Bench Talk

Pokémon Go is a new smartphone game by Niantic which uses augmented reality (AR) to allow players to find and “catch” the popular fictional species Pokémon. Using the phone’s camera and gyroscope, Pokémon appear as if they are in the real world. The concept of augmented reality is far from new, but Pokémon Go is introducing many people around the world to the possibilities of AR. Pokémon Go, with its smartphone integration and franchise appeal, has found the intersection between ease-of-access and mass interest, bringing millions of people into contact with AR for the first time. In a few years, people might be augmenting their reality without having to look down at their phone.

When I think of the International Space Station (ISS), I think of smiling astronauts giving TV interviews while floating weightless in some sort of tube. Meanwhile, the rest of us wonder "what exactly are they doing up there"? Well, it should come as no surprise to you that the Internet of Things (IoT) has finally reached space.

Makers and engineers now have a ridiculously easy way to add a high quality touchscreen display to the Arduino UNO without a lot of fuss. It’s called the CleO35 and seems ideal for projects that need a simple yet elegant Human-Machine Interface (HMI). That’s nerd speak for the barrier between the human user and the digital device. The CleO35 was first introduced on Indiegogo, a crowdfunding site, by FTDI Chip.

White LEDs used in street lighting may consist of packaged combinations of Red, Green, and Blue LEDs, but more often than not employ blue LEDs, which are built generally from indium gallium nitride (InGaN) and have a yttrium-aluminum-garnet (YAG) (Y3Al5O12) phosphor coating placed on their emitter or emitter’s optic. From the base color of blue light, white light can be realized and utilized for white LED streetlights. But does this blue light found in LED streetlights make humans experience any negative impacts?

Touch technologies have been with us for decades but our experience with them has not always been positive. Often, we’re not sure if the devices we touch have noticed! Even when there’s some visual or audible indication that they’ve registered our intentions, the outcome isn’t always as we expect – false triggering, contact bounce and other interference effects come into play.