DIY Foot Pedal Controller For Guitar Rig 5

Back in the old days, it took external guitar effects pedals to modify a guitar’s sound. As computer processing power has been growing at an exponential rate, software-based effects modelers have been becoming more common. [Matthew]‘s dad is running Guitar Rig 5 modeling software on his Lenovo tablet. Although it works well, it is a hassle to change effects and amp models while playing. That’s where [Matthew] comes in. He’s built a foot pedal controller so his old man can change up those sweet sounds on the fly.

Guitar Rig 5 has the ability to change presets with key presses. Even so, it would still be a hassle tapping a keyboard while playing, whether it be physical or on-screen. Since an Arduino-compatible board with an ATMEGA32U4 chip can be used to simulate an HID device, [Matthew] decided to use one as the basis for his project. Standard push buttons mounted in a project box indicate to the microcontroller which keyboard commands to send to the tablet. There are 4 buttons for 4 presets on this build but any number can be used. When a button is pushed, the associated keyboard command is sent to the tablet via a USB cable and Guitar Rig 5 responds to that command by changing the preset. And just so you know where you are, an indicator light adjacent to each button shows which preset is current.

If this is something you’d be interested in building for yourself, [Matthew] made the Arduino code available at the above link.

Filed under: musical hacks

Here Come the RGB LED Clones

It seems like every third project on Hackaday uses WS2812 RGB LEDs in some way. We all love our blinkenlights, and bright, cheap, serial controlled RGB LEDs are the bees knees.

As with all products these days, competing manufacturers have discovered the huge market for these things, and clones are now available. [Tim] recently took a look at the PD9823, as well as three versions of the WS2812. [Tim] is considered something of a WS2812 guru here at Hackaday. You might remember him from his WS2812 driver optimization article, which should be required reading for any WS2812 hacker.

As many of us know, the timing characteristics for these LEDs can be a pain to work with. The values also differ between the WS2812S and WS2812B. [Tim] discovered that the new through hole WS2812D parts are different yet again, though rather close to the B parts. The PD9823′s designers must have studied the WS2812′s closely, as their 190ns time base falls directly between WS2812S 166ns time and the 208ns time of the WS2812B. The PD9823 also requires a slightly longer reset pulse.

The takeaway is that well written drivers such as [Tim's] should have no problem with the new parts, but compatibility is something to keep in mind as more clones hit the market.

Filed under: led hacks

DIY Hydroponic System Grows Herbs on the Wall

Everyone knows that you should eat healthy, but it’s not always easy. Fresh and healthy foods are often more expensive than processed foods. When money is tight, sometimes it’s best to just grow your own produce. What if you don’t have room for a garden, though?

When [Matthew] returned home from the 2014 San Mateo Maker Faire, he found himself in a similar situation to many other faire attendees. He saw something awesome and was inspired to build it himself. In this case, it was a wall-mounted hydroponic garden. [Matthew] started out with some basic requirements for his project. He knew which wall he wanted to cover with plants, so that gave him the maximum possible dimensions. He also knew that they may have to remove the garden temporarily to perform maintenance on the wall in the future. And as for what to grow, [Matthew] loves lots of flavor in his foods. He chose to grow herbs and spices.

[Matthew] purchased most of the main components from Amazon and had them shipped to his doorstep. Everything else was found at the local hardware store. The base of the build is an off-the-shelf planter box. The drainage hole in the bottom was plugged up to prevent water from leaking out. A different hole was drilled in the side of the box to allow a garden hose to be mounted to the box. The hose is connected through a float valve, keeping the water level inside the box just right.

[Matthew] then built a frame out of dimensional lumber. The frame ended up being about 4.33 feet wide by 8 feet tall. The boards were fastened together with metal braces and mounting plates. A full sheet of plywood was then nailed to the front of the frame. Thick plastic sheet was then wrapped around the frame and stapled in place.

[Matthew] purchased giant planter pockets to actually hold the plants. He tried stapling them to the front of the frame, but discovered that staples were not strong enough to hold the weight of the plants, soil, and water. He instead used screws and washers.

Next, a submersible pump was mounted inside the bottom planter box. This pump is used to circulate the water and nutrients up to the plants above. Two hoses were connected to the pump and run up the sides of the upper frame. These hoses evenly distribute the water to the plants.

The final step was to mount the unit in place against the wall. [Matthew] didn’t want to screw into the wall and cause any damage. Instead, he placed a couple of bricks inside of the planter box and rested the bottom of the frame on top of those. The top of the frame is essentially hung from a railing up above with some thin steel wire.

The whole unit looks very slick and takes up little space. With some more ingenuity, one could likely build something similar with even more DIY components to save some more money.

Filed under: green hacks

GoPro sets its IPO price at $24 per share, gears up to go public tomorrow

Image Credit: GoPro

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GoPro, the maker of high-definition cameras for action moments, has finally priced its public offering: $24 a share, at the upper end of its targeted range. It will start trading on Thursday morning.

The company revealed earlier this month that it intended to sell 17.8 million shares of stock at something in the range of $21-$24 per share range. At its $24 price, the company will raise $427 million and will have a fully diluted market cap of $3.5 billion and a valuation of $3.3 billion, according to Renaissance Capital.

GoPro will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol GPRO.

The company will use the money to pay off a loan through its credit facility, as well as to fund plans such as developing speciality hardware, bringing in revenue through a content management system, and making the company into a media company that sells user-generated content, as we previously reported.

In other camera news, home-security company Dropcam was acquired last Friday by the Google-owned Nest for $555 million in cash.

GoPro was founded in 2002 by Nick Woodman, who used a $264,000 check from his parents to get started.

GoPro makes the world's most versatile cameras, enabling people to capture immersive and engaging photo and video content during their favorite activities. GoPro's HERO lines of wearable and gear mountable cameras are used collecti... read more »

If Google+ had a ‘Meh’ button, Google just pressed it today

Image Credit: Yoel Ben-Avraham/Flickr

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SAN FRANCISCO — There once was a social network Google was pushing heavily called Google+.

Well, that social network still exists. But during the keynote at company’s I/O developer conference today, it didn’t get a single mention as far as we noticed. Just a single break-out session carried Google+ in its title — about using the service to sign in to websites — giving it less prominence than, say, Glass, Nest, robotics, and something called the cloud.

That’s in stark contrast to the company’s all-Google+-all-the-time posture at this very conference just two years ago. Back then, there was news of a Google+ native app for Android, a slideshow feature, and a new way to invite people to events. Other news at the time included a History application programming interface (API) for integrating information from outside services and a spanking new Google+ iPhone app.

These days, though, social networks other than Google+ are top of mind.

Twitter is a publicly traded company now, and Facebook, which also trades on public markets, now boasts 1.28 billion monthly active users. Enterprise-focused social networks like Slack and Yammer have become respected.

As for Google+, well, it’s announced some feature updates in the past few months, but nothing groundbreaking. Modular cell phones, driverless cars, smartwatches, and cloud computing seem to have attracted far more resources and attention inside of the technology giant.

Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social, did depart from the company in late April, making it a possible factor in Google+ not cooking up anything for this year’s conference.

Google didn’t have much of an excuse for this, but it did respond to VentureBeat’s request for comment on the absence of Google+ at this year’s Google I/O:

This year, we’re focusing Google I/O around three key themes: Design, Develop, Distribute. To that end, our content and sessions aren’t necessarily focused around specific products but more generally about how Google can help you as a developer enrich the experience for your users and grow your audience. Topics and sessions will touch on multiple products and give developers a more holistic overview. Google+ is of course an important component to that, you can see it in topics like identity and our gaming platform, Google Play game services, to name a few.

So it seems social has become an add-on, and less of a star-studded, feature-rich service on its own. Perhaps next year Google will opt for a Google+ rebranding — sort of like what Google did with its television initiative today.

(from Wikipedia) Google+ is a social networking service operated by Google Inc. The service launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only testing phase. Google+ is built as a layer that not only integrates different Google social se... read more »

Healthcare pros are feeling lukewarm on Google Fit debut

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Google announced its Google Fit health platform at Google I/O on Wednesday, and while the overall response was good, some in the healthcare world question whether Google Fit will ultimately do much to improve the health of Americans. 

Even if the platform aggregates lots of fitness and biometrics data, the question is whether Google will be able to do something meaningful with the data.

“The general population wants their data to be collected passively, interpreted by someone else, and fed back to them in the form of actionable insights,” Dr. Molly Maloof, MD, an expert in digital health technology, told VentureBeat via email.

“Google seems to be collecting companies that are great on data collection and aggregation, but as we have seen with Google Flu trends, sometimes the data scientists interpret information inaccurately.”

Still, Dr. Maloof says she’s glad to see an Android equivalent to Apple’s HealthKit platform.

By the numbers

It’s not hard to see why Google and Apple are attracted to consumer health data and devices.

“They see real opportunity to capture a piece of the $2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare industry,” Vaughn Kauffman, principal, PwC Health Industries, told VentureBeat via email.

“In fact, new entrants such as wearable makers are carving paths into a fitness and wellness market worth $267 billion in the U.S. annually – representing an easy entry point to the wider and more complex healthcare market,” Kauffman said.

The clinical value of the data

One of the hopes for health platforms like Google Fit is that healthcare professionals could use the data they collect to help keep consumers well — before they become patients. But some question whether the kinds of data that will be collected can be of much use to doctors.

"It's encouraging to see some of the tech industry's biggest players making entries into digital health, but candidly, this is still pretty softball stuff,” says Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion, a San Francisco-based startup best known for providing a free, web-based electronic health record system for doctors.

“Trackers and other wearable devices can be valuable to consumers, but they only address the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what technology can do to transform healthcare,” Howard said in a note to VentureBeat. “Real change will come when patients, doctors, and actionable health data can be found in the same place – that's when it will get super exciting."

A good deal for developers

If people on the healthcare side aren’t yet feeling good about Google Fit, developers may have reason to.

Mio Global CEO Liz Dickinson told VentureBeat that Google will radically simplify things for developers trying to build health apps for Android. Mio Global makes a heart rate tracking app. Google invited Dickinson and her company to be one of the first apps to integrate with the Google Fit platform.

She explains that apps built with the Google Fit API will work on all Android devices, so developers won’t have to build multiple versions of their health app for each Android version.

“A lot of the app development so far has been done in iOS because you just have to build one app,” Dickinson told VentureBeat. “It’s been hard to have consistent device support on the Android side because of the stratification [of Android].”

Google Fit uses an open architecture to create something like an open transport layer that lays over all types of Android devices, Dickinson says.

So apps built with the Google Fit API will be able to easily share biometrics and fitness data with other apps and devices, through the platform.

This may make a big difference, because it might make health app developers feel a lot better about developing for Android. It should also let consumers move their health data around easily.

For instance, a person could track their steps with one app, their diet with another, and their heart rate with another, then port it all out to yet another app for analysis.

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Monkey Parking creating “parking rage” in San Francisco

Above: Park at My House CEO Anthony Eskinazi

Image Credit: Courtesy Anthony Eskinazi

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Monkey Parking is creating “parking rage” in San Francisco.

That’s the opinion of Parkatmyhouse.com chief executive Anthony ‘Tony’ Eskinazi. The entrepreneur launched his company eight years ago in London. His app lets people rent out space in their garage or driveway. Parkatmyhouse has 500,000 users worldwide, pulled in $10 million last year, counts BMW as a financial backer, and will soon unveil a mobile app in the U.S.

“Monkey Parking is causing lots of tension,” Eskinazi, a Brit of Turkish descent, said. “They’re a headache. They’re creating parking rage.”

He may be right.

Monkey Parking incurred the wrath of San Francisco’s district attorney Dennis Herrera on Monday. Herrera sent a letter to the startup, saying its app — which allows people leaving a public parking space to auction it off to nearby drivers — is illegal in San Francisco.

Herrera, in a firm but finely worded tome, threatened to sue Rome-based Monkey Parking and its baby-faced chief executive Paolo Dobrowolny if they didn’t cease and desist by July 11. Read Herrera’s letter here.

Eskinazi and his team in London have created their own global parking ecosystem, with churches, schools, and government all using the app, he said. He said his app works with the law, not breaking it, and that one of his customers has made nearly $500,000 renting out garage space near the Chunnel high-speed rail terminal in London.

Eskinazi said Monkey Parking is giving legitimate parking apps a bad name.

“Monkey Parking is not kosher. It’s a terrible solution that doesn’t solve problems,” Eskinazi said.

For his part, Monkey Parking founder Dobrowolny is treading a delicate line. In an email to VentureBeat, Dobrowolny said he was consulting with lawyers on his next move. He didn’t specify whether they were Italian or American attorneys.

Eskinazi pointed out that Parkatmyhouse is above legitimate because it works on the premises of private property owners and forbids the using of public streets and spaces, unlike Monkey Parking. Indeed, Eskinazi has created an entirely new living paradigm for some using the app, saying many users are supplementing their incomes with easy cash, pensioners for example.

Parkatmyhouse has so far gained very little traction in the States — currently around 15,000 users — but the ambitious Eskinazi said that will soon change with the launch of a new app focusing on the U.S. market.

Indeed, he plans to announce a new round of funding by BMW in the coming days to help bankroll the expansion in the U.S.

As for Monkey Parking, Eskinazi and his team are keeping an eye on its fate.

“We are monitoring the situation there very closely,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon’s Fire TV vs. Google’s Android TV: The microconsole war no one asked for

Above: The Android platformer Leo's Fortune.

Image Credit: Senri

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Some of the biggest corporations in the world are starting a second video game console war, and it’s one that most people don’t seem to care about.

Today, Google introduced its Android TV platform at its Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco. This isn’t one specific device — it is instead a version of the Android operating system that Google built to work with televisions. Android TV devices will play movies and shows, but they’ll also act as gaming devices. That puts Google’s new platform in direct competition with Amazon’s Fire TV in a living-room gaming battle that probably won’t have most people looking away from their triple-A PlayStation 4 games.

As with standard Android, third-party vendors can take this software, integrate it into their device, and sell it. That means gadget companies like Razer, Asus, and more will soon introduce Android TV set-top boxes. It also means that television manufacturers, like Sony, will integrate the OS directly into TV sets. For consumers, this provides a way to search the Internet with the TV, access Android apps, and play games.

This fight is mostly about providing the service that sells television content. Most people spend hours every day in front of the TV, and Amazon, Google, and Apple want a slice of the money when people go to rent or buy television shows and movies. All three companies have huge libraries of thousands of shows and movies, but most people don’t want to invest in an ecosystem just for their phone or tablet. Bringing Android to the TV may convince some people to start looking to the Google Play store for more of their entertainment, and that include games.

Google is hoping to set Android TV apart by including its powerful search tools, which makes perfect sense. You see an actor in a show and Android TV can tell you their name.

“Google's core search functionality is central to the foray into television — something that AppleTV currently lacks — and aims to leverage digital content via Google Play,” R.W. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian wrote in a note to investors following today’s event. “By providing Google with another native user device, Android TV likely enhances app monetization via Google Play and increases advertising opportunities over the long term.”

While movies, TV, and search all fit with television, the games part of Android TV doesn’t make as much sense. As with microconsoles like Ouya and Gamestick and Fire TV, Android TV will once again bring what are essentially mobile games to the big screen in the family room. Even though these devices are all relatively inexpensive (Fire TV with a game controller is $140), most people don’t seem to care.

Gamers love their mobile games on a smartphone and a tablet, but when they get home, the TV is for premium experiences on an Xbox One or PlayStation 4.

So, why even include games?

Amazon and Google now have Apple TV competitors, and both support gaming. One of the big reasons for that is because Android already has that functionality, and it works well with multiple input devices. It’s almost easier to include gaming than to come up with some reason not to.

Of course, the other big reason Amazon and Google want games in their television strategies is because of the money. Games generate more revenue on mobile than any other kind of content. Free-to-play hits like Candy Crush Saga made nearly $1 billion last year. Gamers spent nearly $16 billion on mobile games in 2013.

Maybe the audience that is dropping cash on mobile will want similar experiences on the TV, and maybe they’d pay for a device that runs Android TV. We haven’t seen that play out yet, and the market is already getting crowded if you count the Android-based microconsoles like Ouya, Gamestick, and Nvidia Shield as well.

Is Fire TV or Android TV better for games?

For now, if you want a connected television experience that also plays games, your best option for that is Fire TV or Android TV. These two options are pretty similar with a few differences.

Fire TV and Android TV both run Android games. The big difference is that Fire TV pulls content from the Amazon App Store, which has fewer games than the proper Google Play market on Android. With Android TV, you can access and play the games you may already own for your Galaxy S5 or HTC One.

The other obvious difference is that Fire TV comes in one microconsole design where Android TV will come in a variety of shapes and sizes. For the Amazon, that means you know what you’re going to get, but you also won’t have any choice. For Google, you may have to do more research, but you may get a product that better fits your situation.

For example, Sony is going to include Android TV built into all of its 2015 televisions. If you’re in the market for a new set, you can just get that and have access to Android games without anything extra lying around your entertainment center. On the other hand, the gaming-hardware experts at Razer are making their own microconsole based on Android TV. This may come with top-of-the-line components and a controller that feels great.

Razer is certainly already talking big: "This is a console of the future," chief executive Min-Liang Tan said in a statement. "Built on Google's incredible Android TV platform, the Razer microconsole incorporates not only hardcore and casual gaming, but music, movies and other entertainment and social applications, all on an affordable system."

Razer isn’t talking specifics about the price, but it did release a photo. It kinda looks like a Fire TV:

Above: The Razer microconsole.

Image Credit: Razer

Of course, having a bunch of options isn’t always a good thing.

“Given that Android TV will be initially available only to those with supported sets — and high-end ones at that — widespread adoption of the platform may not materialize as quickly as experienced with Android smartphones and tablets or Apple TV boxes,” said Sebastian.

In the end, all this stuff kinda doesn’t matter. What does is how well Android TV and Fire TV play games. We can answer that right now for Amazon’s box: It does an OK job with gaming on the television, but its library is what sticks out. Phone games aren’t exciting in the living room, and even the stuff built from the ground up — like Amazon’s own Sev Zero — kinda just feels like an off-brand generic version of the “real games” you would find on an Xbox or PlayStation.

But hey, your kids will have something else to play Minecraft on.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where cu... read more »

Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major glob... read more »