#bluetooth development

[performix]

Join TechKNOWlogy host Ken as he chats with AI expert & entrepreneur Santoash on July 8th! ️This episode will cut through the hype and explore how to implement AI solutions for real value and growth.

[verved]

love having to spend 7 hours in third party equalizer software to be able to use my headphones properly thank you sony

[todayiot]

Bluetooth Mesh Networking: The Future of Smart Connectivity

Bluetooth Mesh Networking enables seamless, large-scale device communication, making it ideal for smart homes, industrial automation, and commercial IoT applications. With its self-healing, low-power, and scalable architecture, Bluetooth Mesh ensures reliable and efficient data transfer across multiple devices.

Want to integrate Bluetooth Mesh Networking into your IoT solutions? Explore its potential today! 🚀

[jcmarchi]

Interactive mouthpiece opens new opportunities for health data, assistive technology, and hands-free interactions

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/interactive-mouthpiece-opens-new-opportunities-for-health-data-assistive-technology-and-hands-free-interactions/

Interactive mouthpiece opens new opportunities for health data, assistive technology, and hands-free interactions

When you think about hands-free devices, you might picture Alexa and other voice-activated in-home assistants, Bluetooth earpieces, or asking Siri to make a phone call in your car. You might not imagine using your mouth to communicate with other devices like a computer or a phone remotely. 

Thinking outside the box, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Aarhus University researchers have now engineered “MouthIO,” a dental brace that can be fabricated with sensors and feedback components to capture in-mouth interactions and data. This interactive wearable could eventually assist dentists and other doctors with collecting health data and help motor-impaired individuals interact with a phone, computer, or fitness tracker using their mouths.

Resembling an electronic retainer, MouthIO is a see-through brace that fits the specifications of your upper or lower set of teeth from a scan. The researchers created a plugin for the modeling software Blender to help users tailor the device to fit a dental scan, where you can then 3D print your design in dental resin. This computer-aided design tool allows users to digitally customize a panel (called PCB housing) on the side to integrate electronic components like batteries, sensors (including detectors for temperature and acceleration, as well as tongue-touch sensors), and actuators (like vibration motors and LEDs for feedback). You can also place small electronics outside of the PCB housing on individual teeth.

Play video

MouthIO: Fabricating Customizable Oral User Interfaces with Integrated Sensing and Actuation Video: MIT CSAIL

The active mouth

“The mouth is a really interesting place for an interactive wearable and can open up many opportunities, but has remained largely unexplored due to its complexity,” says senior author Michael Wessely, a former CSAIL postdoc and senior author on a paper about MouthIO who is now an assistant professor at Aarhus University. “This compact, humid environment has elaborate geometries, making it hard to build a wearable interface to place inside. With MouthIO, though, we’ve developed a new kind of device that’s comfortable, safe, and almost invisible to others. Dentists and other doctors are eager about MouthIO for its potential to provide new health insights, tracking things like teeth grinding and potentially bacteria in your saliva.”

The excitement for MouthIO’s potential in health monitoring stems from initial experiments. The team found that their device could track bruxism (the habit of grinding teeth) by embedding an accelerometer within the brace to track jaw movements. When attached to the lower set of teeth, MouthIO detected when users grind and bite, with the data charted to show how often users did each.

Wessely and his colleagues’ customizable brace could one day help users with motor impairments, too. The team connected small touchpads to MouthIO, helping detect when a user’s tongue taps their teeth. These interactions could be sent via Bluetooth to scroll across a webpage, for example, allowing the tongue to act as a “third hand” to open up a new avenue for hands-free interaction.

“MouthIO is a great example how miniature electronics now allow us to integrate sensing into a broad range of everyday interactions,” says study co-author Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in the MIT departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and leader of the HCI Engineering Group at CSAIL. “I’m especially excited about the potential to help improve accessibility and track potential health issues among users.”

Molding and making MouthIO

To get a 3D model of your teeth, you can first create a physical impression and fill it with plaster. You can then scan your mold with a mobile app like Polycam and upload that to Blender. Using the researchers’ plugin within this program, you can clean up your dental scan to outline a precise brace design. Finally, you 3D print your digital creation in clear dental resin, where the electronic components can then be soldered on. Users can create a standard brace that covers their teeth, or opt for an “open-bite” design within their Blender plugin. The latter fits more like open-finger gloves, exposing the tips of your teeth, which helps users avoid lisping and talk naturally.

This “do it yourself” method costs roughly $15 to produce and takes two hours to be 3D-printed. MouthIO can also be fabricated with a more expensive, professional-level teeth scanner similar to what dentists and orthodontists use, which is faster and less labor-intensive.

Compared to its closed counterpart, which fully covers your teeth, the researchers view the open-bite design as a more comfortable option. The team preferred to use it for beverage monitoring experiments, where they fabricated a brace capable of alerting users when a drink was too hot. This iteration of MouthIO had a temperature sensor and a monitor embedded within the PCB housing that vibrated when a drink exceeded 65 degrees Celsius (or 149 degrees Fahrenheit). This could help individuals with mouth numbness better understand what they’re consuming.

In a user study, participants also preferred the open-bite version of MouthIO. “We found that our device could be suitable for everyday use in the future,” says study lead author and Aarhus University PhD student Yijing Jiang. “Since the tongue can touch the front teeth in our open-bite design, users don’t have a lisp. This made users feel more comfortable wearing the device during extended periods with breaks, similar to how people use retainers.”

The team’s initial findings indicate that MouthIO is a cost-effective, accessible, and customizable interface, and the team is working on a more long-term study to evaluate its viability further. They’re looking to improve its design, including experimenting with more flexible materials, and placing it in other parts of the mouth, like the cheek and the palate. Among these ideas, the researchers have already prototyped two new designs for MouthIO: a single-sided brace for even higher comfort when wearing MouthIO while also being fully invisible to others, and another fully capable of wireless charging and communication.

Jiang, Mueller, and Wessely’s co-authors include PhD student Julia Kleinau, master’s student Till Max Eckroth, and associate professor Eve Hoggan, all of Aarhus University. Their work was supported by a Novo Nordisk Foundation grant and was presented at ACM’s Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.

[an--artistic--autistic]

i just made the connection that the reason I've always hated computer mice is because the joints in my hands are underdeveloped

I've never successfully used a mouse without pain or discomfort

since my first laptop in 2011 i have always preferred to use the trackpads, even buying the fancy apple bluetooth one last year to use on the desktop computers at work and school

[leatherbookmark]

fujifilm instax mini evo!

[unmotivational-motivation]

Words cannot describe how much I hate these Fkn things. It was a calculated move to lock you into a walled garden with a shitter experience.

blutooth 4.0, which I think was the standard when these were released, supports a sub 6mb/s connection. Which is fine-ish for sub cd level quality of sound and there’s all kinds of trickery you can do with the design to help reproduce sound. Or you can host the DAC on the board to send to a 3.5mil Jack and then the quality is restricted to the file itself and be interoperable with 90% of tech, have no small explody pieces of lithium near your head, and better sound reproduction if you get over ear headphones (do you remember what proper bass and space sounds like?) that’ll last over a decade if you look after the headphones.

a pair of Austrian Audio HI-X15s cost around $200 aud, is made by ex-AKG engineers, and the cable is replaceable. Life changer for listening to music as in I enjoy it again.

[bitstream24]

Technical Report: ESP32 WiFi, Bluetooth Classic, BLE, CAN Bus Module

ESP32 WiFi, Bluetooth, BLE, and CAN Bus Module – A powerful development board for IoT, automotive, and industrial applications with wireless connectivity and integrated CAN bus support.

[piedoesnotequalpi]

It should not be this hard to change the maximum number of connected Bluetooth devices!

[lansitec]

Asset Management Tracker: Enhance Your Industrial Asset Tracking with Lansitec

Lansitec’s Asset Management Tracker is built to handle even the toughest industrial environments. With its IP68 rating, it’s dustproof and waterproof, making it suitable for extreme conditions. Additionally, the tracker offers flexible communication options via Bluetooth 5.0, LoRaWAN, and GNSS, ensuring it can be adapted to a variety of asset tracking needs.

For More

[performix]

Digital transformation goes beyond tech upgrades. It's a holistic approach to integrating digital tools into every aspect of your business. This blog explores its core principles, benefits, and practical strategies for businesses, especially those in software development.

[billy2ckknr]

https://www.futureelectronics.com/p/semiconductors--wireless-rf--rf-modules-solutions--bluetooth/453-00046c-ezurio-7132917

Bluetooth module, GPS module RF Bluetooth serial radiofrequency, RFID modules,

Laird Module Sterling LWB5+ MHF4 Cut Tape

[jcmarchi]

A portable light system that can digitize everyday objects

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/a-portable-light-system-that-can-digitize-everyday-objects/

A portable light system that can digitize everyday objects

When Nikola Tesla predicted we’d have handheld phones that could display videos, photographs, and more, his musings seemed like a distant dream. Nearly 100 years later, smartphones are like an extra appendage for many of us.

Digital fabrication engineers are now working toward expanding the display capabilities of other everyday objects. One avenue they’re exploring is reprogrammable surfaces — or items whose appearances we can digitally alter — to help users present important information, such as health statistics, as well as new designs on things like a wall, mug, or shoe.

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the University of California at Berkeley, and Aarhus University have taken an intriguing step forward by fabricating “PortaChrome,” a portable light system and design tool that can change the color and textures of various objects. Equipped with ultraviolet (UV) and red, green, and blue (RGB) LEDs, the device can be attached to everyday objects like shirts and headphones. Once a user creates a design and sends it to a PortaChrome machine via Bluetooth, the surface can be programmed into multicolor displays of health data, entertainment, and fashion designs.

Play video

PortaChrome: A portable light system that can digitize everyday objects Video: MIT CSAIL

To make an item reprogrammable, the object must be coated with photochromic dye, an invisible ink that can be turned into different colors with light patterns. Once it’s coated, individuals can create and relay patterns to the item via the team’s graphic design software, or use the team’s API to interact with the device directly and embed data-driven designs. When attached to a surface, PortaChrome’s UV lights saturate the dye while the RGB LEDs desaturate it, activating the colors and ensuring each pixel is toned to match the intended design.

Zhu and her colleagues’ integrated light system changes objects’ colors in less than four minutes on average, which is eight times faster than their prior work, “Photo-Chromeleon.” This speed boost comes from switching to a light source that makes contact with the object to transmit UV and RGB rays. Photo-Chromeleon used a projector to help activate the color-changing properties of photochromic dye, where the light on the object’s surface is at a reduced intensity.

“PortaChrome provides a more convenient way to reprogram your surroundings,” says Yunyi Zhu ’20, MEng ’21, an MIT PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science, affiliate of CSAIL, and lead author on a paper about the work. “Compared with our projector-based system from before, PortaChrome is a more portable light source that can be placed directly on top of the photochromic surface. This allows the color change to happen without user intervention and helps us avoid contaminating our environment with UV. As a result, users can wear their heart rate chart on their shirt after a workout, for instance.”

Giving everyday objects a makeover

In demos, PortaChrome displayed health data on different surfaces. A user hiked with PortaChrome sewed onto their backpack, putting it into direct contact with the back of their shirt, which was coated in photochromic dye. Altitude and heart rate sensors sent data to the lighting device, which was then converted into a chart through a reprogramming script developed by the researchers. This process created a health visualization on the back of the user’s shirt. In a similar showing, MIT researchers displayed a heart gradually coming together on the back of a tablet to show how a user was progressing toward a fitness goal.

PortaChrome also showed a flair for customizing wearables. For example, the researchers redesigned some white headphones with sideways blue lines and horizontal yellow and purple stripes. The photochromic dye was coated on the headphones and the team then attached the PortaChrome device to the inside of the headphone case. Finally, the researchers successfully reprogrammed their patterns onto the object, which resembled watercolor art. Researchers also recolored a wrist splint to match different clothes using this process.

Eventually, the work could be used to digitize consumers’ belongings. Imagine putting on a cloak that can change your entire shirt design, or using your car cover to give your vehicle a new look.

PortaChrome’s main ingredients

On the hardware end, PortaChrome is a combination of four main ingredients. Their portable device consists of a textile base as a sort of backbone, a textile layer with the UV lights soldered on and another with the RGB stuck on, and a silicone diffusion layer to top it off. Resembling a translucent honeycomb, the silicone layer covers the interlaced UV and RGB LEDs and directs them toward individual pixels to properly illuminate a design over a surface.

This device can be flexibly wrapped around objects with different shapes. For tables and other flat surfaces, you could place PortaChrome on top, like a placemat. For a curved item like a thermos, you could wrap the light source around like a coffee cup sleeve to ensure it reprograms the entire surface.

The portable, flexible light system is crafted with maker space-available tools (like laser cutters, for example), and the same method can be replicated with flexible PCB materials and other mass manufacturing systems.

While it can also quickly convert our surroundings into dynamic displays, Zhu and her colleagues believe it could benefit from further speed boosts. They’d like to use smaller LEDs, with the likely result being a surface that could be reprogrammed in seconds with a higher-resolution design, thanks to increased light intensity.

“The surfaces of our everyday things are encoded with colors and visual textures, delivering crucial information and shaping how we interact with them,” says Georgia Tech postdoc Tingyu Cheng, who was not involved with the research. “PortaChrome is taking a leap forward by providing reprogrammable surfaces with the integration of flexible light sources (UV and RGB LEDs) and photochromic pigments into everyday objects, pixelating the environment with dynamic color and patterns. The capabilities demonstrated by PortaChrome could revolutionize the way we interact with our surroundings, particularly in domains like personalized fashion and adaptive user interfaces. This technology enables real-time customization that seamlessly integrates into daily life, offering a glimpse into the future of ‘ubiquitous displays.’”

Zhu is joined by nine CSAIL affiliates on the paper: MIT PhD student and MIT Media Lab affiliate Cedric Honnet; former visiting undergraduate researchers Yixiao Kang, Angelina J. Zheng, and Grace Tang; MIT undergraduate student Luca Musk; University of Michigan Assistant Professor Junyi Zhu SM ’19, PhD ’24; recent postdoc and Aarhus University assistant professor Michael Wessely; and senior author Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in the MIT departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and leader of the HCI Engineering Group at CSAIL.

This work was supported by the MIT-GIST Joint Research Program and was presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in October.