Go back in time with a Divergence Meter Nixie clock

Clocks are useful things, mostly they tell the time and this is generally a good thing.

Though we live in a digital age, people do have a thing for clocks, especially those that are worn on the wrist and these come in a multitude of varieties. These were analogue, then came the invention of the digital watch and then people spent a lot of money on analogue versions again.

Clocks (as in actual clocks) have tended to remain analogue, circular discs with hands that move around pointing to digits painted (or embossed) around the edge. Clocks can be powered with some clever electronics so they keep time accurately such as using a radio time signal.

Digital clocks to exist and they use flat displays such as e-ink, OLED or LCD. They tend not to be very pretty.

In the past, lots of devices used something called a Nixie display, they look like vacuum tubes, except rather than warming up they have a variety of cold cathodes inside, shaped to look like numbers or digits. They were popular in the 1960's but there has been a recent resurgence and a numeric variety the IN-14 is still available.

Nixie tubes are filled with low pressure neon (and sometimes some other gasses or mercury to change the colour) and when a voltage (around 200V) is applied, the cathode will glow. If the gas is neon based, it's usualy a nice orange glow.

Some enterprising Ukrainians have decided to design and build pretty clocks based on Nixie tubes. These come in several varieties and can be Arduino or Raspberry Pi based using IN-14 or IN-18 Nixie tubes and in kit form or preassembled. This review is on the Arduino Shield NCS314 IN-14 variety and has an external DS18B20 temperature sensor. It's also possible to connect an external GPS that uses NMEA protocol and the clock will maintain time, however the GPS unit does need to maintain visibility of the sky so may not be suitable for indoor use.

There are also RGB LEDs that illuminate the base of the Nixie tubes, but these can be distracting rather than adding aesthetics. This also uses the Arduino MEGA board which runs the software (all available on Github).

There is a mode button which switches between time, date and alarm mode (and up and down buttons to change settings). The LEDs are turned on and off by long pressing the down button and then using the up and down buttons to change the colour.

If you're into pretty old fashioned "digital" clocks, you cant go wrong with a Nixie clock (it is beautiful). The costs vary depending on what options are selected (with/without tubes, sockets, temp sensor, GPS, Arduino Uno/MEGA), but the version shown is about $170.00

Garmin Dashcam 35

The Garmin Dashcam 35 is a little camera that can be mounted on your card dashboard and then as soon as power is applied it will start recording. It's size is 9.43 cm x 4.85 cm x 3.89 cm and it has a 3" TFT LCD display and weighs about 113g.

The supplied mount need to be pushed into the socket on the front of the camera (it takes a fair bit of effort to snap it in) and the mount then attaches to the windscreen with a sticky pad. Unfortunately that means the mount is pretty well permanently attached to the the windscreen as it's pretty strong glue, it's a shame there aren't other types of mount that say attach to a heating grill or some other part of the dashboard that can easily be removed. A bodged mount can work by attaching some sticky tape to the mount and the bottom of the camera and it will just about sit on the dashboard with an unobstructed view ahead.

The system records HD video (1080p or 720p) and will stamp the video with GPS coordinates and the system records in a continuous loop i.e. if it runs out of space it will overwrite older video. The system should come with a 4GB microSD card (though the unit supplied didn't have one) which is enough for about an hour of video. It supports up to 64GB cards.

It also has a microphone which records what's happening in the car!!! There's also an accelerometer which will detect a collision (and start recording if it isn't and log GPS coordinates) which is detected as an "event". However when it's recording an event can be pushing the mount into it or it falling off the dashboard on to the car floor.

There's no software in the box, though Garmin's Dash Cam Player is available for download (for Mac and Windows) through their site. This will show the video and the GPS route next to it (when run it will look for an attached camera or videos on the SD card and import them on to the PC/Mac). The actual video files are MP4 so can be viewed in pretty much any video player. The player shows the route taken, speed and time (there is a pointer on the route that moves as you play the video).

A quite nice feature is that it's possible to select Bing (default)/ Baidu or OpenStreetMaps for the map display. It's also possible to convert any unsaved videos to saved (on the PC/Mac), export GPS positions to a GPX file and take a screen shot.

It's also possible to by a Cyclops subscription from the Garmin store (for various countries including UK/Europe) which will alert the user to speed cameras etc.

Apart from the niggling permanent windscreen mount, it's a nice little unit. It retails for £159 from Garmin, but can be had on-line for at least £20 cheaper.

Samsung gets serious with mobile chips

Samsung is buying the mobile chipset division of Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) for $310m. This will add Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth chipsets to Samsung's already hefty portfolio as well as 310 employees and the IP. CSR was formed in 1998 and went public in 2004 and was one of the 'blue eyed' technology companies that was ahead of its time and it dominated the world of Bluetooth followed by GPS and WiFi. Unfortunately in recent times its mobile chipsets haven't been doing so well due to lacklustre sales from partners Nokia and RIM and revenues have fallen by 50% over the last 2 years. Samsung get a "worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive license of CSR's intellectual property rights used in its handset connectivity and location products" which means less royalty payments for them while other handset manufacturers will now have to pay Samsung. Samsung will also get a stronger hold over Apple as they already manufacture the A4 and A5 chipsets, provide some of the retina displays and now own the CSR components used by Apple too. The combined GPS/WiFi/Bluetooth/FM combined chipset market is dominated by Broadcom who control 51% of the market, followed by Texas Instruments (31%), now Samsung play take a bigger role in this $3bn market. Samsung have also taken a 4.9% in the remaining part of CSR.

Qualcomm Snapdragons pack more byte for buck

Yesterday Qualcomm announced their new Snapdragon MSM8960™ chipset. Though based on the original (ARM) Snapdragon system, the new chip is dual core with the new micro-architecture that delivers 5 times the performance while using 75% less power.

The processor has a built-in mult-modem support all 3G modes as well as LTE, new graphics that operate at 4 times the speed and built-in support for WLAN, GPS, Bluetooth and FM.

The chip is based on a 28nm process and will be available in early 2011.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon is already used in many high-end smart-phones and tablets and the new chip should really give them a lead in the high end market against rivals such as Samsung and even Apple.