“An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device,” writes Tom’s Hardware.

“That’s when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn’t consented to.” The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers’ IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after… He sent it to the service center multiple times, wherein the technicians would turn it on and see nothing wrong with the vacuum. When they returned it to him, it would work for a few days and then fail to boot again… [H]e decided to disassemble the thing to determine what killed it and to see if he could get it working again…

[He discovered] a GD32F103 microcontroller to manage its plethora of sensors, including Lidar, gyroscopes, and encoders. He created PCB connectors and wrote Python scripts to control them with a computer, presumably to test each piece individually and identify what went wrong. From there, he built a Raspberry Pi joystick to manually drive the vacuum, proving that there was nothing wrong with the hardware. From this, he looked at its software and operating system, and that’s where he discovered the dark truth: his smart vacuum was a security nightmare and a black hole for his personal data.

First of all, it’s Android Debug Bridge, which gives him full root access to the vacuum, wasn’t protected by any kind of password or encryption. The manufacturer added a makeshift security protocol by omitting a crucial file, which caused it to disconnect soon after booting, but Harishankar easily bypassed it. He then discovered that it used Google Cartographer to build a live 3D map of his home. This isn’t unusual, by far. After all, it’s a smart vacuum, and it needs that data to navigate around his home. However, the concerning thing is that it was sending off all this data to the manufacturer’s server. It makes sense for the device to send this data to the manufacturer, as its onboard SoC is nowhere near powerful enough to process all that data. However, it seems that iLife did not clear this with its customers.

Furthermore, the engineer made one disturbing discovery — deep in the logs of his non-functioning smart vacuum, he found a command with a timestamp that matched exactly the time the gadget stopped working. This was clearly a kill command, and after he reversed it and rebooted the appliance, it roared back to life.

Source: Manufacturer Remotely Bricks Smart Vacuum After Its Owner Blocked It From Collecting Data

[…] The unveiled Tri-Fold Phone differed from typical foldable phones in that it had two hinges, joints, in the folding section. Its screen ratio was significantly longer horizontally than vertically, resembling a ‘small tablet PC.’ Compared to conventional foldable phones, it featured three external screens aligned side by side. However, the device could not be touched or tested directly; it was only visible through a glass display case.

The Tri-Fold Phone, which Samsung Electronics announced would be released within the year, was designed with a structure allowing the screen to be folded twice. The external screen features a display measuring approximately 6.5 inches, similar to the Galaxy Fold series, while the fully unfolded screen measures approximately 10 inches, comparable to a tablet. Considering the complex hinge structure and additional display components, the launch price is estimated to be over 3 million Korean won.

[…]

Source: Samsung Electronics Unveils Tri-Fold Phone: Two Hinges, Tablet Screen

For those who missed out on the past few years of ‘smart home’ gadgets, the Logitech POP buttons were introduced in 2018 as a way to control smart home devices using these buttons and a central hub. After a few years of Logitech gradually turning off features on this $100+ system, it seems that Logitech will turn off the lights in two weeks from now. Remaining POP Button users are getting emails from Logitech in which they are informed of the shutdown on October 15 of 2025, along with a 15% off coupon code for the Logitech store.

Along with this coupon code only being usable for US-based customers, this move appears to disable the hub and with it any interactions with smart home systems like Apple HomeKit, Sonos, IFTTT and Philips Hue. If Logitech’s claim in the email that the buttons and connected hub will ‘lose all functionality’, then it’d shatter the hopes for those who had hoped to keep using these buttons in a local fashion.

Suffice it to say that this is a sudden and rather customer-hostile move by Logitech. Whether the hub can be made to work in a local fashion remains to be seen. At first glance there don’t seem to be any options for this, and it’s rather frustrating that Logitech doesn’t seem to be interested in the goodwill that it would generate to enable this option.

Source: Logitech POP Buttons Are About To Go Pop | Hackaday

Shark bites on humans are rare but can have substantial consequences for local coastal communities and businesses, often prompting pressure to implement effective mitigation measures. Wetsuits that incorporate bite-resistant materials have emerged as a new mitigation strategy that aims to reduce fatalities from shark bites, by reducing the severity of injuries inflicted from bites (e.g. lacerations, punctures, tissue and blood loss)

[…]

Key results

All bite-resistant materials reduced the proportional area of bites in substantial and critical damage categories, the categories associated with haemorrhaging and major vascular injury. However, there were limited to no differences in substantial and critical damage categories across the bite-resistant materials. Shark length also influenced the proportion of damage from tiger shark bites, but not from white shark bites.

Conclusions

Although internal and crushing injuries might still occur, bite-resistant materials offer an improved level of protection that can reduce severe wounds and blood loss, and should be considered as part of the toolbox and measures available to reduce shark-bite risk and resulting injuries.

Source: CSIRO PUBLISHING | Wildlife Research

Kodak has shrunk a camera to fit onto a keyring, but it still manages to shoot both photo and video. It’s hard not to compare the Kodak Charmera to the ubiquitous Labubu craze, considering the highly collectible nature of Reto Pro selling these officially licensed mini cameras as a single blind box for $29.99 or a full set of six for $179.94. The keyring cameras, which only weigh 30 grams, are already sold out on the Reto Pro website, but are expected to be restocked.

The blind box can be unwrapped for one of seven designs, including one secret version that has a transparent shell to show off the tiny camera’s internals. According to the website, the basic style odds are one out of six, while the secret edition has a probability of one out of 48.

[…]

Source: Kodak’s mini camera fits on your keyring and is smaller than an AirPods case

The phone ecosystem these days is horribly boring compared to the innovation of a couple decades back. Your options include flat rectangles, and flat rectangles that fold in half and then break. [Marcin Plaza] wanted to think outside the slab, without reinventing the wheel. In an inspired bout of hacking, he flipped a broken Samsung zFlip 5 into a “new” phone.

There’s really nothing new in it; the guts all come from the donor phone. That screen? It’s the front screen that was on the top half of the zFlip, as you might have guessed from the cameras. Normally that screen is only used for notifications, but with the Samsung’s fancy folding OLED dead as Disco that needed to change. Luckily for [Marcin] Samsung has an app called Good Lock that already takes care of that. A little digging about in the menus is all it takes to get a launcher and apps on the small screen.

Because this is a modern phone, the whole thing is glued together, but that’s not important since [Marcin] is only keeping the screen and internals from the Samsung. The new case with its chunky four-bar linkage is a custom design fabbed out in CNC’d aluminum. (After a number of 3D Printed prototypes, of course. Rapid prototyping FTW!)

The bottom half of the slider contains a Blackberry Q10 keyboard, along with a battery and Magsafe connector. The Q10 keyboard is connected to a custom flex PCB with an Arduino Micro Pro that is moonlighting as a Human Input Device. Sure, that means the phone’s USB port is used by the keyboard, but this unit has wireless charging,so that’s not a great sacrifice. We particularly like the use of magnets to create a satisfying “snap” when the slider opens and closes.

Unfortunately, as much as we might love this concept, [Marcin] doesn’t feel the design is solid enough to share the files. While that’s disappointing, we can certainly relate to his desire to change it up in an era of endless flat rectangles.  This project is a lot more work than just turning a broken phone into a server, but it also seems like a lot more fun.

 

Source: Phonenstien Flips Broken Samsung Into QWERTY Slider | Hackaday

Tizen OS is on track to lose full support by the end of 2025, Samsung has announced, marking the end of an era that began in 2018 with the original Galaxy Watch. And right now, Samsung is offering up to $100 in trade-in credit for your Tizen Galaxy Watch.

This includes the Galaxy Watch 3, Galaxy Watch Active 2, Galaxy Watch Active, and the original Galaxy Watch. Considering that most major retailers like Best Buy only offer between $5-15 dollars for these trade-ins, that’s a significant boost, as 9to5Google notes.

Samsung ditched Tizen OS, the company’s proprietary operating system, starting with the Galaxy Watch 4 in 2021 as it pivoted to Google’s Wear OS. Now, Samsung has outlined a termination schedule for Tizen watches, according to screenshots first shared by TechIssuesToday of a notice purportedly from a member of the Galaxy Store Operation. It looks like Samsung is gradually phasing out support for Tizen on its Galaxy Store, culminating in a full shutdown by September 2025. You can find the timeline below:

• September 30, 2024: The Galaxy Store will cease sales of paid Tizen watch content, including apps, watch faces, and more.
• May 31, 2025: The Galaxy Store will discontinue new downloads of free Tizen watch content.
• September 30, 2025: The “My Apps” section in the Galaxy Store will stop allowing re-downloads, effectively shutting the door on accessing any further paid or free Tizen content.

The latest iteration of the Galaxy Watch is the Galaxy Watch 6. It runs Wear OS 4, the newest version of Google‘s Android smartwatch software that comes layered with Samsung’s One UI 5 Watch for Galaxy-specific experiences. In practice, that means the watch is loaded with familiar Google apps, but has built-in programs like Samsung Health and Bixby, too.

But a new Galaxy Watch 6 doesn’t come cheap. While you can often catch it on sale (just check out our best Galaxy Watch 6 deals), it’s sticker price of $300 can be a tough sell for some.

[…]

Source: Samsung’s phasing out its Tizen smartwatches — and boosting trade-ins to $100 for Galaxy Watch 3 and older | Tom’s Guide

Another product made broken by the manufacturer and turned into e-waste.

After more than a decade, the Pebble smartwatch is back, and it already looks enticing for those of us who can’t be bothered with today’s health data-obsessed, sensor-filled, and all-too-weighty wearables. The company behind the revitalized watch shared its final designs for what’s coming, and it may be the simple smartwatch we’ve been missing since 2016.

Last month, original Pebble designer Eric Migicovsky reported that his new company, Core Devices, was able to recover the Pebble trademark, meaning we no longer have to pretend the previous “Core 2 Duo” and “Core Time 2” weren’t an update to the older e-paper wearables. It’s a good thing the name’s back. Pebble is a brand name that fits the revitalized wearable’s identity so perfectly. It’s small and smooth, and anybody with fidgety hands can fiddle with it. On Wednesday, Migicovsky dropped pictures, renders, and specs for the upcoming smartwatches.

First on the list is the Pebble Time 2. The smartwatch has a small, 1.5-inch color e-paper touch display with a bottom heart rate monitor, step counter, and sleep tracker. The update showed off the new smartwatch face frame and buttons—now both made from stainless steel akin to the 2014 Pebble Steel. The back is screwed on in case you ever need to access the internals (though it may also require some glue to hold it together). The head of Core Devices also said the new smartwatch will have a compass and a second microphone that could allow for better noise cancellation for any kind of assistant feature.

“Nobody really uses the compass,” Migicovsky said in a video accompanying his most recent blog post. “90-something percent of people haven’t used the compass on a Pebble, so I wasn’t feeling inclined to put another chip on it. But we found a relatively inexpensive chip… no guarantees how good it’s going to be.”

The Pebble Time 2 will potentially sport four colorways. Two of the color options are a silver or blackened shade of metal, but there may also be a blue and red polycarbonate option. The final colors haven’t been finalized, but Migicovsky said the company will email all customers with a preorder to finalize their selection. Similarly, anybody who wants to swap their preorder from a $150 Pebble 2 Duo to a $225 Pebble Time 2 can just wait for a survey that will let them choose the more expensive option. The cheaper, polycarbonate option is akin to a Pebble 2, with a 1.2-inch black and white non-touch e-paper display with a barometer and compass, though it also lacks a heart rate monitor.

Migicovsky has been regularly blogging his efforts in China to get the first Pebble units manufactured through his X account. The new images imply we’re getting closer to an actual launch. Core Devices still needs to finalize colors and polish, and the smartwatch shown in the video is still a “very early” rendition of the hardware. The smartwatch is running age-old PebbleOS with a few modern amenities, but there are still glitches to work out. The company still has to go through the process of engineering testing through design and production, so there’s no official word on a release date. Either way, it may be a more exciting wearable than the upcoming Apple Watch Series 11, which is likely to debut in little under a month’s time.

Source: This Is the New Pebble Smartwatch, and Yes, It’s Now Called Pebble Again

[…]”Spectrometers are critical tools for helping us understand the chemical and physical properties of various materials based on how light changes when it interacts with those materials,” says Brendan O’Connor, corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University. “They are used in applications that range from manufacturing to biomedical diagnostics. However, the smallest spectrometers on the market are still fairly bulky.

“We’ve created a spectrometer that operates quickly, at low voltage, and that is sensitive to a wide spectrum of light,” O’Connor says. “Our demonstration prototype is only a few square millimeters in size – it could fit on your phone. You could make it as small as a pixel, if you wanted to.”

The technology makes use of a tiny photodetector capable of sensing wavelengths of light after the light interacts with a target material. By applying different voltages to the photodetector, you can manipulate which wavelengths of light the photodetector is most sensitive to.

“If you rapidly apply a range of voltages to the photodetector, and measure all of the wavelengths of light being captured at each voltage, you have enough data that a simple computational program can recreate an accurate signature of the light that is passing through or reflecting off of the target material,” O’Connor says. “The range of voltages is less than one volt, and the entire process can take place in less than a millisecond.”

[…]

“In the long term, our goal is to bring spectrometers to the consumer market,” O’Connor says. “The size and energy demand of the technology make it feasible to incorporate into a smartphone, and we think this makes some exciting applications possible. From a research standpoint, this also paves the way for improved access to imaging spectroscopy, microscopic spectroscopy, and other applications that would be useful in the lab.”

[…]

Source: This spectrometer is smaller than a pixel, and it sees what we can’t | ScienceDaily

There’s been some trouble at home lately. Not your home, hopefully, but if you live in Google HQ, then maybe. Last week, people using the Google Home app flooded Reddit with complaints over smart home products that mysteriously stopped working—lights, cameras, smart plugs, you name it. Those complaints were so numerous, in fact, that Google even bothered to address them and do better. Things in the Googleverse were (or are) bad, to say the least. But just because they’re bad right now doesn’t mean they can’t get worse—and worse they may still get. For Google, that is.

As it turns out, Google’s overtures about fixing its smart home app and doing better may not be enough for people, and all of that pushback may actually result in a good, old-fashioned class-action lawsuit.

“Kaplan Gore has begun investigating a possible class action against Google LLC for failing to remedy increasing problems with its Google Home ‘smart home’ service,” the law firm Kaplan Gore said in a statement. “Unfortunately, many users have reported functionality issues with Google Home and associated Google and/or Nest devices, resulting in commands not being recognized or properly executed. Users are reporting that they are experiencing these issues despite their devices having previously functioned normally and despite having a stable internet connection.”

Kaplan Gore also has a form for any users experiencing those issues and is asking them to fill out some information and join a class action.

[…]

According to loads of complaints on Reddit, Google Home has been so broken that some users have reported being unable to even turn their smart lights on and off properly. And it’s not just lights; all kinds of smart devices have been swept up, including other speakers and even (disconcertingly) cameras and smart doorbells. If you’re experiencing similar issues, by the way, you can try pulling open the Google Home app and tapping Settings in the bottom-right corner, then tap “Works with Google,” and a list of your synced apps should show up. If they’re no longer synced, re-sync the app by finding it under “Add new.” If they’re still synced and not working, unsync the app by tapping on the icon and then tapping “Unlink account.” After that, you can try syncing once more and hope that it works.

[…]

Source: Google Home Is So Bad That a Lawsuit Could Be on Its Way

We recently noted how device maker Garmin had decided to follow in the footsteps of Google’s Fitbit, and begin putting basic features behind an annoying subscription paywall to goose revenues. Garmin’s new “premium” Garmin+ tier takes several features users already enjoyed for free, put them behind a $7 per month paywall, and called it innovation.

Users are pretty broadly pissed about it. In part because Garmin smartwatches are already significantly more expensive than many brands. And because they’re now paying more money for the same services. And the new services Garmin has added to justify a “premium price” — like a new “AI” assistant — suck.

Speaking on the company’s latest earnings call, Garmin CEO Cliff Pemble responded to questions about the backlash by first lying and claiming that Garmin customers really like the direction Garmin is heading (a five second tour of the Garmin subreddit makes it very clear that’s not true). He then promised that more of this kind of enshittification was definitely coming:

“I think we’ve been saying for a while that we are evaluating opportunities to have a premium offering on Garmin Connect,” Pemble responded. “I think the developments of AI and particularly around AI-based insights for our users was one of those things that we felt was important to recognize the value for the investment that it takes to do.”

Again though, reviews of the “AI” features they’re adding are extremely bad, aren’t as good as other devices or fitness apps, and are often subject to basic math mistakes. Again it appears we’ve taken software and some light LLM automation, thrown the “AI” tag on it, and demanded that consumers both be stunned by the innovation and accept higher prices for existing services.

For a while Garmin differentiated itself from competitors like Fitbit for not doing this kind of predatory bullshit. If you dig through Reddit comments, it’s clear that a lack of subscription paywall is what drew a ton of customers to the brand in the first place.

But now that Garmin has decided to hop on this treadmill of goosing earnings by sucking value out of the free tier, it will never end. Company execs have deluded themselves into thinking this kind of paywalling is innovation, when it’s just mindless extraction and gatekeeping that harms customer loyalty.

Pemble, of course, can’t admit any of this to investors keen on improved quarterly returns at any cost, so it creates both a weird anti-consumer slippery slope, and a sort of willful delusion to prop it up. It also creates a new opportunity for future smart device competitors to make market inroads by not being nickel-and-diming assholes keen on insulting their customers’ intelligence.

Source: Garmin CEO Hints More Paywalls And Enshittification Are Coming, Falsely Claims Users Love It | Techdirt

[…]The regular slate of smartwatches from the likes of Google, Samsung, and Apple hasn’t left us truly excited. Samsung and Apple are in a race to add as many health sensors to the back of their devices, and still the most we can hope for on the impending Apple Watch Series 11 is a slimmer body and slightly better display. Core Devices’ Core 2 Duo, in its current iteration, is practically the same device as a Pebble 2 but with a few tweaks. It includes a relatively small, 1.2-inch display and—get this—no touchscreen. You control it with buttons. The Core 2 Duo screen is black and white, while the $225 Core Time 2 has a 1.5-inch color touchscreen display and a heart rate monitor.

 

In a video posted Thursday, Migicovsky offered some insight into the smartwatch itself, plus more on what people in the U.S. can expect to pay for one due to Trump tariffs. He confirmed the Core 2 Duo is being made in China

[…]

There are upgrades on the way. Migicovsky said he hopes to integrate complications—aka those little widgets that tell you the time or offer app alerts— alongside deeper Beeper integration for having an all-in-one chat app. The Pebble founder said he would also like to add some sort of AI companion onto the smartwatch. He cited the app Bob.ai, which can offer quick answers to simple queries through Google’s Gemini AI model. The maker has already mentioned users could connect with ChatGPT via a built-in microphone, but the new smartwatches will have a speaker for ChatGPT to talk back.

The Core 2 Duo is supposed to retail for $150

[…]

Source: The Not-Pebble Watch Is a Sign We Crave Something Unique

I hope it works and I hope they have an e-ink display with a huge battery life.

Google has just announced that it’s ending software updates for the first-generation Nest Learning Thermostat, released in 2011, and the second-gen model that came a year later. This decision also affects the European Nest Learning Thermostat from 2014. “You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or with
Google Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the thermostat,“ the company wrote in a Friday blog post.

[…]

Google is flatly stating that it has no plans to release additional Nest thermostats in Europe. “Heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes,“ the company said. “The Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd gen, 2015) and Nest Thermostat E (2018) will continue to be sold in Europe while current supplies last.”

[…]

Source: Google is killing software support for early Nest Thermostats | The Verge

Yes, so in about a year they will be dumb thermostats too. I don’t think I would buy one of those then.

[…] This work reports a bio-integrated gustatory interface, “e-Taste,” to address the underrepresented chemical dimension in current VR/AR technologies. This system facilitates remote perception and replication of taste sensations through the coupling of physically separated sensors and actuators with wireless communication modules. By using chemicals representing five basic tastes

[…]

Gustation, an essential component of the human perceptual system, plays a key role in the overall sensory experience and flavor perception. However, the integration of gustation is currently limited or missing in most AR/VR experiences. […]

The actuator uses an EM minipump to deliver concentration-controlled tastant solutions into the oral cavity. Figure 2AOpens in image viewer shows schematic illustration of the EM actuator consisting of a microfluidic channel and a minipump that includes a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) liquid chamber, NdFeB permanent magnets, and a coil placed perpendicular to the magnet (32). The design details and fabrication process of the EM actuator are in figs. S2 and S3. The outlet of the liquid chamber connects to the refillable microfluidic channel embedded with tastant-infused gels (fig. S4). The equivalent circuit of the system appears on the right. A bipolar junction transistor (BJT) serves as an “on/off” switch through a pulse width modulation (PWM) base current received from an ESP32 chip microcontroller. The actuation system uses an NPN-type transistor (2N2222), within which electrons serve as the majority charge carriers.

[…]

Liquid flows through the channel during the “on” state and stops temporarily during the “off” state, allowing interaction with the hydrogels with tastants. Adjusting the duty cycle controls the time that the liquid takes to traverse the microfluidic channel, thereby regulating the concentrations of taste chemicals in the resulting solution. A larger interval time (t) between pulses corresponds to a longer period of the liquid contacting the gels, increasing the resulting concentration of tastants in the delivered solutions

[…]

the variations in concentrations of five taste-related chemicals (H⁺, Mg²⁺, Na⁺, glucose, and glutamate) in the resulting solutions

[…]

Field testing involves healthy, consenting volunteers instrumented with devices to examine the human perception dimension of the e-Taste system within envisioned application scenarios in the real world. In the first case, assisted by the e-Taste system, it becomes feasible for individuals to share the taste experience of food remotely (Fig. 5AOpens in image viewer). Figure 5BOpens in image viewer illustrates an example of transmitting the taste of beverage: When a person immerses the sensor patch in a cup of lemonade near the Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco, CA, USA), the system uploads the captured concentration data to the IoT platform. The actuator located at the campus of The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH, United States) subsequently downloads the data, guiding to replicate a liquid with the same taste profile. For the remote control and instruction, the entire duration includes the latency (0.3 and 1.4 s for the short- and long-range process, respectively; fig. S26), the sensor response time (~10 s), and an optional signal stabilization time after the response reaches the plateau.

[…]

The result confirms the high accuracy of the system in replicating taste sensations, effectively mimicking the sourness levels encountered in real-world scenarios.[…] demonstrates an accuracy rate of 70%, indicating that testers can distinguish different sour intensities in the liquids generated by the system. Increasing the training time and providing customized concentration categorization based on individual differences could potentially enhance the accuracy for future applications.

[…]

During the mixed taste recognition test, subjects interact with a multichannel e-Taste system in a “digital cup” geometry (movie S4). The experiment uses five food options: lemonade, cake, fried egg, fish soup, and coffee.

[…]

the recognition outcomes when users taste replicated solutions (sample size: 6, accuracy: 86.7%)

[…]

 

Source: A sensor-actuator–coupled gustatory interface chemically connecting virtual and real environments for remote tasting | Science Advances

What does one do when frustrated at the lack of affordable, open source portable trackers? If you’re [OG-star-tech], you design your own and give it modular features that rival commercial offerings while you’re at it.

What’s a star tracker? It’s a method of determining position based on visible stars, but when it comes to astrophotography the term refers to a sort of hardware-assisted camera holder that helps one capture stable long-exposure images. This is done by moving the camera in such a way as to cancel out the effects of the Earth’s rotation. The result is long-exposure photographs without the stars smearing themselves across the image.

Interested? Learn more about the design by casting an eye over the bill of materials at the GitHub repository, browsing the 3D-printable parts, and maybe check out the assembly guide. If you like what you see, [OG-star-tech] says you should be able to build your own very affordably if you don’t mind 3D printing parts in ASA or ABS. Prefer to buy a kit or an assembled unit? [OG-star-tech] offers them for sale.

Frustration with commercial offerings (or lack thereof) is a powerful motive to design something or contribute to an existing project, and if it leads to more people enjoying taking photos of the night sky and all the wonderful things in it, so much the better.

Source: DIY Open-Source Star Tracker Gets You Those Great Night Shots | Hackaday