of the box, it is powerful enough to emulate the original Playstation console with striking clarity. To put it all together in one sentence; The combined processing power of the Pandora is twice that of the original Xbox system, and it can do so much more. The open source and homebrew following that this system has sold 2000 units in 6 hours, and sold out in much less than a week. As of Christmas 2008, this device is far superior to any other handheld on the market, and it comes in costing 330 USD.
This video is a Mark 0 Pandora, development version. The final product looks like the image pictured above. Ignore the commercial fanboys who talk down the Pandora and prefer their Nintendo DS. Tell them to look at the specs, and when they are blown away, just say “I told you so,” and walk away. For more detailed specs, check out this page on their wiki. When the next systems are being sold, I’ll be buying one, so keep an eye out for a review. I can’t wait!
This is at the top of my list of “programs that no one should go without”. It is far superior to all other free messaging, conference, and teleprescence programs, in every way I can think of. It just is. I can’t really explain it. So instead, I’m asking one (or as many as are willing) of the College-Now students to consider downloading it and setting it up, be it on a laptop, desktop, or preferably a machine with a web cam. Then add me on Skype. My user name is my first and middle name with no spaces.
Then, we’ll do some conferencing, file transfers, and video chatting. Before the day is done, you’ll see why it is just so amazing.
Maybe then we’ll do a follow up on everyone’s impressions. Looking forward to hearing from someone!
If you’d like to see what the College-Now students are up to, feel free to download this four page newsletter detailing their progress up to this point.
The Newsletter focuses mainly on the PBLs that the student are participating in. PBL stands for Problem Based Learning. Rather than just sit the students down in front of a text book and tell them to memorize, Problem Based Learning attempts to bring in engineering problems from an established base of business partners that will share problems and expertise with the students.
Not quite steam engines, and certainly not ICE’s, Stirling engines seem to be in a class all of their own. A stirling engine uses temperature differences to, in most cases, generate mechanical motion. The working fluid is a gas, and is in a completely closed cycle, ie, no new gas should ever be introduced or lost during normal operation. The easiest to understand example of a Stirling engine is the traditional ‘coffee cup’ engine.
The engine in this video ‘feeds’ off of the heat coming from a coffee cup full of hot water. The gas moves back and forth between the internal chambers, and moves (in this case) a vertical rod that turns the wheel. When the top of the engine cools the warm air, the cycle repeats. The faster this cycle takes place, the more mechanical work that will be done! Here’s another well built Stirling engine.
This one runs off of the heat of two torches. When the heat is removed, it takes time for the engines to slow down, because the residual heat has to ‘burn off’ .
Ever heard of Neodymium [Nee-oh-deem-e-uhm] magnets? Also known as rare earth magnets, or just plain neo magnets, these little miracles have some series magnetic power to them. In some cases, it is even enough to break bones or cause other sometimes fatal injuries. (It isn’t the magnetic field doing the breaking, it’s the whole ‘being crushed between a magnet and a metal wall’ thing that does it.) There’s also a really cool mixture called ferrofluid that actually reacts to magnetic fields, as seen above.
But where to buy such dangerous magnets, or interesting things like ferro-fluid? This could pose a problem. That is, unless you have ever heard of United Nuclear before. For the sake of argument, let’s assume you haven’t. Head on over to their section on magnets and check it out. If you scroll about halfway down the page, you will come to the huge magnets. These things are monstrous. An excerpt from the item description is as follows:
Beware - you must think ahead when moving these magnets.
If carrying one into another room, carefully plan the route you will be taking. Sensitive instruments like computers & monitors will be affected in an entire room. Loose metallic objects and other magnets may become airborne and fly at great speed to attach themselves to these magnets. If you get caught in between the two, you can be severely injured. These magnets will crush bones in the blink of an eye.
Two of these magnets close together can create an almost unbelievable magnetic field that can be incredibly dangerous. Of all the unique items we offer for sale, we consider these items the most dangerous of all. Our normal packing & shipping personnel refuse to package these magnets - our engineers have to do it. This is no joke or exaggeration - and we cannot stress it strongly enough. You must be extremely careful - and know what you're doing with these magnets.
Two Supermagnets can very easily get out of control, crush fingers and instantly break ribs or even your arm if opposing poles fly at each other.
When you are done thinking of all of the amazing experiments you could carry out with such dangerous items, peruse the huge selection of hard to find chemicals, equipment, and other odds and ends that seemingly can only be found at United Nuclear. I know, it sounds like a sales pitch, but it’s not. I just love all of the cool stuff on that site!
Here’s a interesting video, showing off just what ferrofluid can do.
How many trees are wasted just to fulfill our daily paper needs? I don’t know, and I would hate to be the person in charge of finding out. No matter what the number, waste is waste. A few companies are working to change that. Digital readers like the one in the following video have the potential to evolve into devices that dramatically cut back on our printer’s duty cycle.
E-ink is a generic name for the revolutionary technology powering these devices. Using an electric field, particles of pigment that have been given a certain charge are brought to the top or bottom of its respective ‘environment’. When these minuscule points are duplicated, placing millions on a single page, you have a piece of e-paper!
Each ‘point’ is similar to the pixels found on a common day LCD screen.The primary difference is that these consume no power when displaying images. E-paper’s power consumption is relative to ‘page-turns’, not the time it can display an image. The electric field is applied to the millions of particles in a way that displays text or images on screen. They, the electric field is turned off, and the image stays there. So, ‘turn a page’ and the reader scrambles the small pixels into the new image. Once it’s there, it’s there. Very efficient!
For more information on what your textbooks will look like someday, check out Wikipedia’s entry on electronic paper.
Yes. I am a staunch supporter of Wikipedia, and proud of it. :]
Well folks, the answer to the Real-IZation question was ‘camera tracking’. No worries, I’ll still consider giving out a prize to the student who has an idea for the best use of camera tracking.
The small specks that you saw were actually the tracking points made by PFHoe Pro. The camera tracking software determines how the camera recording the real footage moved, and then creates a 3d camera in Blender (or your other 3D app of choice) that matches that video footage. This means that I can slap an object on the table, and it stays there no matter how the camera moves. Like so:
So, any suggestions? What are your ideas for a video utilizing camera tracking?
Years ago, I remember sitting with my friend Nathan at a lan party of at least sixteen people in the middle of a big ‘Halo’ match, talking about how different video games would be in the future. We envisioned a world where the game is constructed around the player. Where looking left and right would actually entail the movement of our heads, not of the the thumbsticks on the controllers. A world where the actions of a fighting game were actually acted out in a 3D environment, where you could almost feel the bullets flashing overhead, because you could see them as they whizzed overhead and ’struck’ your bedroom wall.
In our mind, a prototypical model of the future of visual media was revolutionary. A white room, with a door that barely had a seam. No windows. Hidden holographic projectors would have locations which were impossible to discern. When the game or movie started, the projectors would kick in and the user would find him or herself surrounded by an entirely different world. The environment of a World War II combat game, the rich green grass and blue skies, as well as the rusting metal and thundering artillery cannons would materialize out of nowhere and surround us as if we had been transported back in time.
This video records holographically, but lacks the ability to display in 3 dimensions. The reporter in the studio was most likely looking at nothing. Give it 5 more years.
I have a proposition for you, College-Now students of Shelby, Ohio. The following video is a snippet of a process that accomplishes a general requirement in some fields of 3D modeling and animation. (Cryptic, huh?) The first person to guess what that process is wins a prize directly related to the video. The video is output from Blender. You can submit your guesses through the IZation Labs contact form. Be sure to include your full name. Have at it!
This is just one of those projects that blows my mind. If you’ve browsed IZationLabs before, you know how appealing computer imaging and CG graphics are to me. Here’s an interesting project that does…. well it just does some mind boggling things, and it does it really well.
This uses algorithms similar to those of motion and camera tracking software packages. By looking at specific points in the video and tracking them from one frame to the next, it can generate a basic 3d model from it. In camera tracking, it uses this information to drive the motion of a digital camera so that you can stick objects on a point and the video and it will stay there. (More about that later.)
It also uses interpolation. Who remembers the slow motion effect from The Matrix? To create that effect, over a hundred photo cameras were set up , all of them focusing on the same spot on a green screen stage. The cameras were then fired sequentially very quickly as the actor made his motions (in this case, the ‘bullet dodge’).
Something to think about. The video we are seeing is the perspective of each camera as it is fired sequentially. After the photos are taken they are stitched together into a video, as if from a moving camera’s perspective. See how it is jittery? Interpolation generates new frames in between each of the actual images that were taken! This results in a video that looks much more smooth, like this:
