Category: Blog

Already in use on some Android smartphones like Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra, pixel binning merges data from multiple smaller pixels on the camera’s image sensor into one “super-pixel” for improved low-light sensitivity.

Pixel binning is beneficial because simply increasing a smartphone camera’s megapixels while maintaining the same camera sensor size results in smaller pixels, which generally capture less light, leading to lower-quality low-light photos. Pixel binning would allow iPhone 14 Pro models to shoot high-resolution 48-megapixel photos in bright conditions and 12-megapixel photos in low-light conditions that are still of high quality.

See How the iPhone 14 Pro’s Upgraded 48-Megapixel Camera is Expected to Work

#technology #photography #pixelbinning #mobilephotography

It has once again been rumored that next year’s iPhone 14 Pro models will feature an upgraded 48-megapixel primary camera (the “Wide”…

Its team has developed two different sensor nodes for this purpose: an indoor one that can measure CO2, and a mobile one that can measure particulate matter (PM) levels. Both versions are powered by an ESP32 microcontroller that reads out the air quality sensors and connects to the Internet using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The data can then be shared online to create detailed maps showing local variations in air quality.

The design of the sensor nodes is fully open-source, allowing anyone with basic electronic skills to build them.

See Measuring Air Quality Using Mobile Sensors For The Masses

#technology #opensource #airpollution #citizenscience #CanAirIO

Poor air quality is a major problem for city dwellers the world over. Dust, smoke, particles and noxious gases from vehicles, industry and agriculture makes many megacities downright hazardous to l…

Much of today’s music features the exacting work of a drum machine. The term might make you think of a drum set with mechanical levers and cranks armed with drumsticks, but all it actually refers to is a synthesizer programmed to play drum sounds.

The excellent LMMS application contains a drum machine, and there’s the drumkv1 plugin for DAWs like Ardour, Qtractor, and Rosegarden. But there’s also the dedicated Hydrogen drum machine that has just one job, which it does very well, and has done for the past 20 years: be a great, fully-featured, and open source drum machine.

See Play the drums on Linux with Hydrogen

#technology #music #drums #opensource #hydrogen

Much of today’s music features the exacting work of a drum machine. The term might make you think of a drum set with mechanical levers and cranks armed with drumsticks, but all it actually refers to is a synthesizer programmed to play drum sounds. A good drum machine programmer (often also a drummer) can make a drum machine sound either hyper-robotic (if that’s the sound the producer’s going for) or almost human, with nuance and swing.

Apple announced that this app was coming in June, promising that it would allow Android users to find potentially malicious trackers being used without their knowledge. Unlike on iOS, though, it doesn’t seem like this app will constantly do scans in the background and alert you if something is up — it’s purely a manual search. Tracker Detect also doesn’t help you keep track of the AirTags attached to an Apple account, so it’s not helping Android users actually use AirTags.

Good effort in developing such an app for Android, but it does seem to fall short of what the app could have really done.

See Apple releases Android app to help find sneaky AirTags

#technology #AirTags #Android

The app won’t let you use AirTags with Android, though.

This is just a “demo” but likely the best we have seen so far of what this gaming engine can produce. Make sure to crank up the video quality to be able to appreciate it. Even the body movements etc look so real.

Although it’s a demo, it is a fully open world equivalent to 4 km x 5 km with 260 km of roads, 7,000 buildings, and 35,000 simulated MetaHuman pedestrians. It’s a proof of concept demo designed to showcase how close Unreal Engine 5’s cutting-edge systems are to showtime and to prove once and for all that these systems are capable of running on the new wave of Sony and Microsoft simples, albeit at capped at 30 frames per second. If performance can look somewhat inconsistent, that’s because the entirety of the character rendering demo at the beginning and indeed the cutscenes with the chase shoot-out, all render at a ‘cinematic’ 24 frames per second.

The entire open world project with all of its assets will be distributed to Unreal Engine 5 users to experiment with as they wish.

See #^https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-the-matrix-ue5-demo-is-incredible but watch the video at

The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience
by Unreal Engine on YouTube

#technology #gaming #thematrix #unrealengine5

KDE Plasma desktop is used by millions today. The KDE technology evolved over the years to reach a point where it is now running in desktops, laptops, tabs, mobile phones and hand-held gaming devices. It’s amazing, isn’t it, for a desktop environment? And with an active set of developers and community, it is improving every day with new features aligning with technology trends.

Since I discovered KDE many years ago (with Kubuntu), I was hooked. I progressed after that to Linux Mint’s KDE version, until I found Manjaro KDE in mid-2017 (where I am still happy today).

The article below compares some of the best options, not on technical terms, but more based on use cases.

See Top 10 Linux Distributions for KDE Plasma [Compared]

#technology #opensource #KDE #Linux

Planning to adapt a stable KDE Plasma based desktop in Linux and thinking about as a daily driver? Well, here we present top 10 Linux distributions that are better integrated with KDE Plasma. KDE Plasma desktop is used by millions today. The KDE technology evolved over the years to reach a point where it is…

I know I have posted a month back about this calculator, but this video unboxing and test, is really entertaining to watch (as testified by the over 430k views so far). It just makes me want to have one, although I really don’t have a need for it (I have an HP41CV if I really need one).

The DM42 is a clone and improvement of the famous HP42S, with open source firmware based on the Free42 platform. SwissMicros has done an excellent job though on the build and presentation. It is also an excellent example of how repairability should be done.

Watch at

EEVblog #1159 – World’s Most Precise Pocket Calculator
by EEVblog on YouTube

#technology #gadgets #HP42S #DM42 #SwissMicros