Consumer electronics

29 Nov 23

Why Are We Still Doing What Simon Says?

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

In 1976, Ralph Baer and Howard Morrison, two game designers, happened to see a trade show demonstration of an Atari arcade game called Touch Me. The game’s waist-high cabinet featured four large buttons on the top, which lit up in random sequence; the player had to push the buttons in…

13 Jan 23

Paper Batteries, Blue Quantum Dots, and Other Enabling Technologies from CES 2023

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

CES, the huge annual conference, showcase, and deal-making venue for the international consumer electronics industry, is not just about shiny new gadgets. It’s also about what’s under the hood—or at least what researchers and developers hope will be inside a whole host of devices some day.Here, in no particular order,…

11 Jan 23

CES 2023’s Four Wildest—and Catchiest—Gadgets

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

The consumer electronics world looks to CES for the next big new technology that’s going to change our daily lives. These, of course, are few and far between. We then seek out dramatic changes in existing technology, a new display, say, that will make our old televisions look dim and…

02 Oct 22

This Idea Wasn’t All Wet: The Sensing Water-Saving Showerhead Debuts

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

For Evan Schneider, the family dinner table is a good place for invention. “I’m always, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if this or that,’” he says, “and people would humor me.”In 2012, with California in the midst of a severe drought, Schneider, then a mechanical engineering graduate student at Stanford University,…

10 Sep 22

Deep Learning Could Bring the Concert Experience Home

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

Now that recorded sound has become ubiquitous, we hardly think about it. From our smartphones, smart speakers, TVs, radios, disc players, and car sound systems, it’s an enduring and enjoyable presence in our lives. In 2017, a survey by the polling firm Nielsen suggested that some 90 percent of the…