- An Adaptive Learning Interface that Adjusts Task Difficulty based on Brain State (PDF) — using blood flow to measure cognitive load, this tool releases new lessons to you when you’re ready for them. The system measures blood flow using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Increased activation in an area of the brain results in increased levels of oxyhemoglobin. These changes can be measured by emitting frequencies of near-infrared light around 3 cm deep into the brain tissue and measuring the light attenuation caused by levels of oxyhemoglobin. I think we all want a widget on our computer that says “your brain is full, go offline to recover,” if only to validate naptime.
- Deploying Software — Your deploys should be as boring, straightforward, and stress-free as possible. cf Maciej Ceglowski’s “if you find it interesting, it doesn’t belong in production.”
- Replicating SQLite Using Raft — rqlite is written in Go and uses Raft to achieve consensus across all the instances of the SQLite databases. rqlite ensures that every change made to the database is made to a quorum of SQLite files, or none at all.
- An Introduction to Autonomous Robots — An open textbook focusing on computational principles of autonomous robots. CC-NC-ND and for sale via Amazon.
"sensors" entries
Four short links: 2 March 2016
Sensing Cognitive Load, Boring is Good, Replicating SQLite, and Intro to Autonomous Robots
Rachel Kalmar on data ecosystems
The O’Reilly Hardware Podcast: Collecting, sharing, and accessing data from sensors.
Subscribe to the O’Reilly Hardware Podcast for insight and analysis about the Internet of Things and the worlds of hardware, software, and manufacturing: TuneIn, Stitcher, iTunes, SoundCloud, RSS.
In this new episode of the Hardware Podcast, David Cranor and I talk with data scientist Rachel Kalmar, formerly with Misfit Wearables and the founder and organizer of the Sensored Meetup in San Francisco. She shares insights from her work at the intersection of data, hardware, and health care.
Discussion points:
- The need for a “data ecosystem” approach: it’s important to understand the entire stack from acquisition through storage and analysis, and where security and privacy become concerns.
- Analysis and insight as the real value in data: consumers get very little from raw data.
- Authentication for smart devices—and an experiment (let us know if your lights went out during this podcast by e-mailing hardware@oreilly.com).
Four short links: 21 January 2016
Hidden Networks, Dissolving Sensors, Spies Spy, and Redirected Walking
- Big Bang Data: Networks of London (YouTube) — guide to the easy-to-miss networks (fibre, CCTV, etc.) around Somerset House, where an amazing exhibition is about to launch. The network guide is the work of the deeply talented Ingrid Burrington.
- Sensors Slip into the Brain and then Dissolve When Done (IEEE Spectrum) — pressure and temperature monitors, intended to be implanted in the brain, that completely dissolve within a few weeks. The news, published as a research letter in the journal Nature, described a demonstration of the devices in rats, using soluble wires to transmit the signals, as well as the demonstration of a wireless version, though the data transmission circuit, at this point, is not completely resorbable. The research was published as a letter to Nature.
- GCHQ Proposes Surveillable Voice Call Encryption (The Register) — unsurprising, but should reiterate AGAIN that state security services would like us to live in the panopticon. Therefore, don’t let the buggers anywhere near the reins of our communication systems.
- These Tricks Make Virtual Reality Feel Real — Scientists are exploiting the natural inaccuracies in people’s own proprioception, via a technique called “redirected walking,” to create the perception of space where none exists. With redirected walking, […] users can sense they are exploring the twisting byways of a virtual city when in reality they are simply walking in circles inside a lab. Original Redirect Walking paper.
Four short links: 29 July 2015
Mobile Medical Scanner, Amazon Hardware Showcase, Consistency Challenges, and Govt Alpha Geeks
- Cellphone-Based Hand-Held Microplate Reader for Point-of-Care Testing of Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays — we created a hand-held and cost-effective cellphone-based colorimetric microplate reader that implements a routine hospital test used to identify HIV and other conditions. (via RtoZ)
- Amazon Launchpad — a showcase for new hardware startups, who might well be worried about Amazon’s “watch what sells and sell a generic version of it” business model.
- Challenges to Adopting Stronger Consistency at Scale (PDF) — It is not obvious that a system that trades stronger consistency for increased latency or reduced availability would be a net benefit to people using Facebook, especially when compared against a weakly consistent system that resolves many inconsistencies with ad hoc mechanisms.
- The White House’s Alpha Geeks — Megan Smith for President. I realize now there’s two things we techies should do — one is go where there are lots of us, like MIT or Silicon Valley or whatever, because you can move really fast and do extraordinary things. The other is, go where you’re rare. … It’s almost like you’re a frog in boiling water; you don’t really realize how un-diverse it is until you’re in a normal diverse American innovative community like the President’s team. And then you go back and you’re like, wow. You feel, “Man, this industry is so awesome and yet we’re missing all of this talent.”
Four short links: 26 June 2015
Internet of Gluten, Testing Less, Synthetic Blood, and Millibot Guns
- 6SensorLabs — product is a grind-your-food-for-my-sensor product that tests for the presence of gluten. Or, as celiacs call it, death.
- The Art of Testing Less Without Sacrificing Quality (Paper a Day) — until finally you don’t test at all and it’s perfect!
- Synthetic Blood Transfusions Within Two Years (Independent) — Britain’s National Health Service, boldly planning on still being around in two years.
- Self-Assembling Millirobotic Gauss Gun (IEEE Spectrum) — they’ll blast their way through arterial blockages.
Four short links: 20 April 2015
Edtech Advice, MEMS Sensors, Security in Go, and Building Teams
- Ed Tech Developer’s Guide (PDF) — U.S. government’s largely reasonable advice for educational technology startups. Nonetheless, take with a healthy dose of The Audrey Test.
- The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers — 1 cubic millimeter-sized sensors are coming. The only sound you might hear is a prolonged groan. That’s because these computers are just one cubic millimeter in size, and once they hit the floor, they’re gone. “We just lose them,” Dutta says. “It’s worse than jewelry.”
- Looking for Security Trouble Spots in Go — brief summary of the known security issues in and around Go code.
- The New Science of Building Great Teams (Sandy Pentland) — fascinating discussion of MIT’s Human Dynamics lab’s research into how great teams function. The data also reveal, at a higher level, that successful teams share several defining characteristics: 1. Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet. 2. Members face one another, and their conversations and gestures are energetic. 3. Members connect directly with one another—not just with the team leader. 4. Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team. 5. Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back.
A bigger and different way of looking at the IoT
Tim O’Reilly’s Solid Conference keynote highlights the capabilities that will let us shape the physical world.
Tim O’Reilly has recently focused on the connection between humans and the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s a topic he’s written about and talked about, and it’s also at the heart of our explorations into interaction design and connected devices and experience design and the Internet of Things.
O’Reilly’s keynote address at the Solid Conference in 2014 explored the human-IoT link. The talk expanded the scope of the IoT, making it clear this isn’t just about individual devices and software — we’re creating “networks of intelligence” that will shape how people work and live.
The talk has become an essential resource for us as we’ve investigated the blurring of the physical and virtual worlds. That’s why we decided to put together a text-friendly version of the presentation that’s easy to scan and reference. And since we think it’s so useful, we’ve made the text version publicly available.
You can download your free copy of “Software Above the Level of a Single Device: The Implications” here. Read more…
Four short links: 11 September 2014
Win98 Retro, Glass as Sensor, Theoretical CS, and Code Search
- windows_98.css — the compelling new look that’s sweeping the world all over again.
- BioGlass (MIT) — use Glass’s accelerometer, gyroscope, and camera to extract pulse and respiratory rates. (via MIT Tech Review)
- Building Blocks for Theoretical Computer Science — free online textbook covering what I lovingly think of as “the mathy bits of computing that are so damn hard”.
- The Platinum Searcher — code search tool similar to ack and ag. It supports multi platforms and multi encodings. Written in go, and is fast.
Four short links: 13 August 2014
Thinking Machines, Chemical Sensor, Share Containerised Apps, and Visualising the Net Neutrality Comments
- Viv — another step in the cognition race. Wolfram Alpha was first out the gate, but Watson, Viv, and others are hot on heels of being able to parse complex requests, then seek and use information to fulfil them.
- Universal Mobile Electrochemical Detector Designed for Use in Resource-limited Applications (PNAS) — $35 handheld sensor with mobile phone connection. The electrochemical methods that we demonstrate enable quantitative, broadly applicable, and inexpensive sensing with flexibility based on a wide variety of important electroanalytical techniques (chronoamperometry, cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry, square wave voltammetry, and potentiometry), each with different uses. Four applications demonstrate the analytical performance of the device: these involve the detection of (i) glucose in the blood for personal health, (ii) trace heavy metals (lead, cadmium, and zinc) in water for in-field environmental monitoring, (iii) sodium in urine for clinical analysis, and (iv) a malarial antigen (Plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein 2) for clinical research. (via BoingBoing)
- panamax.io — containerized app creator with an open-source app marketplace hosted in GitHub. Panamax provides a friendly interface for users of Docker, Fleet & CoreOS. With Panamax, you can easily create, share and deploy any containerized app no matter how complex it might be.
- Quid Analysis of Comments to FCC on Net Neutrality (NPR) — visualising the themes and volume of the comments. Interesting factoid: only half the comments were derived from templates (cf 80% in submissions to some financial legislation).
3 topologies driving IoT networking standards
The importance of network architecture on the Internet of Things
This article is part of a series exploring the role of networking in the Internet of Things.
There are a lot of moving parts in the networking for the Internet of Things; a lot to sort out between WiFi, WiFi LP, Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, Z-Wave, EnOcean and others. Some standards are governed by open, independent standards bodies, while others are developed by a single company and are being positioned as defacto standards. Some are well established, others are in the early adoption stage. All were initially developed to meet unique application-specific requirements such as range, power consumption, bandwidth, and scalability. Although these are familiar issues, they take on a new urgency in IoT networks.
To begin establishing the right networking technology for your application, it is important to first understand the network architecture, or the network topology, that is supported by each technology standard. The networking standards being used today in IoT can be categorized into three basic network topologies; point-to-point, star, and mesh. Read more…