Aj the laser show guy on the worlds largest HD TV Screen.

 Aj Seabeck of Stellar Designs on the worlds largest HDTV Screen at Dallas Cowboys stadium.

He's on tour with the StarWars in Concert series and the show's come to Dallas.  Such a long way from such beginnings as the A/V nerd of Clifton Senior High school.

The massive display weighs 600 tons, is 180 feet long and 72 feet tall. It's made of 10.5 million LEDs.  13000 square feet display was installed back in May of 2009.

California poised to ban big screen TVs November 4th.

I do not necessarily agree with this, just something that arrived in my in box.
I think setting power consumption standards is actually a good thing. Don't know what levels they are actually talking about.

from The Innovation Movement <imovement@ce.org>
to John Sokol 
date Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 2:08 PM

California poised to ban big screen TVs November 4th.

Make your voice heard! Take Action! On November 4, the California Energy Commission (CEC) is set to pass new regulations that will limit the sale of big screen TVs in California by requiring that the products meet an arbitrary energy use limit. The CEC's regulation would effectively ban the sale of 25 percent of current big screen TV models and later, 100 percent of plasma TVs larger than 60 inches. For less than the amount of energy of two light bulbs-- which is typical of today's TVs -- the CEC wants to decrease consumer choice, destroy jobs, and stifle innovation. There are alternatives to these regulations that will achieve the same or better energy savings without the added costs to the California economy.  We encourage you to learn more, and then tell the CEC that you don't want state regulators to decide what TV you can buy! Thank you in advance for your willingness to get involved. Find more information on: Facebook: Californians-for-Smart-Energy Twitter: http://twitter.com/casmartenergy YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/casmartenergy

Dissection of Ambicom Bluetooth CF card

Dissection of Ambicom Bluetooth CF card.
(We were able to get this running on Arm Linux, but it was very difficult with modified driver code from manufacturer)

This is the insides of the Ambicom BT2000-CF card

More High res images of board below

Ceramic Chip Antenna's for BlueTooth. This is a similar one, not sure what the actual one is.
http://www.rainsun.com

Chips

U11 -- High performance single channel UART
Oxford Semiconductor
OXCF950-TQBG



U2 -- 4 Megabit (512K x 8-bit / 256K x 16-bit) Flash Memory, Boot Sector Flash Memory,
EON
EN29LV400AB



U1 -- CSR Bluecore2 chip
CSR
BC212


CSR chip is Bluetooth 1.2 -- Belkin uses it, don't release firmware for it.


U13 - 1Kbit Serial EEPROM
ATMEL 646
93C46


Similar card
http://osdir.com/ml/linux.bluez.user/2004-09/msg00088.html


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CSR - BC212

http://www.waggies.net/Ken/Loox/BT-A01.htm

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oxford Semiconductor OXCF950

* High performance UART with peak asynchronous data rates up to 15Mbps
* RS232/422/485 full and half duplex interfaces
* Deep 128-Byte receive/transmit fifos
* Full modem interface with hardware out of band flow control
* Automated Xon/Xoff in-band flow control
* Flexible clock prescalar allows for a wide range of baud rates
* Infra-red (IrDA) receive and transmit operation
* Support for external, 8 bit pass-through local bus for port expansion
* 2 GPIOs
* 16-bit PC Card 7.1 and CF+ 1.4 compliant
* Software compatible with industry standard 16C550 type devices
* 3.3V operation with 5V Tolerant IO
* 48 TQFP or 48 TFBGA package
* Industrial temperature range (-40 to +105°C)
* Certified device drivers for a wide range of operating systems

Description

Combining Oxford Semiconductor’s high performance UART and 16-bit PC Card/Compact Flash technology, the OXCF950 is the ideal connectivity solution for products that need to bridge serial devices to 16-bit PC Card or Compact Flash interfaces including: Cellular CDMA/GSM/GPRS, GPS, and Bluetooth wireless data cards.

This highly integrated device is backed by certified device drivers, for a wide range of operating systems, to deliver ultimate performance with reduced design cycles and accelerated time to market.

The OXCF950 is a single chip serial port solution for 16-bit PC Card and Compact Flash based serial connectivity and bridging applications. The device incorporates Oxford Semiconductor’s high performance, feature-rich UART technology that combines the industry’s fastest baud rates and deepest fifos with unrivalled flexibility. It adds up to a class leading serial connectivity solution.

Applications

* Cellular CDMA/GSM/GPRS
* Bluetooth
* GPS
* ZigBee
* Serial port expansion
* Bar-code readers
* Roll printers
* Scanners

 BC212.pdf               19-Oct-2009 04:23  2.2M  
 EN29LV400.pdf           19-Oct-2009 04:23  320K  
 SER_OXCF950_DS.pdf      19-Oct-2009 04:23  367K  
 atmel93C46.pdf          19-Oct-2009 04:23  536K  

LCD display manufacturer used in Archos video players

LCD display manufacturer used in Archos video players

It's amazingly thin and has a very sharp image.

Data Image Corporation.
http://www.dataimage.com.tw/eng/
Taiwanese web site seems to be down today.

They have a USA one.
http://www.dataimagelcd.com/

Laser TV

http://www.coherent.com/









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvMj60x0ddk
CES 2008 - Mitsubishi launched its Laser TV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHvGFEPIf5E
OLED
http://thefutureofthings.com/news/1045/not-only-on-tv-holographic-video.html

"Lifeblogging" Camera Enters Mass Production

FROM: Slashdot



"Remember Microsoft's camera to be slung around the necks of people with Alzheimer's to help them recall where they'd been? A version of this device will now be mass-produced by a UK firm, Vicon, which obtained a license from Microsoft to manufacture the camera. It is worn around the neck and takes an image every thirty seconds, or in response to its light sensor, accelerometer, or body-heat sensor indicating that something of interest may be happening. Until now only a few hundred had been made for research, which showed they can genuinely help people with memory problems. The new version will be marketed to Alzheimer's researchers this winter, and to consumers for 'lifelogging' beginning in 2010."

California appears poised to be first to ban power-guzzling big-screen TVs

California appears poised to be first to ban power-guzzling big-screen TVs
The influential lobby group Consumer Electronics Assn. is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to dissuade California regulators from passing the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen television

Human LCD - ie: Stupid human tricks.

SOUTH KOREA : High school students cheering for their soccer teams.
The most amazing thing is that they do this with their CLOTHES (not holding up cards). they have a jacket that is one color on the back, one on the front, and that they can open or close to show a third color shirt on the inside.

save RTMP streams as raw FLV's

If you've ever needed to download video that's distributed in a Flash application, you may have encountered a scenario where the video is being streamed via RTMP instead of progressively downloaded over HTTP. Luckily, there's application called rtmpdump which, as its name suggests, is able to dump an RTMP stream as if you had downloaded a standard FLV.

After downloading and building the source, you can save the contents of an RTMP stream with the following command, replacing the RTMP url and the desired output file name:

rtmpdump -r rtmp://hotname[:port]/path -o output.flv

The program is distributed with a Perl script called get_iplayer, which apparently used to be capable of quickly finding Hulu streams and passing them to rtmpdump, but it looks like this feature isn't currently working due to a recent Hulu obfuscation switcheroo. My fingers are crossed that this will be available again soon, but until then, the tool is still useful for pulling content from RTMP urls that you know about.

rtmpdump

Worlds Smallest TV - Dec 1965

from Popular Science - Dec 1965

"Here is the results of Westinghouse engineer's work with micro miniature circuitry and components: the worlds tiniest TV set. The ultimate in compact receivers stands 3½ inches in height and is hardly 4½ inches long.  It's picture tube is only 1 inch in diameter - about the size of a quarter. You'll not be able to buy one, it's being tested for applications in military and space electronic microcircuits."

Bye Bye to Acacia's Streaming Media Patent

Court Invalidates Key Patent Claims In Acacia's Streaming Media Patent

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091001/0211456380.shtml

I have reported on Acacia a known patent troll before.