Headworx

2014 is yet another Google I/O I missed. You simply cannot be everywhere. And I barely have time to catch up. Feedly more or less keeps me informed every morning when I browse through around 100 news items that keep flowing my way every day via subscribed RSS feeds. Yes I still use RSS, not Twitter, as my main information source. BTW: an idea for an app: offline reader for the most popular articles and news items referenced by given Twitter hashtags: subscribe to several #, hit refresh when online and it all gets sucked into the local cache (like in the Pocket). I'd pay $10 for an app like this one. So would probably a million other people. Does $10M budget seem interesting? But back to Google and the Subject Line. I am absolutely amazed with the Material Design presented by Google. When this is implemented in Android itself and in the most popular apps (of course it will be!), Android is going to be the most beautiful and desired OS on the planet. Material affects not only ...

The moment I plugged the new Samsung 4k monitor (the U28D590D - what a name!) to my 3-year old Lenovo X220 laptop and it booted with less-than-optimal 2560x1600 resolution I thought "I knew - it won't be capable of running this thing". But a short search brought me the Intel knowledge base article about setting custom resolutions with graphic adapters. My X220 runs the old (by today's standard) Intel HD 3000 graphics card. To my surprise I was able to enter 3840x2160@30p and it all clicked! My tiny old laptop is now running this 4k monster at full resolution. 30 frames a second is not bad, as long as it is progressive (can only do this via DisplayPort or HDMI 1.4, which the machine does not have). The experience of having more than 8 million pixels or screen real estate is awesome. I'm upgrading from Apple 27-inch cinema display and it feels like I have twice the space (which I have!). It also seems 4K resolution at 28 inch is maximum that makes sense. Anythin...

A water valve seems easy. Close when a flood is sensed. But that is reactive. I wanted it more proactive. Why not shut down water pipes BEFORE there is a leak? Of course I installed sensors (wireless) that detect leakage and close the main valve. This is easy in most home automation systems. But then I thought water should be shut down whenever the house is not occupied. Meaning when the burglar alarm is armed or there is no motion / presence detected for a certain time. It was almost that easy until I realized the washing machine is often programmed to wash when we are away. So the valve should open when a washing cycle is active. This has no longer been so easy, how do you detect a washing cycle? I never wanted to introduce a special extra user interface. The washing machine has a simple dial to delay the cycle by up to 8 hours. The UI is super intuitive and we use it almost every day, leaving for work in the morning, we set it to +7 hours, so the cycle starts just in time to fin...

As we started meeting potential customers (and investors), one of the most commonly repeated question has been: "Why Bluetooth Smart?". Or more precisely, "In a residential environment, what would be the problem it can solve, while WiFi/Zigbee/Zwave can’t?". The answer is: there are several use cases where Bluetooth Smart helps. A lot! Let me talk about some of them. The key difference between Bluetooth Smart and all other wireless protocols is it is the only one communicating directly with a smart phone (or a tablet or a smart watch...). Even WiFi is not direct, as it goes through an access point. Being direct peer-to-peer the devices know if they are close to each other. We call this proximity. Scenarios? Indoor location is #1. You enter a room (well.. your phone enters a room - but we start considering this equal :) and the lights come up. You leave the room (your phone or a smart watch does) and the iron goes off. This is simple. But can be more sophisticate...

My first post on WiFi vs Bluetooth ignited a fierce discussion. So let's continue this interesting debate. Today about power consumption: this one is rather obvious. Bluetooth Smart has been designed to run connected sensors on coin batteries for years. And it delivers on that promise. Even with the current generation of Bluetooth Smart chipsets, it is possible to bring the average current draw below 20uA with 1Hz reporting frequency. This means more than 4 years lifetime on a single CR2477 coin battery (assuming 800mAh battery capacity, 800/0.02/24/365=4.56). This is roughly speaking 10x-20x better than the same application on WiFi. Today it is simply not possible to build a battery - powered WiFi device that will last at least one year with decent responsiveness. Wanna proof? Look at what Lockitron is saying about the Electric Imp WiFi module: A little back story on WiFi - when we originally announced WiFi, the power consumption estimates presented to us by potential WiF...