How smartphones helped NASA to build tiny satelites you can hold in your hand
How smartphones helped NASA to build tiny satelites you can hold in your hand
New chips and more powerful software aren't just making better phones, they're improving our ability to explore space
A model of NASA's Nodes cubesat on show at Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley on March 8, 2016.
The same advances in electronics that bring us ever more powerful smartphones are helping NASA become more nimble in exploring the universe.
Engineers are taking advantage of the low-cost, highly integrated components developed for phones and using them to build satellites that are small enough to hold in your hand. They're easier to build and cheaper to launch than conventional satellites, and provide a testing ground for other technologies used in space.
The technology allows for "fast, affordable, transformative missions. We can try new things more quickly, take risks that we might not take with a much larger spacecraft, and we’re using it as platform to develop and test new technologies that might be useful for spacecraft of any size," said Andrew Petro, who heads the small satellites program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
He spoke recently at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, where some of the small satellite work was on show.
Typical of the work being done here is Nodes, a pair of "cubesats" scheduled for launch from the International Space Station in early April. Each measures just 10 centimeters across and 17 centimeters long and weighs 2 kilograms.
They're the epitome of low-cost engineering: they run the open source Android OS and use strips of a metal tape measure for their antennae -- a popular choice for cubesat builders because they they can be folded down for launch and then spring up by themselves when they need to be opened up.
The Nodes satellites will orbit the Earth, relaying information back and forth between each other and to stations on the ground. Sometimes one will take the lead and coordinate communications, at other times the other will. It's a test of a more flexible networking system that will help NASA work out the best way for multiple spacecraft to talk to each other relay data back to Earth.
Until now, that hasn't been much of a concern because most satellites operate independently, but with cubesat projects several can work in unison.
One such project, AeroCube 6, has involved two cubesats collecting radiation measurements in space, said Richard Welle, director of the microsatellite systems department at The Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, California., which is working with NASA.
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With a single spacecraft, it's impossible to know if an uptick in radiation is due to some event that happened at a particular time, or if the spacecraft traveled through an area of increased radiation. Two spacecraft can help sort that out, because each takes measurements at slightly different times and locations. A swarm of cubesats provides even greater accuracy.
"There are kinds of data that you can’t collect with single spacecraft but you can with large [numbers of] spacecraft," Welle said.
While AeroCube 6 uses two satellites, some projects plan greater numbers working in unison. The Nodes mission is integral to those efforts, helping to figure out the most efficient way for small groups of cubesats to talk to each other.
Just because the satellites are small and low-cost doesn't mean the are any less ready for space. In a lab at the Ames Research Center, cubesats are put through their paces to ensure they're ready for the rigors of launch, deployment and a life in space.
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"We like to say we 'shake and bake and sometimes break,'" said Lynn Hofland, who runs the lab.
It has machines for testing vibration, shock, G-force, extreme cold and the ability to survive in a vacuum.
NASA has a busy schedule of future cubesat missions, and other projects are planned and in operation by companies, universities and other organizations.
As the innovations in electronics keep bringing new capabilities to handheld computers, Hofland's shake-and-bake lab will be busy for some time yet.
Are you drinking while tweeting? This algorithm can tell
Are you drinking while tweeting? This algorithm can tell
Using machine learning, it can also figure out where you're imbibing.
Tweeting under the influence may not get you in as much trouble as drunk driving does, but it can still mean a whole lot of hot water. Now there’s an algorithm that can tell when you’re drinking while tweeting—and also figure out where you’re imbibing.
Using machine learning, researchers at the University of Rochester have created a system that can find alcohol-related tweets and determine whether they were made by someone who was actually drinking at the time. It can also pick out whether those tweeters were drinking at home or somewhere else.
Equipped with that knowledge, the researchers compared the results for different locations in New York State. Eventually, they hope to use the technology to study the health implications of alcohol.
So, how did they do it?
The researchers began by collecting geotagged tweets sent over 12 months up to July 2014 from New York City and nearby suburban and rural areas. Then they zeroed in on those that included alcohol-related words, such as “drunk” or “beer,” and put the Mechanical Turk crowds to work to help confirm the context.
Specifically, Mechanical Turk workers read the tweets to confirm not only that the tweeter was talking about using alcohol personally, but also that he or she was consuming it while tweeting.
To figure out the settings from which the tweeters sent their tweets, the researchers focused on words and phrases that people tend to use in tweets sent from their homes, such as “bath” or “sofa,” and confirmed the geolocated results once again via Mechanical Turk.
They used all that information to train a machine-learning algorithm, which they hope to use to better understand alcohol consumption patterns and how they vary with location and other factors. That data could help them do things like relate the number of places to buy alcohol in a region to the amount of home drinking that takes place there.
A paper describing the work will be presented at the International Conference on Web and Social Media in May.
Hands-on with Zotac's tiny VR-ready PC
Hands-on with Zotac's tiny VR-ready PC
Zotac's Magnus EN380 packs a full-on water-cooled GeForce GTX 980 and Skylake processor.
If you want VR in your living room but don't want a PC bigger than a small child to run it, Zotac has a pint-sized VR-ready Magnus EN980 that might excite you.
Zotac teased its Magnus last week, but on Wednesday, I got to actually touch the sole prototype in the United States, and it’s a dozy.
The PC measures approximately 9 x 8 x 5 inches. Inside you’ll find a Core i5-6400 and GeForce GTX 980. Both are liquid-cooled using a closed-loop cooler and 120mm radiator and fan.
That GPU is not to be confused with the full-length desktop card of the same name. It’s actually the laptop version of the confusingly named GeForce GTX 980. Confusion aside, the card is rated by Nvidia for VR in laptops. In my tests of laptops with the same GPU, I've found the card to be every bit fast as the desktop version.
The CPU is socketed but Zotac officials tell me it’ll take major surgery to get to it. It’s not impossible, but it’s not intended to be messed with. The same goes for the GeForce GTX 980, for that matter, which sits in an MXM module that is technically serviceable but not for the faint of heart.
The only truly serviceable parts are accessed by removing the bottom of the device, which reveals two DDR3 SO-DIMM slots, a spot for a 2.5-inch hard drive or SSD, and an M.2 slot.
The choice of RAM is an interesting one. I expected DDR4 modules to match the Skylake chip, but Zotac said it decided to go with DDR3L because it’s easier to buy.
The M.2 setup will be a little disappointing for performance freaks. M.2 can be wired to run on PCIe or over SATA, and Zotac choose the later. I’m not certain, but it’s possible this is due to a lack of PCIe lanes in the chipset. The chipset model wasn’t disclosed but I’m told it’s a 100-series Intel part.
Front and back ports
The port setup is reasonable and includes four USB 3.0 ports (but oddly not USB 3.1), two DisplayPorts, and two HDMI ports. There’s also two gigabit ethernet ports plus two antenna ports for the 802.11AC.
The unit features two power plugs that go to the same power brick. One plug powers the PC’s components while the second powers the CLC water cooler in the box.
Zotac officials were still finalizing the specs for the HDMI and DisplayPort but I’m hoping for HDMI 2.0 so it works with 4K Ultra HD televisions. Televisions rarely if ever have DisplayPort.
The front port configuration is a little unusual. You get a USB Type A and USB Type C, both of which are USB 3.1 Gen 2, which means “full” 10Gbps speeds. (Why there isn’t USB 3.1 on back I don’t know.) Both are powered by an Asmedia chip so there’s no Thunderbolt 3 or DisplayPort functionality from these. You also get an SD card reader and analog audio ports.
Pricing and availability
Zotac says its hasn't set a price yet but I’m going to guess it’ll be between $1,500 and $2,000. Here's my reasoning: You really can’t buy into a gaming laptop for less than $2,200. But that includes OS, RAM, Storage, keyboard, and monitor, too. The EN980 will come bare-bones, so you’ll have to add RAM, storage, and OS. There's a price premium for small computers but I can’t see this costing close to what companies charge for an entire laptop.
The Magnus won’t be available for a few months, with this summer as the target. Zotac has no plans for a Steam version just yet, so it’ll likely be Windows for most machines initially.
What the next version of Android TV might mean for cord cutters
What the next version of Android TV might mean for cord cutters
Android N plants the seeds for a futuristic DVR and brings picture-in-picture mode back to TVs.
Although Google doesn’t seem to know exactly what to do with Android TV, its never-quite-baked platform for smart TVs and streaming boxes, the company does have some interesting ideas.
With the upcoming Android N release, Google is promising picture-in-picture mode on the big screen, and it has announced a developer tool called “TV Recording” that sounds intriguing on its face. Details are still scarce, but both additions could help Android TV stand out from Google’s far more popular Chromecast.
As someone who’s rooted for Android TV despite its many faults, I started digging around to find out what Android N might do for people who’ve cut the cable-TV cord. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
TV Recording: Reinvention, or reinventing the wheel?
One of Android TV’s most promising—but also most overlooked—features is a built-in app called Live Channels that’s supposed to serve as a unified menu for live video sources. Imagine, for instance, if the live feeds from Sling TV, Pluto.TV, CBS News, and your antenna could all live under one channel guide, like the one you get with a cable box. That’s the promise of Live Channels.
Unfortunately, Live Channels depends on support from third-party app makers, and so far they haven’t embraced the concept. Several big-name services that were supposed to feed into Live Channels last year have since backed off, and when I spoke to the Android TV team in November, they admitted the concept has been slow to progress.
But instead of backing down, Google said it was focusing on the concept even more, and hinted at plans to combine live and on-demand viewing into a single seamless experience. That brings us to TV Recording in Android N.
Right now, TV Recording is little more than a set of buttons. It doesn’t magically imbue video apps with recording capabilities, nor does it automatically bring new sources into the guide. All TV Recording does—at least as it’s described now—is allow TV apps that support recording in some fashion to feed those capabilities into the Live Channels app.
Here’s an example: If you have an HDHomeRun networked tuner, you can currently stream broadcast channels from an antenna to your Android TV device over Wi-Fi and view them within Live Channels. You can’t currently record or time-shift those broadcasts, but that’ll change later this year when HDHomeRun adds DVR service. At that point, TV Recording could allow users to schedule and watch their shows through the Live Channels app. (I’m guessing Google will rename the app if DVR becomes a centerpiece.)
Granted, this does nothing to solve the lack of sources for Live Channels. HDHomeRun can just as easily relegate DVR to its own app, and it’s hard to imagine many big streaming services allowing fon-device video recording.
Why even bother with this capability, then? I have a few theories:
- Google could court cord cutters by allowing antenna input in Android TV set-top boxes, paving the way for DVR software that feeds into Live Channels. (This would be awesome, but is wild speculation on my part.)
- Google is banking on the FCC to open up the cable-box market, paving the way for Android TV-based DVRs that anyone can buy. (Google is a key proponent of what the FCC is proposing, so consider this an educated guess.)
- TV Recording is just part of Google’s ho-hum plan to make Android TV a set-top box platform for big pay-TV operators. (This initiative is already underway with some operators in Europe and Asia.)
In any case, cord cutters can hope that the new features bring more attention to the Live Channels concept, resulting in more apps and services that want to feed into the channel guide.
The return of picture-in-picture
A more immediate benefit of Android N is the long-awaited arrival of split-screen and picture-in-picture multitasking for apps. This once-common feature of high-end TVs has largely disappeared from modern sets, but now Google is bringing it back.
According to the Android N documentation, users can invoke picture-in-picture by holding down the remote’s home button while a video plays. This sends the video to one corner of the screen in a 240-by-135-pixel window while the user does something else in the app or switches to a different app. (It’s unclear, however, if users will be able watch two videos at the same time, or play a game and watch a video simultaneously.)
Apps won’t support picture-in-picture by default. Instead, developers will have to declare picture-in-picture support and define what happens when their videos switch to small-screen mode. So as with Live Channels, it’s anyone’s guess whether developers will get on board with what could be a standout feature for Android TV.
Keep In mind that none of these concepts will materialize until later this year when Android N is complete. And because “great ideas, weak execution” defines so much of the Android TV experience, it’s worth keeping some skepticism handy while we wait for Google’s plans to shape up.
Alexa is your personal trainer with Amazon Echo's new Fitbit support
Alexa is your personal trainer with Amazon Echo's new Fitbit support
"Hey Alexa, how many calories did I burn today?"
Amazon Echo’s voice assistant Alexa has a slew of skills. She can dim your lights, stream a Spotify playlist, and even order you a large pie from Domino’s. On Thursday, Fitbit integration turns Alexa into a coach who encourages you each morning to meet your fitness goals with inspirational phrases like, “Every step is a step in the right direction.”
FITBIT
Once you activate Fitbit in the Alexa app, you’ll be able to ask questions that pull in your activity-tracking data, like, “Alexa, ask Fitbit how many calories I have left” before you reach for the ice cream in your freezer, or “Alexa, ask Fitbit how I’m doing today” to get a summary of your activity and a push to keep going. She’ll offer different words of encouragement depending on the time of day.
If you’re diligent about tracking your food and water intake and logging your weight in the Fitbit app, Alexa can also tell you how much water you’ve had that day and how much you weigh. There are 58 prompts in all, and Alexa can tap data for the entire week, not just the current day. Alexa integration works with all Fitbit models, including the new Blaze and Alta.
Checking data on the actual device or in the Fitbit app isn’t exactly challenging or time-consuming, but Amazon Echo is all about speed and convenience. What I’m most intrigued by is the potential for Alexa’s future Fitbit-based functionality.
“As we look at how this integration could evolve in the future, there is an endless world of possibilities from fitness coaching and nutrition tips, to guidance before bedtime to help you get a more restful night’s sleep,” Tim Roberts, Fitbit’s executive vice president of interactive, said in a press statement.
Fitbit is also integrated with Microsoft’s Cortana assistant, so you can log meals with your voice instead of manually in the Fitbit app. That feature isn't yet available for Alexa, so you can't input your food intake by telling her what you ate for dinner.
Alexa will never be able to prepare nourishing meals for you or force you to go to the gym, but positive affirmation goes a long way to staying healthy.
This trick can quickly fix many mysterious hardware failures
This trick can quickly fix many mysterious hardware failures
Every now and then something breaks on your computer. Maybe you get a bad system update from Microsoft or cosmic rays flip the wrong bit on your system. Whatever the cause, often your problem has nothing to do with hardware, but lies within the software powering it, instead.
This recently happened to me when a USB 3.0 port on my system suddenly stopped working. I wasn't sure how it happened, and when I looked into the problem Windows displayed its infamous "error code 43." Luckily, this problem can often be fixed in just a few clicks. Try this out before freaking out if one of your PC components suddenly stops working.
Device Manager
On Windows 8.1, right-click the Start button and select Device Manager from the contextual menu. Windows 7 users can find out how to open Device Mangerhere.
Let's continue using the borked USB port example. Fixing code 43 isn't just for USB devices, though—it's a quick tip you can use to help troubleshoot any PC component that ceases to work due to a software issue.
Once the device manager is open look for the heading that says Universal Serial Bus controllers and click it to reveal a list of all the USB devices on your PC.
In the list, you may see an item that has a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it and says "Unknown Device." Click on that and another window will open. Under the General tab you'll see a window that saysDevice status. For this tip to work, that window should say "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)".
Now it's time to get to work.
Open the Driver tab and then click theUninstall button. This will remove the USB controllers driver software (the low-level programming that makes the hardware work) from your system.
Next, you have to put it back. Close the smaller window for your USB device and in the main Device Manager window clickAction > Scan for hardware changes. Windows will notice that the USB device is lacking driver software and will reinstall it.
After that's done, you can click on the USB device again and under the Generaltab and under Device status it should now say the device is working properly.
When your fast PC suddenly slows down
When your fast PC suddenly slows down
Rodolfo's laptop "started to slow down 2 days ago." A number of factors can cause that change.
Let's start with the easiest and most obvious fix: Have you rebooted lately? A lot of people leave their PCs on 24/7, or put them into sleep or hibernation mode rather than shutting them down completely. But a simple, full reboot can clean out a lot of Windows' temporary cobwebs.
Did that do the trick? If not, we'll have to do some detective work.
What's new?
Ask yourself what's changed recently. Did you install a new program? New hardware? Updated a driver? If so, try undoing what you did.
You can uninstall a program from Control Panel's Programs and Features tool.
Suspect a driver? Search for and openDevice Manager. Then find and double-click the new driver. In the resulting dialog box, click the Driver tab, then theRoll Back Driver button. If that button is grayed out, the problem isn't with that driver.
If you added new hardware, remove it, then go to Device Manager, find the device, right-click it, and select Uninstall.
Find the bad process
None of those panned out? Then look for an overly large process that's hogging the CPU or memory. Right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager or Start Task Manager. Click the Processes tab, then the CPU column header.
If there's one big hog clogging the CPU, you'll see it. And you should be able to tell by the name or the description which program launched that process.
You can also click the Memory column and see if there's a hog there, as well.
Closing that program should fix the problem temporarily. If not, go back to Task Manager and see if the process is still running. If it is, select it and click End Process.
That's only a temporary fix. To kill the problem permanently, find a better program that does the same job, then uninstall the application that was causing the problem (and let the publisher know why you stopped using their program).
Scan for malware
Malware rarely causes a serious performance hit. The last thing cybercrooks want is for you to get suspicious. But it's worth looking into. Follow my previous advice for discovering and tracking down malicious code.
Windows System Restore: You can adjust this utility to save your PC image more often
Windows System Restore: You can adjust this utility to save your PC image more often
I noticed that Windows wasn’t creating restore points as often as I wanted them. I set out to discover how I—and you—can better control how often this vital task happens without manual intervention.
Just about any new problem that makes Windows behave badly can be fixed by opening Windows’ System Restore and returning to an earlier time. But this only works if you have a restore point that was created before the unfortunate changes.
Restore points are also vital to Windows’ File History feature. If you want to go back to last Thursday’s version of that spreadsheet, you'd better hope that a restore point was created last Thursday. (You can avoid this problem with a good backup program.)
So you need to take control of how often Windows creates these points.
Set up Windows to create new points on a regular basis. Type
restore point in the Start menu’s Search field or Windows 8’s Search charm, and select Create a restore point. Once the dialog box is up, you could simply click the Create button to create one point. But your goal is to automate the process, not do it manually.
In the list of available drives, select your C: drive. Then click the Configure button.
In the resulting dialog box, select Restore system settings and previous versions of files.Set the Max Usage slider as high as you can comfortably go. The more space you give it, the more restore points will be available the next time you need one.
There’s another dialog box that offers more control on when and how often restore points are created. Search for
Task Scheduler Library>Microsoft>Windows>SystemRestore.
task and select Task Scheduler. Navigate the left pane as if it were Windows/File Explorer, and go to Task Scheduler Library>Microsoft>Windows>SystemRestore.
In the top section of the middle pane, double-click the only option, SR. In the resulting dialog box, you’ll find six tabs where you can change a great many settings.
For instance, you can change the time that the backup happens, postpone the creation until the PC is idle, or have it create a restore only once a month.
Note that although the default setting runs the task daily, the task itself will create a restore point only if it’s been seven days since the last one. That’s about right for protecting Windows, although it’s insufficient for data files.
It’s also worth nothing that certain actions trigger restore point creation. For instance, Windows Update creates one before updating Windows. And many installation routines start by creating one.
