Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, September 24, 2010

Crestron Core 3 OS Lets You Control Your Entire House from Android, iPhone and iPad [Home Entertainment]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5646200/crestron-core-3-os-lets-you-control-your-entire-house-from-android-iphone-and-ipad

There's lot going on in home automation giant Crestron's new Core 3 OS, but up there is the fact that it runs on basically anything—from the iPhone and iPad to the Samsung Galaxy tablets sprinkled around their booth.

Core 3 supports HTML5, Flash, h.264 video, and from it you can control AV equipment, lighting, climate control and pretty much anything else networked into the system. [Crestron]

Martin Logan ElectroMotion ESL: Insane Audiophile-Worthy Electrostatic Speakers for Under $2000 [Speakers]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5646214/martin-logan-electromotion-esl-insane-audiophile+worthy-electrostatic-speakers-for-under-2000

Martin Logan ElectroMotion ESL: Insane Audiophile-Worthy Electrostatic Speakers for Under 00 "Affordable" for futuretastic electrostatic speakers means a few grand. Martin Logan's ElectroMotion ESL electrostratic speakers'll be under $2000 when they're out in March, using the cheapest full-size electrostatic transducer ever. They sounded superclean during a five-minute demo. [Martin Logan]

This Is the Fanciest Farm House You Can Imagine [Architecture]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5646462/this-is-the-fanciest-farm-house-you-can-imagine

This beautiful 4564-square-foot house reminds me of Magneto's base in Secret Wars, with its second floor almost fully suspended over the air. At night it looks like the Jawas' Sandcrawler. It's actually a farm house on the Minija Valley, Lithuania.

The owner of the Utriai Residence, who is dedicated to the production of chicken eggs and pigs, and his wife, an art college student interested in furniture design, wanted a house that looked like a place "made from huge logs". Like Noah's Ark, "where the family with all their belongings and animals moved from the city."

And on top of having an awesome house, they can have fresh eggs and bacon every morning. I want to marry the farmer's daughter. [Archdaily]

Advanced Camera System Revealed in Apple Patent Application [Apple]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5646587/advanced-camera-system-revealed-in-apple-patent-application

Advanced Camera System Revealed in Apple Patent Application Apple's latest patent application details a new camera flash system that would optimize the flash based on the photo's subject. It combines a flash redirector, imaging sensors that concentrate on scene conditions, and a touch screen.

This combination of these elements could be used to provide the equivalent of a touch-to-focus for light for dark areas of a soon-to-be photograph: a touch-to-illuminate feature. The system could be incorporated into iOS devices, the iMac, MacBooks, and even a dedicated video camera. [Patently Apple]

GE stuffs DLP projector into 14MP PJ1 point-and-shoot camera, we go hands-on

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/23/ge-stuffs-dlp-projector-into-14mp-pj1-point-and-shoot-camera-we/

It ain't the first point-and-shoot to emerge with a beamer within, but it's the first from GE's General Imaging branch. Boasting a 14 megapixel sensor, a vanilla enclosure and a DLP projector, the PJ1 was seen making its debut here at Photokina in Germany. The highlight of the device is obviously the 854 x 480 resolution projector that's somehow stuffed within the casing, while the most impressive part to us was just how thin it remained with such a unit inside. In other words, the projector itself was certainly lacking, and with just 15 lumens, we felt that the darker-than-dark test room (shown in the video just past the break) still wasn't dark enough. On the capture side, there's a 7x optical zoom, SD / SDHC card slot and support for 720p movies; thankfully, GE's not planning to include too hefty a premium for the projector, as we were told to expect it for "around €250 ($334)" when it lands in Europe next February.

Gallery: GE PJ1 projector camera hands-on at Photokina 2010