Power Your Home of Tomorrow with Solar Energy

As you’ve seen here on Tech Today, there’s a lot of gadgets to look forward to. But they all run on some sort of power. So, how are we going to power the homes of tomorrow?

Coal, oil and gas are having a bit of an image problem, and they’re not even going to be around forever for us to use. So what are we going to do? Wait for some more to be found, or make a change to a new level of technologies?

I vote for the second option, and the big name for other energy sources at the moment are renewables.

Renewables are sources of energy that don’t run out, and there are so many different types. There’s solar, geothermal, wind, wave and tidal, and even biomass.

Some of these options are way too big to ever work on just a single home, but some of these renewable sources can be used on a much smaller scale. This means that you could heat up your home and charge all your new electronics without having to rely on the big energy firms.

Let’s take a look at the best choice for renewable home energy.

Solar Power

The UK isn’t exactly the most sunny country in the world, but don’t count out solar panels as an option to power your home of tomorrow. They actually work even when it’s cloudy outside!

Most people think that there’s only one type of panel, but there’s actually two: solar thermal and photovaltaic. The main difference between the two types is how they use sunlight to work. Solar thermal panels use the suns energy to create heat, which then powers a generator to make electricity, whereas photovaltaic directly converts the suns rays into electricity.

There’s already over 500,000 homes in the UK that have solar panels on their roofs, and if they create any energy that you don’t use, it gets fed back into the national grid. The government introduced the Feed-In Tariff schemes (FITS) a few years ago, which means that you get paid for the energy that you put into the national grid.

According to Which?, the Feed-In Tariff scheme will give a household nearly £600 pounds a year on average for the extra power that they generate.

Solar panels certainly look like their going to be a big part of our future, they certainly are an investment, but for more and more people, it’s the way to go for powering their homes of tomorrow.

No comments Add a comment

Autonomous Cars – Enjoy the Ride

When you watch a sci-fi show or movie, cars can play a big part in setting the scene. Think of the DeLorean in Back to the Future or flying cars of 2015 in Back to the Future Part II. Pretty cool right?

We’re not quite at the level where cars can fly or travel through time, but we’re on the way to having cars that can drive themselves. Even Google are getting in on the act:

The Google driverless car uses laser radars and high definition maps to create routes that the car will follow. There aren’t any plans for Google to start selling their tech just yet, but they do hope that eventually other car makers will want to work with them in the future.

Volvo are also coming up with their own concept. They want to make a car that can take passengers on long distance rides, getting them safely from A to B. Instead of using huge computer systems and laser radars, they want to use the humble magnet, embedded into the road.

While it sounds like both a sensible and zany idea (how very Swedish), Volvo has already carried out some tests. They built a 100 metre test track and drove their modified S60 down the track at 90mph, keeping it in place with the magnets.

They say that all cars could be fitted with the new technology, costing only a few hundred pounds, compared to the Google car technology which costs tens of thousands. The only potential problems that could emerge from this idea is the amount of time and money required to line the roads of Sweden with magnets, which if improperly handled could quickly mount up.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the 2014 Geneva Motor show has been attracting another type of autonomous car. The Link & Go 2.0 by AKKA Technologies was unveiled in March as an improvement to the first model, which was unveiled at the previous years motor show. New features included a smartphone controlled parking system, a fully autonomous driving mode (as well as a steering wheel and pedals for when you want a turn to drive) and an ‘augmented reality display’ – so that passengers can watch the world go by within the cabin.

The car itself is powered by two electric motors, which according to AKKA, provides the car with a range of 124 miles. Not bad. In a similar fashion to the Google car, the Link & Go 2.0 uses lasers, cameras and other sensors to create a 360 degree view of the world around it.

AKKA also plan for individual cars to interact with each other, safely coordinating between lanes of cars, pedestrians and cyclists, with them all being part of the city of tomorrow. The other idea that AKKA has is that these cars will become the future of car sharing, picking up and dropping off colleagues who live in similar areas to one another.

When the car is in full autonomous mode, the steering wheel retracts and the front seats can be turned around the face the rear. This creates a relaxing cabin for passengers to socialise with one another, all whilst enjoying the view as the car safely takes them to their destinations.

This last car definitely looks the most futuristic and comfortable, but it may be a while yet before we see these self driving cars out and about on our roads. The Google car currently has the approval to road test their vehicles in California, Nevada, Florida and Michigan, and Volvo have only tested their car on an empty track.

But, I think that one day cars like this may be a common sight, especially for car sharing. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to get to work in the morning, not having to stress too much about being stuck in the morning traffic? You can just let the car do the driving, whilst you relax in the cabin.

No comments Add a comment

Save On Your Heating Bills with “Cosy” App

You’ve just finished work, you check your phone for texts and Facebook and then you turn you heating on in your house ready for when you get home. With the “Cosy” heating app you get to save money and control the heating whenever you want.

A Kickstarter appeal is requesting backing to be able to change the way we heat our homes. By using an app that will allow you to control how warm your house when you are in any part of the world, you may never need to worry about frozen pipes again. The idea of getting home to a freezing house and staying in your gloves, scarfs and coats just waiting to warm up so that you can save a few, very crucial, pennies will be a thing of the past.

Green Energy Options, GEO, hope to help people not only find heating their home when they need it much easier, but also to lower emissions to the environment and to help to lower your bills at the same time.

Chief Strategy Officer, Simon Anderson said: “Boiler controls are notoriously unfriendly so many people set a programme and leave it regardless if they are at home or not. Few, if any of us, know how much it costs to have your heating on for an hour. Assuming that an average gas bill is about £800, and probably about £500 of this is for central heating, every 10% that you could reduce the number of hours you are heating your house unnecessarily, could save you approximately £50.”

The idea is that rather than having the heating on a timer over the day, estimating when you will get home, you can just turn it on by the mobile app that links to your home when you know that you are leaving. This would mean that if you finish work and fancy going to the pub for a couple of drinks, then you don’t need to worry that the heating is going to waste.

At this point in time they are still applying on Kickstarter for £20,000 so that they can include into the function the ability to turn lights on and off too. “We are a small business and the amount that we can develop at each step is constrained by the revenues we generate.” Simon said. “If we are able to raise additional funding through kickstarter then we can add more features and get a better product to market faster to compete with the big guys like British Gas’s Hive.”

The first stage of the product will be release toward the end of April as a tester and Release Two of the product should be available in Autumn this year at a cost of around £250.

No comments Add a comment

Find the Watch to Keep Up with Your Smartphone

A watch that promises to make your life easier is the Gear 2 and Gear Fit.

Having dropped the name of Galaxy from the original version, the Galaxy Gear, the new and improved watches are expected to work either with a higher end smartphone, or can be used as a standalone. Both the Gear 2 and the Gear fit are expected to be release 11 April 2014.

Both gadgets are designed to be lightweight, with an interchangeable strap so that you can have it with different colours and, I am sure, that additional designs will also come onto the market. The watches can also be personalised, the same as your phone, by changing the background, clock interface and font type. Most importantly though, both devices are dust and water resistant.

Although the Gear 2 is not specifically designed for fitness, it will still monitor your heart rate through a built in heart sensor as well as track the distance that you have covered and the time that it has taken you, just the same as the Gear Fit. You are also able to, via Bluetooth, answer calls and see messages and notifications from other apps as well as play music through to independent Bluetooth earphones.

Samsung Gear 2

There are, of course, important differences between the two devices through. The Gear Fit is designed to be more streamline with a curved screen, so that it can be more shapely on your wrist and the screen is designed so that you just have to glance down at it to see how you are doing, rather than hold it in front of your face so that you can read it the right way around. But an added bonus with the Gear Fit over the Gear 2 is that it will give you instructions, like your own personal instructor, as to how you can improve and reach your goal.

Although you can still answer calls and see text messaged via the Fit, you are only able to send a pre-set message back, whereas the Gear 2 allows you to be able to use S-Voice to dictate your response. The Gear 2 also has a two mega pixel camera which has the function to be able to use any picture you take with your background.

There is a home button as well to help with navigation and you can also use it with the Watch On app too, to control your TV. Both devices promise to be better than the first and help to make lives that little bit simpler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZLvv0q8ltw

No comments Add a comment

Consumer Virtual Reality is So Close You Can Touch It

So, we have the Xbox One, the Playstation 4 and the 3DS as being the current leaders in technology on the gaming market. But what direction can gaming go in now? Could the Oculus Rift be it?

We may be a long way off the Holodecks from Star Trek that the world is so eagerly waiting for, if it’s even possible but we are getting closer, step by step. We now look forward to a new form of virtual reality with the Oculus Rift.

What is it?

Still in its experimental form, but thought to be released within the next year, the Oculus Rift is a head set, covering your eyes, designed to show you a view of 107 degrees of the game. It takes into consideration your head movement so if you lean to see around a corner you can. This is all thanks to the positional tracking.

When trying the demo version, the user feels completely immersed in the game. As far as the brain comprehends, everything around you is a computer graphic and in 3D. You can use, what looks like the Wii nunchuck, controllers to control arms and pick things up in the game and move forward and backwards.

However, as with all experimental technology, there are a few bugs as Mark Aldridge from the College of Arts Technical at the University of Lincoln confirmed, the arms that you use whilst immersed can loose calibration quite quickly and there have also been cases of people experiencing motion sickness as the brain says that their legs should be moving when, in fact, they are stood still. This is something that Oculus will need to overcome in order for the technology to be viable for public sale.

(Mark Aldridge giving a quick guide to the Oculus Rift)

Although the Rift is still in its prototype days, other technology has already been designed to work with it in anticipation so that the user can immerse their whole body into the scenario, such as the Omni. But as the Developers of the Oculus Rift say that at the moment the games that are being used to experiment with on the VR headset are not specifically designed for the headset there are the issues with motion sickness.

(Mark Aldridge explaining about motion sickness on the Oculus Rift)

How much?

Oculus are expecting that this technology will be available to the public and their target price to release this at is only $300 (£180) meaning that it would be cheaper than both the Xbox One and the PS4. However, the likely-hood is that the technology will be incorporated into these systems and be able to run in addition to them as well as possibly with just a pc.

Just experiencing the device for a short time will give anyone the hopes and dreams that this becomes bigger than big. My experience was short but it was enough to make me realise how easily you can completely loose yourself in another world.

(My experience on the roller coaster)

The dream

The hope to eventually have this as a consumer product where you can truly be part of the game is only just around the corner, especially with the help of the Omni. The Omni has be designed to would with VR headset to incorporate all of the movement of your body whilst keeping you safe from running into objects in your living room.

Hopefully within the next couple of years, the world of gaming will have been completely reworked. With graphics in games already being so realistic and now being able to take the next step of actually putting your head in the game, there appears to be no limitation to the virtual world. There are even rumours that there is a vibrating vest being created to work with all of these devices as well so that if you get hit in a game then you will feel a vibrating version of the impact too.

Check out http://www.oculusvr.com/ to keep up with how close they are getting to release this amazing technology.

No comments Add a comment

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: