Rode’s range of tiny, portable microphones are a mainstay for creators looking for crisp audio on their phone videos. The company knows that those using digital cameras probably want that same blend of portability and performance for their own footage. That’s why it’s launching the new Wireless Micro Camera Kit, which outputs audio over USB-C or via a 3.5mm line-in.
As with the Wireless Micro, the new set includes a pair of microphones and a transmitter that all sit in a portable charging case. You’ll also find a pair of furry wind screens should you need to film in less than favorable weather. But unlike that model, the receiver comes with both a cold shoe mount and a 1.1-inch AMOLED screen. That will let you configure the audio setup on the fly, plus you’ll get battery data for all three units and an on-screen visualizer.
Rode
It would appear that Rode noticed user gripes that its own kit was being shown up by DJI’s Mic Mini, which had a transmitter with its own 3.5mm jack and shoe mount for camera connection. In addition, Rode has added Bluetooth Direct Connect to the microphones so they’ll connect to your iOS phone directly via the Rode Capture App. Which, like the 3.5mm, was a notable omission from the older hardware.
In terms of battery life, Rode says the kit and the charging case will hold up to 21 hours of use before you need to head back to an outlet.
Plus, to sweeten the deal, Rode is also throwing in one of its first-generation USB-C smartphone receivers into the package for free.
Rode’s Wireless Micro Camera Kit is available to purchase today for $149.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/rodes-latest-wireless-microphones-now-work-with-digital-cameras-025338766.html?src=rss
It’s been nearly three years since Withings first showed off U-Scan to a bemused world, and now it’s finally on sale. U-Scan is the company’s at-home urinalysis gizmo which sits in your toilet bowl and tests your first splash of the day. The device runs a tiny sample through a microfluidic to test, depending on what cartridge you use, either your nutritional or kidney health. These results are then sent to the Withings app, letting you track the quality of your urine over time. Your humble narrator holds the dubious honor of being the first reporter to test the U-Scan during its debut, and found the results pretty interesting.
There are two cartridges available at launch, the first dubbed Nutrio, which looks at your body’s response to nutrition. It will look at your urine’s pH, specific gravity, ketones and the presence of vitamin C over time. Those factors can help you understand if your diet is too acidic, how much fluid you’re drinking on a regular basis, if you’re burning fat, and your anti oxidant intake. The company says that Nutri will be of special interest to people taking GLP-1 medication for weight loss to help them monitor changes to their nutrition levels. Calci, meanwhile, will track your urine’s pH, specific gravity and calcium levels, to keep an eye on your risk of developing kidney stones.
Naturally, such a tool will not be the most affordable in the world, and you can expect to pay a hefty price to own one. Pay $379.95 and you’ll be able to get a U-Scan, a single cartridge that will last for three months, and access to Withings+. The options are then split across “Proactive” and “Intensive” Plans, with the former giving you 2-4 analyses per week, while the latter runs near-daily. If you want the closer monitoring, then $449.96 will get you two cartridges and Withings+ access, which will last you the same three month window. As for replacement cartridges, those on the Proactive tier will spend $99.95 every quarter, while those in team Intensive will pay $179.95. As part of signing up for Withings+, you’ll get a free coaching session with a registered dietician available in all 50 states.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/withings-380-toilet-mounted-urine-analyzer-is-finally-ready-to-buy-040146049.html?src=rss
Black Friday is finally upon us, willing us to purchase some much-needed tech with some degree of a discount. Our Black Friday hub has been collecting the best deals available, so you can save a bundle in the run-up to the holidays. And while there have been some tasty deals in the last few days, the real blockbusters have now dropped.
There are plenty more where that came from, which is why we have the Black Friday hub. So go and get all the biggest and best deals without having to lift a finger.
Did it promote its own products ahead of its competitors?
Amazon may face an EU antitrust investigation next year, with regulators curious if it promoted its own products at the expense of competitors. The continent has stringent rules around big tech platforms that act as both the marketplace and a player in the same space. If found to have given its own gear preferential treatment, the fines under the Digital Markets Act can be hefty.
As our homes (and lives) get smarter, the need for some sort of digital hub big enough to run things becomes more urgent. It’s why Amazon surprise-released a new 21-inch version of its Echo Show that does everything the Show 15 did, but biggererer. It gets a built-in smart home hub with Thread, Zigbee and Matter control, Wi-Fi 6E and a better camera for video calls.
I bought an Echo Show 8 on a whim to use as a screen for my Ring doorbell and found it quite underwhelming. But the idea of having a 21-inch screen that could theoretically lay out to-do lists and calendar tasks on the daily is quite appealing. Having two small kids makes being able to marshal all our schedules on one device quite desirable.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-amazons-got-a-21-inch-echo-show-121502524.html?src=rss
The Department of Justice is reportedly planning to make Google sell its Chrome browser to address its search monopoly. It’s in response to a 2020 lawsuit filed by the DOJ and several US states that was finally ruled upon in August. Google has, naturally, said such a sale would be a terrible idea and would harm American competitiveness in the tech industry. I’m more curious about how much inherent value Chrome has without the backing of its parent company.
Black Friday is upon us once again, and the internet’s awash with gonzo deals on the world’s most sought after tech. Naturally, you’re too busy living your actual life to check if the deals on offer are as good as they’re made out to be. That’s why Engadget employs a crack team of spreadsheet nerds to comb through what’s hot and what’s not. If you’re in the market for a new device, keep your eyes on our guide of the real deals.
For instance, a big chunk of change has been knocked off the M3 MacBook Airs to clear room for the M4s. Given the M3 was already a superlative-exhausting piece of equipment, that you can now snag one for as little as $899 is staggering. If I was in the US and in the market for a new machine, I’d have whipped my credit card out before writing this newsletter. I’m asking the universe for Fujifilm to offer an even tastier discount for the X-T50 in the coming days.
This is Lightfoot, a solar scooter conceived by San Francisco-based R&D outfit Otherlab that, it claims, will be available to buy in the US from January. The most eye-catching feature are the two side panels covered in solar cells that will hopefully keep you from needing a charger. In the gap between the two, however, is a fairly capacious cargo compartment with almost 1.6 cubic feet of space. That should be more than enough to haul your gear to and from work, or to pick up some groceries when you’re out and about. The padded seat and footplates, too, are designed to carry the rider and an additional passenger when required, too.
Specs-wise, there’s a pair of 750W brushless DC motors with a top speed of 20 miles per hour, generating 90Nm of peak torque, which should hopefully be enough to scale the hills around SF (and wherever you are). They’re wired up to a 1.1kWh battery that the company promises will deliver a range of 37 miles on a single charge. The two 120W panels on either side will trickle charge the battery when on the road or parked up outdoors. Otherlab claims this idle solar charging will add three miles of charge per hour, or 18 miles if you leave it for a whole day.
Lightfoot / Otherlab
Aside from the solar hardware, Otherlab claims that you — or a qualified technician — will be able to keep this running without any outside assistance. It said most of the components are off-the-shelf motorcycle parts and that they can be repaired or replaced just as easily. There’s also a one-year whole-bike and two-year mechanical guarantee, as well as a no-question buy back policy. We’ll reserve judgment on every facet of this until we’re able to test it for ourselves, but we’re looking forward to doing so just to see what this thing feels like to ride.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/im-kinda-in-awe-of-this-goofy-solar-scooter-150041980.html?src=rss
In 2016, I dragged my Engadget colleagues to preview Star Trek: Bridge Crew, a VR title letting you live out your fantasies of sitting on the bridge of a starship. Sadly, despite having two fans in the team, we failed miserably at the game, a wound I’ve been nursing ever since. When Bridge Command, London’s latest attraction, asked me if I wanted to try out its real world equivalent, I leapt at the chance. After all, this wasn’t just me testing out a new sci-fi themed event, it was a shot at redemption.
Bridge Command sits in the space between an escape room, team-building exercise, live-action roleplay and immersive theater. It’s essentially a paid-for LARP taking place on a custom-built starship set which cost £3 million (around $4 million) to play space captain. In order to survive and succeed, each player must work with their team, communicate and solve problems on the fly for the better part of two hours.
ASIDE: There’s plenty of existing bridge simulator roleplaying games and a small, but vibrant community that supports it. Digital platforms like Thorium Nova, Artemis and EmptyEpsilon are all platforms that enable folks to gather around to play in teams. Bridge Command itself is built on top of EmptyEpsilon’s platform, albeit with some degree of customization on top.
Effort has been taken to ensure Bridge Command isn’t a one-and-done experience, and creator Parabolic Theatre hopes to build a base of recurring fans. There are two different “ships” players can crew, the smaller UCS Havock and the far larger UCS Takanami, which do two different jobs in the fleet. In terms of capacity, both vessels can take up to 14 players at a time but the ideal figure is around nine. There are four different mission types, too:
Exploration: Involving discovery and adversity.
Military: Space dogfighting.
Intrigue: Espionage and more subtle action.
Diplomacy: Making nice with alien races.
With two ships and four missions, you can play the game eight times and theoretically get a new experience every time. But creators Parabolic Theatre will look to develop the game’s running story over time, like a long-running D&D campaign. The game even tracks your performance as your career progresses, and can receive promotions after a particularly successful mission.
I dragged a Trek-loving friend along to one of the previews, which set us on a Military mission on the UCS Havock. We were tasked with escorting a resupply mission to a large warship on assignment, a rather mundane assignment. It’s not much of a spoiler to suggest our gang of plucky underdogs might wind up in over their heads on a far grander mission. Or that they’ll need to take the under-equipped ship to go toe-to-toe with the baddies and win out against impossible odds.
Both “ships” are fully-realized starship sets, which are probably better-assembled than what you’ll see on most sci-fi series. They’re designed to withstand the regular punishment that can only occur when crews of friends come to play spaceships. But once you’re onboard, you’re essentially in a self-contained environment for the duration of the mission. And it’s a pretty impressive piece of set design.
The vibe is distinctly Star Voyage (Not Infringing Any Copyright, Promise!), with the Havock laid out like the USS Defiant, but with the paint job from Red Dwarf’s first two seasons. A trio of terminals line each side wall, with the captain’s chair on a raised dais in the middle. There’s a helm console up front that’s pointed directly at the imposing viewscreen that dominates the room. There’s a ready room off to one side of the bridge and a toilet on the other, while the corridor behind the bridge is the ship’s engineering bay, bunkroom and brig.
Everything from the terminals and the set is linked up, so if a subsystem takes damage you’ll not just have it grayed out on your screen. Built-in dry ice machines will emit “smoke” when something goes wrong or you take a nasty hit from an enemy vessel. If the lights had flashed at the same time, I’d have been tempted to start jostling myself around in my seat to add to the immersion.
The bridge of the (larger) UCS Takanami.
Alex Brenner / Bridge Command
There were seven of us in the party, including some other journalists and some regular players who were coming for a regular session. Your humble narrator took the helm, figuring that I’d played enough Star Trek: Tactical Assault and Star Trek: Bridge Commander to be useful. We had an acting captain, and folks manning the radar, communications, engineering, laser and torpedo stations.
If you’ve ever used a touchscreen in your life then you won’t feel too unmoored from the role you’ve got to do here. Not to mention the first half hour of the game is little more than a tutorial to ensure that everyone is fluent with what they’ve got to do.
My helm station, for instance, offers you a picture of the ship with a 360-degree coordinate ring around it. There are two sliders, one for impulse power and one for warp, and a small square that lets you make some small evasive maneuvers. This is fine when the ocean-going liners you find in Star Trek are just heading from waypoint to waypoint, but pretty rubbish for combat. And I’m still annoyed you’re locked to a flat plain when space offers so much room for verticality.
Spoiler warning: The following three paragraphs outline my mission in greater detail.
The story begins while you’re putting on your military-issue space boilersuit, with a fictional newsreel playing in the background setting the scene. Once you’ve “transported” from the entrance to the space station, you’re then given a mission briefing and a send-off from the Earth president. Our mission, as outlined, was to escort a freighter on a resupply mission to a battle fleet which was dealing with pirates on the edge of the system.
A member of the Bridge Command team starts as our captain, giving us a tour of the ship and assigning roles for us to play. After we all get used to the basics in what might as well be called the tutorial stage, the captain then departs to help elsewhere. We’re then sent off to scout for incoming threats in nearby nebulas that, quelle surprise, are full of pirates. Naturally, the closer we get to the battle group, the harder the attacks we have to repel, forcing our chief engineer to race around repairing and repowering systems.
We limped to the battle group, repairing and re-armoring before we hatched a plan to play Possum to lure out the pirates. That plan worked spectacularly well, and with our hull integrity at just three percent, we were able to take out the pirates command and control vessel. After being congratulated by the top brass we were escorted back to the space station for a debrief and a drink in the bar.
End of Spoiler Warning: The following paragraphs do not contain any spoiler material.
It’s important to be aware of one’s own privilege and preferences when reviewing something like this. I found Bridge Command to be enormous fun, and if I lived in London, I suspect it would quickly become a hobby I indulged in with like-minded friends on a monthly basis. At £40 ($50) a session, the cost is a little steep but, even so, you could easily make this a long-running roleplaying game. And I’m sorely tempted to go a few more times when I can just to try and gain those promotions.
If there’s a downside (and it’s not even really a downside per-se), it’s that there are phases of play where you’re not doing anything. Or, at least, you’re a present and useful member of the team waiting for your colleagues to fulfill their parts of the mission. I found, given the need for clear oral communication and cooperation, that there were plenty of times where the best thing I could do to help my team was shut up and wait.
Given that focus on communication, I suspect it might be a turn-off if you’re a little shy or quiet of voice. The game doesn’t work unless everyone’s talking to share information between consoles and so it’s nearly-impossible to sit quietly in the corner. That’s not to say you need to bring any Big Theater Kid energy along, but I can imagine how this would feel like mandatory fun if you were dragged along by your friends or on a work team-building exercise. It’s a damn sight more fun and less painful than paintball, so maybe count your blessings there.
Bridge Command is located at St. George’s Wharf which is next to Vauxhall tube station in London. It is open for most of each day through to late evening, with ticket prices starting at £40 (around $50) at off-peak times for a single session.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/bridge-command-lets-you-live-out-your-starship-fantasies-140046532.html?src=rss
If you’ve used Cash App in the last six years, you might be entitled to compensation as part of a class-action settlement. The company set up a $15 million fund after breaches enabled a trove of user personal data to leak. You can file a claim through a dedicated settlement website, and depending on what you can prove, you could receive up to $2,500. If there’s a downside beyond having your private financial data leaked, it’s that you’ve only got until November 19 to file.
Google is reportedly developing an AI agent for Chrome to act as a live assistant for your daily browsing. Codenamed Jarvis, because of course it is, it will help you with common tasks, like research, shopping and booking flights. Perhaps you could ask it to look at every price comparison website, collate the results and select the cheapest option. Maybe, in future, it could even buy, use and enjoy the thing you’re looking to purchase while you sit at your computer.
If you’ve used Cash App in the last six years, you might be entitled to compensation as part of a class-action settlement. The company set up a $15 million fund after breaches enabled a trove of user personal data to leak. You can file a claim through a dedicated settlement website, and depending on what you can prove, you could receive up to $2,500. If there’s a downside beyond having your private financial data leaked, it’s that you’ve only got until November 19 to file.
Google is reportedly developing an AI agent for Chrome to act as a live assistant for your daily browsing. Codenamed Jarvis, because of course it is, it will help you with common tasks, like research, shopping and booking flights. Perhaps you could ask it to look at every price comparison website, collate the results and select the cheapest option. Maybe, in future, it could even buy, use and enjoy the thing you’re looking to purchase while you sit at your computer.