Archives for the Gadgets category

Giving an old PSP a new life

Over the past few months my PSP started to show the signs of old age. Whether it’s my addiction to World Tour Soccer series that completely worn out the analog stick, or frequent uses of the device in the train, on the beach, and on the planes that resulted in a dirty screen and what not. Cleaning out your PSP is actually pretty easy, and is roughly a 20-30 minute project. Things you’ll need (and I got them all from one place, your shopping experience may differ):

Unscrew three bolts on the back of PSP to separate the front and the back of the device. The last screw might be tough to find, and it is under the battery, which you need to take out. There’s a protective seal that warns you about warranty being void if you remove it. If you have any kind of warranty left on the device, you should probably have it replaced instead of cleaning it out yourself.

CIMG1772

Separate the front panel of PSP, and remove it. It contains many small buttons such as Start and Select, which could fall out, and get in the way. The front panel frame hardly needs any cleaning, so it’s safe to just put it away for the time being.

CIMG1773

The back of the panel, however, contains the analog stick, and 4-directional button. The analog stick can be replaced, if you have a replacement handy, or just cleaned out, if it’s just the matter of dust and a few odds and ends getting in. If you remove it, that’s the only electronic part on the front panel. The rest of it can have a date with Mr. Windex for brighter shine.

Replace the analog stick of 4-directional button, and you’re pretty much done. Check out the top buttons, R and L, that are not used in all the games, and therefore might be in different state of wear and tear. Those can be washed and cleaned out as well, nothing but white plastic there.

Time to put the PSP back together, and remember - no spare parts.

CIMG1776

For a pretty small budget, and 20-30 minutes of work you have a good-looking shiny gadget back in shape.

CIMG1777

Emotiv publishes neuro SDK

Emotiv brain headsetSlashdot had a story on brain control headsets coming out soon from Emotiv. The company seems to have done a fair bit of research in linking various neural activity to explicit emotions. They’re targeting gaming market, and hoping to introduce game that analyze your emotions as well as kinetic signals that the brain is sending towards the other body organs. What’s also cool is they’re launching an SDK:

Additionally, Emotiv has announced the commercial availability of its full SDK. The SDK has been upgraded significantly since it was first announced in March 2007 at last year’s GDC. The commercially available version of the kit now includes:

  • 2 beta-version neuroheadsets
  • Software toolkit that exposes the APIs
  • Full access to detection libraries
  • Suite of development tools for effective creation and integration of applications with content

The Emotiv EPOC is the world’s first consumer neuroheadset. It detects and processes human conscious thoughts and expressions and non-conscious emotions. By integrating the Emotiv EPOC into their games or other applications, developers can dramatically enhance interactivity, gameplay and player enjoyment by, for example, enabling characters to respond to a player’s smile, laugh or frown; by adjusting the game dynamically in response to player emotions such as frustration or excitement; and enabling players to manipulate objects in a game or even make them disappear using the power of their thoughts.

Headset itself will cost $299 once released into commercial production, the SDK details are available here.

Bionic arm nears completion

The bionic arm project, sponsored by DARPA and executed by Deka Research and Development Corp. run by Dean Kamen (inventor of Segway, among other things), is nearing completion and might undergo clinical trials if DARPA sees the project fit, IEEE Spectrum says: “The arm has motor control fine enough for test subjects to pluck chocolate-covered coffee beans one by one, pick up a power drill, unlock a door, and shake a hand. Six preconfigured grip settings make this possible, with names like chuck grip, key grip, and power grip. The different grips are shortcuts for the main operations humans perform daily.”

5 22″ LCD monitors reviewed

22 inch monitors reviewedThere’s a huge price difference between 22″ LCD monitors and 24″ LCD monitors, so Information Week reviews 5 of the more affordable 22″ monitors - Dell E228WFP, NEC MultiSync LCD225WXM, Planar PX2210MW, Samsung SyncMaster 2232GW, and Viewsonic VG2230wm. There’s a chart comparing features of each, and it’s obvious that the price varies depending on the level of the contrast ratio that you want, and at $269 Dell’s 22″ model delivers approximately the best bang for the buck.

At work and at home I have identical Dell 24″ monitors, but I think a switch back to 22″ would not be that big of the deal - most of the time a sidebar from Google Desktop or Trillian is taking spare two or three inches anyway. At Facebook 30″ monitors recently became a standard issue, and I had an offer to have mine replaced, but, alas, it looks like my Thinkpad T34 does not support the awesome resolution that a 30-incher offers. Plus, even now most of my applications never run maximized, and I usually stick to 1000-pixelish width anyway, so the productivity gains for me would be questionable.

High-def projectors are here

Panasonic high definition projector PT-AE2000UFor anyone considering replacing an HDTV set with a projector and a blank wall at some point, there’s good news - Panasonic is coming up with a high-definition (that is 1920 x 1200) projector.

The PT-AE2000U projector reproduces Hollywood movies, independent films and other entertainment with exceptional color accuracy. Its enhanced unique Pure Color Filter Pro uses optical adjustment to achieve a higher purity level of the three primary colors; it also helps displays deeper, purer blacks. The color space has been extended even more to match the approximate level specified in the digital cinema industry. The new projector also incorporates Panasonic’s well-known Smooth Screen technology that reduces the black lines between pixels that mar picture quality. The technology has been tuned together with the new full-HD optical unit, allowing consumers to enjoy vibrant, smooth images found in commercial movie theaters. In addition, Panasonic’s original Dynamic Iris has also been improved for further stability and response by controlling the iris speed at finer increments to help reproduce darker blacks and brighter whites. The image processing system has been improved dramatically, with a maximum of 16 bit digital signal processing making it possible to reproduce subtle hues and brightness variations faithfully with greater smoothness.

Tale of three 802.11 b/g USB wireless adapters

With frequent changing of apartments it’s always a crap shot on whether the next bedroom/office will have a cable outlet or not. I was briefly considering purchasing a wireless bridge for my desktop machines, but then figured out since 802.11 b/g USB drives were so cheap nowadays, I might just as well go with those.

TrendNet TEW-424UB wireless 802.11 b/g USB 2.0 wireless adapterTRENDnet TEW-424UB was the first choice, since pretty frequently on CompUSA Web site the adapter will sell for $15 with a $10 rebate. Rebates for TrendNet are pretty reliable and come in the mail, but the adapter itself seems to be a total opposite. Its coverage seems to be quite spotty, and on my wife’s HP laptop with the drivers pre-installed it kept being recognized as some RealTEK networking product. Who knows, could be a Windows XP issue.

D-Link DWL-G120 -- AirPlus Xtreme G Wireless USB Adapter 802.11g, 54MbpsD-Link DWL-G120 (AirPlus Xtreme G Wireless USB Adapter 802.11g, 54Mbps) is also quite frequently on sale from Buy.com, which in combination with Google Checkout’s $10 off for new customers would sometimes yield you a free product. The driver for this guy has not been certified for Windows, of which you’re warned on installation, but little you can do at that point. Lack of certification seems to be appropriate considering the occasional blue screens of death the driver causes. Windows Error Reporting then redirects you to a page with generic “driver failure” message, which doesn’t help much. There’s not an updated version of a driver, nor a Windows-certified one.

ZyXEL ZyAIR G-220 - USB 2.0 802.11G Wireless Adapter & Soft-APWhat seemed to work for me flawlessly (so far) is ZyXEL ZyAIR G-220 - USB 2.0 802.11G Wireless Adapter & Soft-AP, which I generally got on Buy.com. The driver installation goes through pretty well, there’s an additional utility for wireless network management you can install, if you opt to use another one outside of Windows’ default. Right now they sell it for $27 with a $17 rebate (which is trackable online, and which I got). However, on Buy.com checkout screen there’s also an option to get a free magazine subscription. Opt out of that, and you’re eligible to receive a $10 rebate, bringing the price of the wireless adapter effectively to $0 (except for sales tax in California). I have not received that rebate yet, and it does seem kinda shady without online tracking. Nevertheless, so far this adapter seems to perform the best.

Secret Mountain Laboratory bike

Every once in a while I see someone driving an aluminum vehicle in downtown Palo Alto. This morning, when I was getting my coffee down at Peet’s, it was this bike from Secret Mountain Laboratory.

Secret Mountain Laboratory bike in downtown Palo Alto

If you go through their site, you will see that they’re creating high MPG vehicles from generic commonly available parts, such as this 100 mpg car with Honda engine.

Dr. Technology bike in downtown Palo Alto

NeuroSky to capture, interpret brain activity

Associated Press profiles NeuroSky, a company that started selling a brain activity sensor and an algorithm library to analyze it. The current application is better video games, where a golfer incapable of concentrating on the game would make an inferior move, or a scared Grand Theft Auto player would lose the precision in his aim. An EE Times article from 2005 says the company hired the top neuroscience experts from Moscow and licensed their inventions in order to produce a device that is capable of recognizing and interpreting brain activity.

Earlier this year some German scientists used brain surveillance techniques to determine whether the test participants decided to add or subtract a number, and reached 71% rate.

Master list of all Nintendo Wii games

When searching for Nintendo Wii games, Amazon currently provides only 42 titles. This is the master list from Nintendo, which keeps track of existing and upcoming games for Wii.

Open source phone coming

Dr. Dobb’s Journal reports on GPE Palmtop Environment creating a full stack of open source software for mobile phones. Mobile operator Orange and France Telecom are contributing to the project.

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