Category: Computer Hardware Design

Article

Bluetooth 4.1 Will Offer Better Connections | Tom’s Hardware

Bluetooth 4.1 prepares headsets and more to connect to the ‘Net | PC World

From the horse’s mouth

Bluetooth SIG

Press Release

Specification Guide

My Commenbts

Sony VAIO Duo 11 with Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity that can be upgraded to Bluetooth 4.1 through a software update

Recently, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group have released the Bluetooth 4.1 specification which is intended to capitalise on the low-power devices application that Bluetooth 4.0 was known for, but improve on useability and reliability.

With Bluetooth 4.0, it allowed the development of low-powered “Bluetooth Smart” devices that work with a “Bluetooth Smart Ready” device like a smartphone or tablet that serves as a hub for these devices.

This is intended to be a software-based upgrade so that an operating system, device firmware or driver software update could bring a Bluetooth 4.0 device up to date to this newer standard. It is compared to previous Bluetooth standards which affected the silicon that was installed in the device.

But what are the improvements?

Reliability

This Bluetooth 4.0-capable smart deadbolt can work with “hub” devices that are updated to Bluetooth 4.1 specification

A Bluetooth 4.1 subsystem can co-exist with an LTE cellular connection used for mobile broadband services without suffering or causing near-band interference which could ruin the user experience. This is catering to the increased rollout of the LTE-based 4G mobile-broadband services by many cellular-telephony carriers, the integration of LTE-based 4G modems in well-bred smartphones and tablets and the popularity of these services amongst users.

This is also augmented by use of longer time windows for inter-device handshaking so that there is less risk of the connections between devices being “dumped” and requiring users to manually pair the devices to each other again. The devices also connect with each other when they are in proximity to each other without extra user intervention beyond just powering-on devices that were powered off.

Functionality

One ability that Bluetooth 4.1 adds to Bluetooth Low Power devices is to support bulk data transfer in this class of device. One commonly highlighted application is for a sensor device to capture data while away from a “hub” device for an amount of time then upload it to the hub device. The situation that is described is someone who uses a heart-rate monitor during a physical activity, especially swimming. Then, after they have completed that activity, they upload the data to their smartphone or tablet which has the fitness-tracking ap.

I also see this as being useful for updating a Bluetooth Smart device’s firmware without the need to connect the device to a computer for this purpose. This could be to add functionality to a device like a smartwatch or improve on a device’s reliability and security.

A smartphone like this one here that has Bluetooth 4.0 hardware support can head towards Bluetooth 4.1 through a software update

Another ability would be for a device to be both a Bluetooth Smart peripheral device and a Bluetooth Smart Ready hub device. This is obviously targeted at the smartwatches which are effectively the descendents of those 1980s-era many-function digital watches. Here, these devices could serve as an extra display for a smartphone or be a display and data-capture unit for a health monitor or another “key fob” device for the Kwikset Kevo deadbolt.

To the same extent, this functionality could allow for peer-to-peer setup with Bluetooth Smart Ready devices such as a “smartphone and tablet” or “smartphone and laptop” setup; or a quick data share setup between smartphones or tablets to work taking advantage of what Bluetooth Low Energy has to offer. This would lead to increased battery runtime for devices used in these setups.

Extra functionality has been added to the core Bluetooth 4.1 specification to support IP-based high-level data transfer especially to the IPv6 standard. This is essential for integrating Bluetooth devices in the “Internet Of Things” which is about devices beyond regular and mobile computing devices benefiting from the same kind of communication advantages that the Internet has offered.

This is becoming more important where we are seeing sensor and controller devices being part of personal health and wellbeing; and a convenient secure and energy-efficient lifestyle.

Conclusion

Bluetooth 4.1 could be a path for the Bluetooth specification to mature its role in the support of low-power devices whether they integrate with each other or with other so-called full-powered devices especially as the concept of the “Internet Of Things” matures.

Articles

Motorola unveils Project Ara, customizable smartphone effort | CNET

Motorola’s ‘Project Ara’ modular smartphone setup switches out hardware like apps  | Engadget

Project Ara: Motorola Wants to Make Your Smartphone Modular | Mashable

My Comments

The IBM PC of 1981 had not just become the standard for a business-class desktop computer as far as software was concerned but epitonised the concept of a highly-modular hardware design. This was highly evident in the way the computer’s system unit was designed where there were user-upgradeable parts, a concept that was so heavily underscored with the PC/AT “second-generation” design.

Here these computers had a continuous update and upgrade lifecycle where one could install faster microprocessors, highly-capable graphics cards, hard disks of increasing capacity, increased RAM, newer secondary-storage media like backup tapes, 3.5” disks and CD-ROMs  along with various communications devices like modems and network cards. This capability evolved with the ATX form factor along with newer smaller form-factors such as microITX.

In my experience with desktop computers since the early 1990s, I kept “dragging through”components from a previous chassis to a newer chassis to keep them useful and valid while being able to, in some cases, junk dud components like power supplies with nearly-worn-out fans and replace them myself. This has allowed me to maintain a longer service life for my desktop computing experience.and achieve this goal with minimal expense.

Similarly, I have seen most offices equipped with computers that have the “right mix” of software and hardware but where most of the componentry is affordable and the only expensive aspects of the system are components that suit a particular job. For that matter, this modularity opened up the business desktop-computing boom in the late 1980s.

Now Google’s Motorola smartphone arm is bringing this concept to the smartphone in the form of “click-together” components that snap on to a “skeleton” which is similar to a PC’s motherboard. Google wanted to achieve a platform for the hardware like what Android has done for the software. The goal with the Ara platform would be to have user-replaceable processors, displays, keyboards and the like that also allow these phones to work to newer technologies or work to specific needs.

For example, a higher-capacity flash storage could be planted in these phones or a Bluetooth module compliant to the latest Bluetooth specification could come in to play here. Similarly, the cracked screen could be easily replaced with something newer and brighter or an extra switch array could come in to place for one-touch access to functions. A newer sensor could come in to place to allow the phone to measure newer quantities as a dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi radio links the phone to the networks.

Of course this will lead to the longer service life for these phones as people “spin them out” further to their ever-changing needs and as technology marches onwards.

Article

Samsung slashes price of curved OLED TV to $8,999 | TV and Home Theater – CNET Reviews

My Comments

Most of you who have a Samsung, LG, HTC or Sony smartphone will be looking at an OLED display as you use these phones. These are self-illuminating solid-state displays that are known to have a wide viewing angle and a very high contrast ratio. Some devices like the Denon CEOL music systems, the Revo Domino Internet radio and some of the high-end broadband routers use a monochrome variant as a display which reminds me of the fluorescent displays commonly used on home-theatre receivers.

But these displays were too costly to implement for a screen area that would typically represent anything from a “coat-pocket” 7” tablet upwards. This would mean that a television based on this technology would be ridiculously expensive to buy.

Now LG and Samsung have increased the manufacturing yield for OLED displays of this area and this has lead to a reduction in the price of these sets that are based on this technology. For example, a Samsung 55” curved OLED “main-lounge-area” TV which was sold at US$14,999 is now selling at US$8,999.

What I see of this is that Samsung, LG and others could also start selling tablets, Ultrabooks, televisions, monitors and similar large-screen devices implementing this kind of technology. Even for that matter, it could also lead to more devices being equipped with the smaller-display-area OLED displays thus making the OLED display become highly ubiquitous.

Article

Sony Vaio Pro 13 Ultrabook v Apple MacBook Air For Photographers

My Comments

Previously, Apple had a stronghold on computing for the creative industries with most of their Macintosh computers. This was even since the Macintosh platform was launched where these computers with their graphical-user-interface being run alongside a laser printer brought in the concept of desktop publishing.

Similarly, they had a few years cornering the mobile computing platform with their iPhone and iPad devices. It also included capturing the premium “stylish computing” market with their MacBook Air and, in some cases, the MacBook Pro laptops.

Now a few computing devices and platforms are challenging Apple in a lot of these fronts. Over the last year, Samsung, HTC and Sony have fielded some very impressive highly-capable smartphones that have put the iPhone on notice like the Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4. These phones also show an impressive “cool” style about them as well as the phones being able to take as good an image as an Apple iPhone.

As for mobile tablets, the 7” coat-pocket tablets like the Google Nexus 7 have created a distinct market niche which Apple couldn’t successfully fill with the right device. Similar, Sony had tendered the XPeria Z which has come close to competing with the iPad as far as 10” tablets are concerned.

HP Envy 15-3000 Series Beats Edition multimedia laptop

Over the last few years, there have been a number of laptops and notebooks that have answered the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air in many ways. For example, the HP Envy 15-3000 which I previously reviewed provided a construction look and feel that is very close to the MacBook Pro series of laptops. Lately, Sony fielded the VAIO Pro 13 which is a Windows 8 Ultrabook that has been described in a review by “The Age” as having a photo-grade display and is capable of answering a similar-size MacBook Air as a portable workflow computer for a professional photographer. Here, this one implemented a highly-controllable Full HD display which was able to yield the proper colour temperature for photography.

Harman-Kardon speakers to give this laptop full sound

As well, companies who have a strong presence in the recording and reproduction of music are becoming involved in the quest for improved sound quality in Windows-based laptops. Examples of these include Beats by Dr Dre working with HP to provide improved sound for HP Envy laptops; premium Toshiba laptops being equipped with Harman-Kardon speakers and ASUS laptops having Bang & Olufsen sound tuning. Who knows what would be happening soon with even the conversion of audio signals between the digital and analogue domains being worked on so as to provide a line-level sound quality equal to or better than the Apple MacBook Pro.

Of course, the Windows and Android equipment have supported an “open-frame” operating environment for both the hardware and software where common standards set by industry groups have been respected. For example, the Android smartphones use MicroUSB as a power / data connection, it is easier for users to gain access to the files held on their Windows or Android devices, and users can integrate an Android or Windows device to a Wi-Fi wireless network at the touch of a button using WPS setup.

What I do see is that regular and mobile computing is swinging from Apple being considered the “cool kid” for both these applications to a situation where they are considered a has-been.

The HP OfficeJet 6700 Premium – an example of a printer’s control panel that is about printing apps

Previously, only “regular” desktop and laptop computers were highly programmable with a huge hive of companies and individuals writing programs for them. These typically ranged from applications like word processors, spreadsheets, databases, graphics editors and the like through to games and entertainment software. Typically the people who used these computers either loaded the software from tapes, disks or other media or simply downloaded them from bulletin-boards, online services or the Internet initially by telephone but through networks like cable TV. Then they ran these programs on the computers to gain the benefit from them.

Now, Apple popularised the idea of downloading programs to their mobile devices using the iTunes App Store. This is although there were online services and Internet Web sites hosting programs for other mobile devices but the practice was considered very difficult. It included loading the programs from the iTunes App Store using the phone’s control surface without the need to use a regular computer to facilitate this procedure.

A smartphone based on the Android platform

Subsequently companies who manufactured mobile phones and tablet computers implemented this kind of software download and used the platform which these devices were built on as a software-development platform for third-party programmers. This led to the mobile devices i.e. the smartphones, media players and tablet computers gaining that same kind of flexibility as the regular computers.  We have ended up with remarks with “There’s an app for that” for daily tasks because of this situation.

As I mentioned before, the app stores have started to become like the bulletin boards and download services of yore where these services became full of substandard software.

Now we are seeing printers and television sets becoming developed to work on app-driven platforms. This allows these devices to perform more that what they were initially designed to do. For example, the smart-TV platforms are acquiring software front-ends for most of the catch-up TV services.

As we will head towards more devices having online and Internet functionality, we could see more of the app stores surfacing. For people who work on apps or Websites, this could become a situation where front-ends or apps would need to be ported for the different platforms. In some cases, it could end up with games and entertainment software pitched towards the dashboard of a car or towards that “Internet refrigerator” or “online microwave oven”. But on the other hand, this could lead towards increasing the role of these devices in our lifestyle. In this case, functions like device cameras could become part of health and wellness monitoring as what Fujitsu is working on.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Badgy

Badgy Card Printer – Design & Print id badges on plastic pvc cards

My Comments

A common question for anyone in business is what tools do exist for printing out plastic cards in short runs whether with the same design or populated with particular data such as a person’s details for an ID or membership card. Situations may include turning out membership or ID cards on an “as-required, while-you-wait” basis such as for late attendees at a conference or new library members, or making a test print of a card design to see how it looks.

There is a machine that can do this in colour in the form of the Badgy dye-sublimation card printer. This unit, which connects to a regular computer via USB, can print up cards using a ribbon that has a 100-card yield and can work with thin or thick cards. It can work with third-party cards such as magstripe and smart cards, but can’t encode any of the machine-readable cards itself.

It is based around you downloading templates with pre-designed art from the site and using the supplied software to turn out the cards. Of course, this unit would use a Windows printer driver so you could press your desktop-publishing software in to printing to these cards as long as they have the ability to print to the standard “credit-card” size, which is supplied by the driver software as a defined paper size. This could include the ability to use the software to turn out ID cards using the software’s mail-merging abilities or turn out short-run “for approval” card designs before you commit to a large card-print run.

The fact that it doesn’t encode the magstripe or smart cards shouldn’t phase you as long as you have a separate machine which encodes these cards. This wouldn’t be an issue with, for example, a hotel-based conference or event application where you may turn out ID or participant cards which are to be used as guest-room keycards. In this case, the workflow would require the staff member to transfer the card between the Badgy machine and the card encoder to create a useable custom-printed keycard which is the event ID card.

The cost per card would typically be AUD$0.88 per thin card or AUD$0.96 per thick card. But to develop this concept further, it could be feasible to work with other cheaper methods like ink-jet printing for these short-run applications appealing to small businesses. At least this machine is for plastic cards like the colour laser or high-volume inkjet printer is for brochures and stationery.

Article

Touchscreens | Apple | Mac | PC | Macbooks | Photos

My Comments

Increased relevance to regular desktop computing

Windows 8 “Modern UI” start screen – optimised for touchscreens

Since Windows 8 with its “Modern” user interface came on to the scene late last year, the touchscreen has been valued as a part of the regular computer rather than an option for some business computers or for use with mobile computing devices like tablets and smartphones.

Here, the touchscreens in this computing context are seen as a complementary third method to control the computer. It comes in handy with coarse navigation of the user interface, especially with selecting options or working “at-a-glance” dashboards like the “Modern” UI that is your start point in Windows 8. You can also flick across material you are reading or viewing such as text you are “skimming” or a PowerPoint presentation. This is something I have experienced for myself when I reviewed the Fujitsu TH550M convertible, the Sony VAIO J Series all-in-one and the HP Envy X2 detachable-keyboard “hybrid” tablet. The HP, for that matter, was the first touchscreen computer that I reviewed with Windows 8.

HP Envy X2 detachable-keyboard hybrid tablet computer

As we already know, the consumer tablet computers like the Apple iPad drew us towards the touchscreen paradigm. But Windows 8 plus some variants of desktop Linux had integrated touchscreen computing from the ground up rather than as an afterthought.

Apple missing out on the touchscreen trend with the Macintosh

The article that I cite raised the issue that Apple weren’t equipping the Macintosh regular-computing platform with touchscreens even though other platforms that serve the same usage style were equipped with this feature. This is because they see the regular-computing platform of being comparatively little value to the iOS mobile-computing platform. It is similar to how they added on the mouse and the 3.5” floppy disk to the Apple II platform in 1987 even though the Macintosh, which was the “new baby” with both these options commercialised these features from the day it was launched in 1984.

On the other hand, Apple could enable the MacOS X operating system with touch control as part of a major upgrade then roll out the functionality in to the MacBook and iMac lineups as well as offer a Desktop Display with touch abilities.

Other gaps in the touchscreen computing trend

Speaking of this, there aren’t many add-on touchscreen monitors available at a reasonable price for use with the regular “tower” desktop. This is more so with monitors sold through larger technology chains that pitch at the small business or the consumer. Typically, you may find that these places offer a touchscreen monitor that is a smaller size and pitched for the POS system, thus sold at a price that is considered ridiculous for regular desktop computing.

Personally, I would rather see more of the touchscreen monitors being available at a slight premium above a non-touch variant of a particular monitor screen size and resolution. Here, one could set up a multi-screen arrangement with one touch-enabled monitor and use the touch-enabled monitor as, for example, a persistent “Modern UI” control screen. This could then lead to a gradual upgrade path for those of us who want the “all-touch” user interface across the multiple screens.

Conclusion

Of course, these comments may be too early to make as Windows 8 and the “open-frame” computing crowd makes the touchscreen display mature quickly and more software authors integrate touch in to their software and games.