After four years on the market, Google has announced a sequel to the original Google Home. Meet the Google Nest Audio, the company's new mainstream smart speaker. The device is in stores now for $99.99, a price drop over the original $129 Google Home.
There's not much reason to upgrade a speaker, but a big part of the sales pitch here is that this should have better sound than the original Google Home. Google says the new speaker is 75 percent louder than the original Google Home, with 50 percent stronger bass. These speakers are packing some seriously beefy speaker equipment and are over double the weight of the original Google Home.
The speaker is also supposedly pretty smart. Google says "Our Media EQ feature enables Nest Audio to automatically tune itself to whatever you're listening to: music, podcasts, audiobooks, or even a response from Google Assistant. And Ambient IQ lets Nest Audio also adjust the volume of Assistant, news, podcasts, and audiobooks based on the background noise in your home, so you can hear the weather forecast over a noisy dishwasher." Like the Nest Mini, this features a next-gen, onboard version of the Google Assistant that "learns your most common music commands and responds two times faster than the original Google Home."
After what felt like a thousand leaks, Google's flagship smartphone for 2020, the Pixel 5, is finally official. As we've been expecting, this phone doesn't feature top-of-the-line hardware and is instead more midrange, with a Snapdragon 765G SoC. If you've been following the leaks, the main news we were looking for today is the price, which is $699.
The specs include a 6-inch, 2340 x 1080 OLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate, a Snapdragon 765G SoC, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 4080mAh battery. The phone has wireless charging, 18W quick charging over USB-C, and IP68 dust and water resistance. There are two cameras on the back, a 12MP main camera which reportedly is the same sensor the Pixel line has been using for years, a second 16MP wide-angle lens, and an 8MP front camera.
The Pixel 5 design looks just like a Pixel 4a, but a bit more high-end. It has an all-screen front featuring slim bezels and a hole-punch camera. The Pixel 5 looks like it has fully symmetrical bezels all the way around instead of a thicker chin on the bottom like the cheaper 4a. On the back, there's a throwback capacitive fingerprint reader—a contrast to the in-screen fingerprint readers most phones ship with—and a camera block. The design back is also very reminiscent of the Pixel 4a with a simple, one-color design that wraps around the sides. The two-tone motif of the Pixel 4 (which had a flat back and contrasting sides) or the Pixel 1/2/3 (which had a contrasting top half) has been abandoned.
We consider ourselves well-versed when it comes to the technical literature plastered on hardware store parts. Acronyms don’t frighten us, and our Google-fu is strong enough to overcome most mysteries. One bit of dark magic we didn’t understand was the gobbledygook on LED lamps. Wattage is easy and color temperature made sense because it corresponds with warm and cool colors, but Color Rendering Index (CRI) sounds like deep magic. Of course, some folks understand these terms so thoroughly that they can teach the rest of us, like [Jon] and [Kevin], who are building a light controller that corrects inadequacies in cheap lamps by installing several lamps into one unit.
We learned a lot by reading their logs, which are like the Cliff Notes from a lighting engineer’s textbook, but we’ll leave it as an exercise for the students to read through. Their project uses precise light sensors to measure the “flavor” of light coming off cheap lamps so you can mix up a pleasing ratio. In some ways, they are copying the effects of incandescent bulbs, which emit light relatively evenly across the visible light spectrum, right into the infrared. Unfortunately, cheap LEDs have holes in their spectrum coverage, and a Warm White unit has different gaps compared with Daylight, but combining them just right gives a rich output, without breaking the bank.
The new Chromecast with Google TV. It comes in colors. [credit: Google ]
Alongside the launch of the Pixel 5, today Google is making major changes to its TV strategy and merging its products, Chromecast and Android TV, into a single device. Oh, it's also changing the name of Android TV. Meet the redundantly named "Google Chromecast with Google TV" a Chromecast that, instead of being just a streaming endpoint you control with a phone, runs Android and comes with a remote.
The new HDMI dongle is $49.99, and it looks like a replacement for the Chromecast Ultra, since it supports 4K and HDR10. Google didn't officially release specs yet, but since this is already for sale in some stores, we know the specs. It's powered by an Amlogic S905X2 SoC, which has four 1.8GHz Cortez A53 cores and a Mali-G31MP2 GPU. There's also 2GB of RAM, a measly 4.4GB of user storage (there is probably 8GB total), 802.11ac, and Bluetooth 4.1.
Since this is a low-power streaming device with almost no storage, you would think playing games on Google Stadia would be a major part of the sales pitch, but Google didn't mention the streaming service once during the live event. The Stadia Twitter account tweeted that support would be coming in the first half of 2021.
When Nikola and GM announced a partnership on September 8, GM said it expected the deal to close by September 30. Now September 30 has arrived, and the deal hasn't closed. Media reports indicate that the deal is unlikely to close today.
A GM spokesman confirmed the delay in an email to Ars. "Our transaction with Nikola has not closed. We are continuing our discussions with Nikola and will provide further updates when appropriate."
Also this morning, Nikola published a revised overview of the company's business strategy. It discussed Nikola's plans to manufacture semitrucks in Europe and the United States, build a network of hydrogen fuel stations, and even plans for an electric all-terrain vehicle. But conspicuously missing from the document was any mention of the Badger pickup truck—the one that GM was supposed to manufacture for Nikola under the now-delayed partnership.
Enlarge/ Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), attends an event about coronavirus vaccine development in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 15, 2020, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Drew Angerer)
Trump administration officials have once again sidelined the head of the country’s leading public health agency while crafting public health policy. This time, officials torpedoed a plan to extend the “no-sail” order on cruise ships until next year.
Cruise ships were initial hotbeds of coronavirus transmission at the start of the global pandemic, which is still far from under control in the United States. Mass outbreaks on the tightly-packed, social vessels forced the cruise industry to shut down in March, and the Centers for Disease Control issued a no-sail order that is set to expire today, Wednesday, September 30.
In a meeting in the White House Situation Room Tuesday, CDC Director Robert Redfield floated a recommendation to extend the no-sail order until February 2021, according to a report by Axios. But Vice President Mike Pence, who chaired the meeting, told Redfield that the administration will be setting a different course.
When it comes to measuring time on microcontrollers, there’s plenty of ways to go about things. For most quick and dirty purposes, such as debounce delays or other wait states, merely counting away a few cycles of the main clock will serve the purpose. Accurate to the tens of milliseconds, they get the average utility jobs done without too much fuss.
However, many projects are far more exacting in their requirements. When you’re building a clock, or a datalogger, or anything that relies on a stable sense of passing time for more than a few minutes, you’ll want a Real Time Clock. So called due to their nature of dealing with real time, as we humans tend to conceive it, these devices take it upon themselves to provide timekeeping services with a high degree of accuracy. We’ve compiled a guide to common parts and their potential applications so you can get things right the first time, every time.
Requirements Are Key
The RTC you choose for a given project will come down to a variety of factors. Battery-powered projects will benefit from a low power draw, while scientific measurement devices may need the ultimate in accuracy over time. Interfaces are important too, as implementing an RTC in an already-existing design may necessitate part choice due to the availability of I2C or SPI. Budget is not commonly a problem for the home experimenter in this space, as parts are cheap, however a production run in the thousands will make huge savings in quantity from a cheaper part. As always, having a clear idea of the project requirements is key to choosing the right component for the job.
I Just Need To Know What Time It Is!
Suggested Part: DS1307
The DS-1307 is often the default choice for an RTC. However, if you need advanced features like alarms or square wave outputs, it’s best to look upmarket.
The DS1307 has the proud title of being the de facto RTC for those experimenting with microcontrollers. Running off 5 V, with a 500 nA current draw on battery backup, it’s the barebones solution for a project that needs to keep track of time. Unlike more advanced solutions, the DS1307 relies on an external 32.768 KHz crystal for timekeeping. As per the datasheet, this means the accuracy of the timekeeping is somewhat affected by the design implementation, due to varying capacitances and noise. Maxim don’t provide a proscribed accuracy value for this reason, but for the average clock build or basic datalogger, the DS1307 will do the trick. DS1307 modules are readily available, and often the cheapest RTC solution available at most outlets.
I Need Something Accurate, With Alarms!
Suggested Part:DS3231 (I2C), DS3234 (SPI)
The DS3234 has the distinction of using an SPI interface instead of I2C. It also packs in 256 bytes of user-addressable RAM.
For those that need accuracy they can bank on, an RTC with an integrated oscillator is key. These devices guarantee accuracy from the factory, as there’s no user design error possible in the installation of the crystal. Parts like the DS3231 and DS3234 fit this bill, with their temperature-compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO) boasting accuracy as good as ±2 ppm in temperatures from 0°C to +40°C. This comes at a sacrifice to standby current, with 1500 nA more typical, meaning backup batteries don’t last as long.
These parts are more modern, able to operate at voltages between 2.3-5.5V, making them easier to use with a variety of different microcontrollers. They also feature square-wave and alarm outputs. These can be used to generate clocks for other hardware, or to wake microcontrollers out of sleep via a GPIO pin set as an interrupt. RTCs are commonly used in this way to enable battery powered projects to get the most out of their batteries, by keeping the main microcontroller in a low-power sleep mode and only waking up when necessary. There’s also a bonus temperature sensor onboard that can be read out, which may come in handy in some projects.
These modules are marketed with terms like DeadOn due to their accuracy. The additional features and more sophisticated hardware does come at a higher price, however.
I Need An RTC That Barely Sips Power, And All The Rest!
Suggested Part: RV-1805, RV-3028
The RV-1805 draws so little power that this Sparkfun module gets by without a backup battery at all. Instead, a supercap keeps time for up to 35 days without external power.
When it comes to battery power, every last bit of juice matters. For projects deployed out in the field, it’s even more crucial, as it’s often not practical to regularly change batteries or guarantee an ongoing supply of energy from alternate sources like solar or wind.
For applications like these, the RV-1805 and its newer replacement, the RV-3028 come in. Complete with alarms and other high end features, their party piece is an absolutely miniscule current draw. With a special mode that relies on a low-power RC oscillator with a crystal as calibration backup, the RV-1805 draws just 22 nA in timekeeping mode. This is low enough that Sparkfun’s module specifies only a supercap, which is capable of keeping the set time for a full 35 days, where other RTCs must rely on batteries instead. The RV-3028 ups that to 100 nA, with Pimoroni claiming a potential run time of 9 years on the included battery. Accuracy is also top notch with these parts (±2 ppm RV-1805, ±1 ppm RV-3028), making them perfect for accurate datalogging in far-flung environments.
Special Mention: Raspberry Pi Modules
The RTC Pi, a cheap and simple solution to keeping the Pi in sync when away from the Internet.
The Raspberry Pi, like many computers from the 1980s, lacks a real time clock. This obviates the need for a battery, but can also cause havoc with system logging and other duties, particularly in non-networked environments. Thankfully, many of the above listed RTC devices are available in special modules designed for the Raspberry Pi’s particular form factor. They’re available in all kinds, from the humble DS1307 to the razor-sharp DS3231.
Installing these requires a little work. The vast majority communicate over I2C, which can be a headache for projects already using the interface for other purposes. It’s also necessary to install a utility to communicate with the RTC and use it to properly update the system time where necessary.
Conclusion
Whether you’re trying to make a sweet timepiece for your loungeroom, or maintain accurate debug logs for a complicated system, accurate timekeeping is key. Thanks to the ready availability of modern hardware, it doesn’t have to be too hard. We hope this guide helps you on your way, and when your project is done, be sure to drop us a line. Happy hacking!
Enlarge/ Clouds obscure the waters off Greenland's southwest coast. (credit: NASA EO)
While the GRACE satellites were active, their incredibly precise gravity measurements tracked a loss of about 280 billion tons of ice from Greenland each year. That's glacial land ice that raises sea level as it flows into the ocean—and it's vanishing at a remarkable clip. But just how remarkable is that clip? We don't have such excellent measurements going back too far into Greenland's history.
A new study led by the University of Buffalo's Jason Briner takes this question on. We have lots of paleoclimate records of climate conditions in Greenland, the position of the ice on the landscape, and even changes in sediments carried into the sea by meltwater. None of that directly tells you how much ice was accumulating or disappearing. To put the pieces together and calculate that, you need to combine that data with a model.
Digital ice
The researchers used a high-resolution ice-sheet model simulating (roughly) the southwest quadrant of Greenland. There's a good reason for that: the ice sheet mostly melts before reaching the ocean here, making it the simplest area to simulate. Since we've been tracking things, the year-to-year growth or losses of the ice sheet here nicely mirror the Greenland-wide total. So simulate this area well, and at high resolution, and your numbers should scale to the whole ice sheet.
Enlarge/ A Starlink user terminal and wildfire-devastated areas seen in images shared by Washington state's Emergency Management Division. (credit: Washington Emergency Management Division)
SpaceX Starlink is providing Internet access to Washington state emergency responders in areas ravaged by wildfires. The group has deployed seven Starlink user terminals (i.e. satellite dishes) since it began using the service in early August, as CNBC reported yesterday:
"I have never set up any tactical satellite equipment that has been as quick to set up, and anywhere near as reliable" as Starlink, Richard Hall, the emergency telecommunications leader of the Washington State Military Department's IT division, told CNBC in an interview Monday.
The broadband service has helped both emergency responders and families in wildfire-stricken areas. Hall "has set up terminals in areas that were burned severely to provide evacuated families with wireless calling and Internet access to file insurance claims," CNBC wrote. Hall said he also "did setup to allow kids to do some of their initial schooling."
Hall said Starlink has "easily double[d] the bandwidth" compared to traditional satellite broadband and consistently provides latency of less than 30ms.
Love puppets? So does New York maker Adam Kreutinger. Adam will be showing off his skills and showing you how to make puppets at the upcoming Empire State Maker Faire — a virtual event hosted by seven New York State Maker Faires on October 16th & 17th. Apply now to […]
[Liang] began the project after being dissatisfied with existing robot animals they’d seen online. Rather than simply attempt to build a cat from memory, instead, [Liang] decided to first study a real cat to ensure the resulting robot would bear real resemblence to its biological inspiration. [Liang]’s focus was on the skeleton, as replicating the way the real skeleton worked would create a robot with more authentic movement.
Using 3D printed parts and many, many servos, we think [Liang] has done an admirable job at creating a basic robot cat platform. With an ESP32 running the show, the cat can be posed using a web interface to control the servo positions of its various joints. We look forward to future upgrades that enable fluid movement and other capabilities, particularly involving the onboard camera.
We opted to only share images from the game's gussied-up trailer that actually resemble what we saw in the hands-off demo.
CD Projekt Red has gone back on a promise that developers wouldn't be required to work overtime or face so-called "crunch time" in the run-up to November's planned release of Cyberpunk 2077. That's according to a Bloomberg report which cites an email from studio head Adam Badowski to employees, suggesting that employees would need to work "one day of the weekend" through launch to fix remaining bugs and glitches in the game.
“I know this is in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch," the email continues, as Bloomberg reports. "It’s also in direct opposition to what I personally grew to believe a while back—that crunch should never be the answer. But we’ve extended all other possible means of navigating the situation.”
"These last 6 weeks are our final sprint on a project we've all spent much of our lives on," Badowski wrote in a tweeted statement in response to the report. "Something we care for deeply. The majority of the team understands that push, especially in light of the fact that we've just sent the game to cert and every day brings us visibly closer to shipping a game we want to be proud of."
Mercedes-Benz's latest articulated bus is the eCitaro G, and it is available with solid-state batteries. [credit: Mercedes-Benz ]
Lithium-ion battery technology has made impressive gains over the years. Today's cells are cheaper than they've ever been, but lithium-ion still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of energy density compared to liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Which means that putting enough of them in a car to give it an acceptable range adds a lot of mass and volume. Which is where solid-state batteries come in.
In a traditional battery, a pair of electrodes are immersed in an electrolyte solution, and it's this liquid electrolyte that allows ions to move from one electrode to the other. But liquid electrolytes can leak, and that's not a great thing, whether the material is highly corrosive, as in a lead-acid battery, or highly flammable, as in a lithium-ion battery. So researchers around the world have been experimenting with batteries that use a solid electrolyte instead, with a particular eye on using them in electric vehicles.
And now, it seems it's a technology that is ready to be deployed, as Mercedes-Benz just announced that its new eCitaro and eCitaro G city buses will be available with roof-mounted solid-state battery packs, developed in conjunction with the Canadian power company Hydro Quebec.
I miss my friend Dave DiOrio. He was a chip designer in the 1980’s, which made him one of the true wizards back then. We met my first day when I started at Commodore Business Machines, though my paycheck said MOS Technology on it.
MOS Technology was the birthplace of the venerable 6502 microprocessor, the VIC video chip, and the SID sound chip to name the really famous ones. It also brought us the TED Text Display chip, a whole boatload of Amiga chips, and several other chips that almost did what we wanted them to do.
I worked with magicians whose stock and trade were comprised of half-part quantum tunneling effect and half-part straight-up logic implementation. These magicians weren’t bound by the number of pins available for TTL logic, not like us lowly hardware engineers who had to string 14 and 16 pin chips together to do any real lifting.
Below the spartan offices where the designs were drawn lived the dragon otherwise known as a chip fab, short for integrated circuit fabrication plant. This beast ate sand and made wafers; slices of almost pure silicon in crystalline form with all kinds of intricate things craftily grown on top of them.
Memory Lane: Touring the Abandoned MOS Headquarters
MOS Technology was started in 1969 by Allen Bradley but only became the MOS that I think of when I talk about the good old days when Chuck Peddle and a bunch of cohorts from Motorola, including Bill Mensch, swept in and produced the 6502 microprocessor, which resembled a particular Motorola processor quite a bit, in fact a lot. Lawsuits followed.
Meanwhile the 6502 was taking over several industries as the go-to processor for everything from medical equipment to microwave ovens to home computers. It was while designing home computers that I met Dave while standing above a chip fab. I can still remember the smell of that dragon farting below our feet… its an understatement to say I miss those times.
A couple of years ago I had a chance to return to the old stomping ground as it were, and set foot (legally) inside of MOS headquarters in Norristown, PA — which had become CSG (Commodore Semiconductor Group) by the end. The basement was dirty and flooded and yet we found wafers, one from one of the computers I worked on.
The ground floor was dark and quiet, I stood at the dirty glass entrance doors looking out at a drab street and I quickly moved on before I got hit by some sort of self evident metaphor for life that would have been annoying.
The second floor was where our offices had been. The hot press of design deadlines has long since left this space, now all there is to see is the golf course out the window and a little camp fire someone had made. I got to show this video to Dave, including the view looking out his old office window, and we both smiled at the thought that it was now 35 years later.
Dave has since passed away, the world has one less wizard and as the video shows, the dragon has long since gone quiet.
Delta IV Heavy nestled in its Mobile Service Tower before launch of the NROL-44 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office [credit: Trevor Mahlmann for Ars ]
United Launch Alliance has been attempting to launch a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, valued at more than $1 billion, for quite a while now. On Tuesday evening, just hours before the company's latest attempt to launch the large Delta IV Heavy booster, the mission was scrubbed again.
The weather at the launch site was far from optimal, but the mission was delayed due a technical problem with the launch pad. What is notable is that this is now the third issue that the company, ULA, has experienced with its ground systems equipment at Space Launch Complex-37 in Cape Canaveral, Florida for this flight.
The mission, dubbed NROL-44, was originally due to launch in June. When it was delayed until late August, military officials did not cite a reason for the schedule slip. However, on August 29, everything seemed nominal as the three-core rocket counted down to liftoff from its Florida-based launch pad. The countdown reached zero, the three main RS-68 engines ignited, and the launch conductor said, "Liftoff!"
