Google has officially unveiled the next generation of Android, version 6.0, codenamed “Marshmallow”. At a launch event in San Francisco, also beamed around the world, CEO Sundar Pichai ran through an overview of the latest platform.

Pixel, Nexus, Chromecasts

Android-6-marshmallow (1)In what was a plethora of announcements, there was also a release of a Google designed Android tablet-laptop, the Pixel C, which will be the hardware flagship for Marshmallow in tablet form. There were two new Nexus phones, the premium 5.7-in, aluminium Nexus 6P from Huawei, and the more "affordable" 5.2-in Nexus 5X from LG, a reworking of the popular Nexus 5. There was also an update to the Chromecast Wi-Fi/HDMI dongle and a new product: Chromecast Audio...

But back to Android Marshmallow 6.0, which will start rolling out to Nexus devices from next week...

As you might expect, the company describes it as the "most polished" version of Android to date. Headline features include Runtime Permissions for Apps, support for Apple Pay, integrated support for finger print recognition (dubbed Nexus Imprint), which itself is integrated into Android pay. There's also support for "voice interactions" that enable apps to query or confirm user actions, support for USB Type-C, and a new Doze Mode.

Runtime permissions

First of all, there's a more granular approach to granting permissions to applications. Google writes:

Runtime permissions give your app the ability to control when and with what context you'll ask for permissions. This means that users installing your app from Google Play will not be required to accept a list of permissions before installing your app, making it easy for users to get directly into your app. It also means that if your app adds new permissions, app updates will not be blocked until the user accepts the new permissions. Instead, your app can ask for the newly added runtime permissions as needed.

For Doze Mode, one of the battery-related features, the system uses more sophisticated motion detection to trigger a deeper sleep state reversed by a new touch, i.e. your phone will know when it has been lying stationary and can use the opportunity to con verve energy. Also, seldom used apps will go into App Standby in order to conserve battery for the apps that you use regularly.

Fingerprint API

Another headline feature is the Fingerprint API. Apple broke this ground a year ago with the 64-bit iPhone 6, of course. It's now in Android, with the latest Nexus and Pixel devices running on 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm or Nvidia processors.

This also enables you to "touch to unlock" your phone. by the touch if your fingerprint. Such biometric access can also be used by third-party app developers.

David Burke, in the launch event, highlighted the fingerprint support as being integrated into Android pay, to quickly verify contactless payments. Positioning of the sensor, on the Nexus 6P was also pointed out: on the back of the phone where the hand would naturally grip the device. A nice touch to make payment slightly quicker.

A new feature is Now on Tap, intended to speed "content discovery". In other words, Google's best guess art information and apps related to a specific input. The example given was being invited to a restaurant and Now on Tap providing contextual information around that venue and location...

Google also recently completed its rollout of Google Play Services 8.1, which have support for wider 6.0 functionality.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced the general availability of its Bluetooth Developer Studio.

This a free development environment for developers get to grips with Bluetooth technology, aiming to cut developer learning time for Bluetooth technology and speed product development.

It makes building for the IoT simple for developers, from the novice to the experienced, boasts the SIG, in terms of adding smart wireless connectivity.

"The Bluetooth Developer Studio arms developers with an all-in-one, cost-efficient, and easy-to-use tool to turn their ideas into reality. With it, they can create products and applications that make our lives easier, better, smarter," said Steve Hegenderfer, director of developer programs, Bluetooth SIG.

"With Bluetooth Developer Studio, not only will we see more smart gadgets enter the market, we will see quality products that 'just work', delivering the IoT experience consumers actually want."

The devkit includes tutorials and code samples, with drag and drop functionality for a variety of Bluetooth use cases, and there are IDE functions such as auto-completion and auto-generation of code and support for virtual device testing.

You can generate code to create and manage your Bluetooth GATT profiles or services, for example.

The kit also supports the use of plugins, for example:

The Android Client plugin (from the SIG) - Generates an Android application which implements the GATT client part of the selected profile, complete with basic user interface.

The Android Profile Validator (again, from the SIG) - Generates an Android application which can connect to a device which has implemented the selected profile and validate the implementation against the profile design.

The software has been available in a beta-prgramme since April 2015.

For more information and to download Bluetooth Developer visit
www.bluetooth.com/developer-studio.

You can also find more developer support at https://developer.bluetooth.org.

Android Wear will now enable cellular comms, Google has announced, in addition to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It means users will be able to take calls direct from their watch.

The first Android Wear watch with cellular support? Not the new Intel-powered, Android Wear-based TAG Heur Connected . The answer is the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE.

The smart watch from LG has an LTE modem inside which means it can connect to the mobile phone network directly and not just via a tethered smartphone.

The LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE runs Android Wear and also connects with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi links. But when there is no Wi-Fi in range, and as long as the user has a mobile phone contract, it will connect via the cellular network, to access the internet and send and receive messages.

Already on sale in US via AT&T and Verizon (for around $200), a European launch date has not been announced yet.

It has a 1.38-inch P-OLED display with resolution of 480x480. It is powered by a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400.

Typical sensors for this type of smartwatch include 9-axis (Gyro/Accelerometer/Compass), a barometer and PPG heart rate sensor.

The watch is also protected to IP67 certification, which means it is waterproof for up to 1 meter for 30 minutes.

When it comes to interactive watch faces, the company writes:

The interactive watch face of LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition provides quick responses to user interactions, with its colorful and easily noticeable display designs. You can choose the graphical elements to make it stylish and functional at the same time. In addition, tons of diverse watch faces are now available at Google Play Store.

You can read more on the LG website »

Qualcomm has updated its CPU profiling tool, App Tune-up Kit, which gives a view into the hardware performance behind an app, if it’s running on the company’s hardware. It’s SnapDragon processor, is rather prevalent in Android devices, of course.

It's described as a "One-Touch Application Profiling" tool that works in 60 seconds.

Qualcomm's App Tune-up Kit

You can evaluate an app's performance in five areas: CPU, GPU, power, thermal and network data. You can also rate it against the top 20 apps in Google Play, for comparison.

Qualcomm writes:

App Tune-up Kit combines our years of experience in profiling with the most common questions about app performance to come up with a tool that’s easy to use. It also rolls up detailed information that software developers would otherwise spend hours or even days trying to collect and organize themselves. 

There are ads, analytics or data collection involved, says the company.

The latest version - released in November - has these changes:

• A Get Recommendations feature ("Provides custom-tailored suggestions to help developers make better apps. This is a beta feature that will improve over time.")
• Session descriptions ("The name of the profiling session now appears in the Compare Sessions report. This allows you to include descriptive info when you save your sessions.")
• Access the Navigation drawer from the Session Summary dashboard.
• Tapping a truncated text string on the Compare Sessions report displays the full text string.
• Shortened the default prefix of saved session files to "ATUK_"
• Added symbols and footnotes to the Dashboard screen ("to indicate when a data point was unsupported and has fallen back to a secondary data point for ratings")
• Lowered the temperature warning threshold from 60C to 55C
• Removed some of the decimal points in all reports to avoid truncation
• Updated text on the About screen and EULA

It requires Android 4.0 and up.

Perfect for Gadget Master. Aimed at individuals experimenting at home with ways to connect their lives via their smartphones, IDT has teamed up with Digi-Key to run a new competition.

It's to create wirelessly powered devices using IDT’s wireless power reference kits for creative market applications. The companies have invited electronics experts and hobbyists to find creative ways to incorporate wireless charging capability into products using IDT’s 5W kits.


Sponsored by global components distributor Digi-Key Electronics, the theme of the contest is, ‘Power Without Borders’.

Interested? Judges will be looking for designs that demonstrate the advantages of wireless charging, such as convenience, the ability to develop a waterproof charging system, or the elimination of failure-prone charging contacts.

The deadline for submitting designs is 31 December and the winners will be announced on 15 February 2016.

The winner will receive a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 or Galaxy S6 edge+, plus a Gear S2 Smart Watch. Second and Third place winners also will receive Samsung products featuring wireless charging enabled by IDT chips.

The contest will be hosted by the hardware creation community, hackster.io at

www.hackster.io/IDTWirelessPower.

“IDT’s wireless power kits dramatically simplify integrating wireless charging capabilities into an existing design - so much so that even engineers without specific power design expertise can create a functioning prototype within hours,” said David Sandys, Digi-Key director of technical and strategic marketing.

“These kits were developed for the mass market,” said Mario Montana, IDT vice-president and chief sales officer. “With this contest, we’re asking today’s innovators from around the world to unleash their creativity and develop entirely new sets of applications that can be wirelessly powered, whether it’s an electric shaver, one of your kid’s toys, or even a battery-operated back-scratcher. Your imagination is the limit.”

A new Arduino is joining the devboard lineup.

Welcome the MKR1000, and yes there's an IoT focus. According to the Arduino team it's a board that combines the functionality of the Zero and the connectivity of the Wi-Fi Shield.

"It's based on the Atmel ATSAMW25 that is part of the SmartConnect family of Atmel Wireless devices, specifically designed for IoT. It offers the ideal solution for makers seeking to add Wi-Fi connectivity with minimal previous experience in networking."

The 32-bit ARM runs at 32KHz, and the board supports 8 digital I/O pins, 7 analogue input pins (adc 8/10/12 bit) and 1 analogue output pin (dac 10 bit). There's 256KB of Flash memory and 32KB of SRAM, and for comms it supports 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. You can see the full tech spec below.

This board has been designed to offers a practical and cost effective solution for makers seeking to add Wi-Fi connectivity to their projects with minimal previous experience in networking."

The design includes a Li-Po charging circuit that allows the Arduino/Genuino MKR1000 to run on battery power or external 5V, charging the Li-Po battery while running on external power. Switching from one source to the other is done automatically."

About the Atmel SoC at the heart of the system, the Arduino team writes:

Arduino MKR1000 is based on the Atmel ATSAMW25 SoC (System on Chip), that is part of the SmartConnect family of Atmel Wireless devices, specifically designed for IoT projects and devices. The ATSAMW25 is composed of three main blocks:

• SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ 32bit low power ARM MCU
• WINC1500 low power 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
• ECC508 CryptoAuthentication
The ATSAMW25 includes also a single 1x1 stream PCB Antenna.

Arduino Maker Challenge

As part of the launch for the MKR1000, Arduino is running a competition with Microsoft on hackster.io - The World’s Largest Arduino Maker Challenge - for a chance to be one of a thousand winners of the new MKR1000 board.

"The contest is very flexible - choose anything you want to build from environmental sensors to gaming, augmented reality, robotics or UAVs using the power of Arduino.cc boards and Windows 10."

The contest started yesterday, 9 December 2015. Idea submissions close on 15 January 15, 2016.

As well as a board, three finalists submitting the best completed projects will be rewarded with: "a fully-funded trip to Maker Faire Shenzhen, New York or Rome; a chance to present their creation at the Microsoft and the Arduino and Genuino booths; a professional video production of the project; and a whopping $500 gift certificate to Adafruit".

The new board will be available for purchase from February 2016.

Sometimes the old and trusted interfaces are best. How about a good old-fashioned dial to exactly control your input to your work? Anything you can control with your mouse or cursor, that is.

This is the premise of the nOb, a project on KickStarter. From analogue to digital. There are also two switches for further control and tweaking.

Flick a switch, and twist the dial, but not too much...

There's adjustable rotation resistance for the aluminium knob, and a "very precise industrial grade encoder" supports up to 2,400 ticks per revolution of the dial.

Apparently it is primarily aimed at those working in media production, mixing and mastering...

By intelligently emulating a Human Interface Device (NOT simply implementing a mouse scroll wheel), nOb is able to control virtually any parameter you would normally adjust with your mouse, delivering out-of-the-box compatibility with any operating system and software package. You simply have to point your mouse cursor to the parameter you want to control and use nOb's big knob to fine-tune it to taste. Based on the current mode of operation, any draggable interface element found in modern media production software can be controlled, including sliders, scrollbars, knobs or even draggable value indicators."

Additional productivity features include:

• Flip a switch to reverse drag direction of
• Double tap the knob to undo or redo last action
• Flip a switch to jump beweetn screen elements fo your choice

The makers say it can work with any programme or any OS. It works with Windows, Macs, Linux and Android out of the box.

It comes with an open serial interface, say the creators, so they hope developers will write software to customise nOb's functionality. Also, they say all hardware parts can be unscrewed and taken apart, allowing for hacks and other modifications.

At time of writing it has raised more than $30,000 towards a $52,000 goal, with 44 days to go.

I don't know quite what to make of this this. It wouldn't be of use to me, but it was flagged for attention by our Technology Editor, Steve Bush, which certainly makes it of interest.

It’s a competitive space, modular programming elements for kids, but check out this new entry: the Robo Wunderkind robot. It’s a robotics and coding kit for “kids of all ages”, described as “the smartest building blocks”.

Build, code, and play is the slogan. You build your robot simply by snapping the Robo Wunderkind blocks together and then programme your robot via the visual interface on an associated app. The fun bit should then be controlling your build remotely from the same app.

What caught my eye is the system supports the MIT-developed Scratch programming system, which first came to my attention via its presence on the Raspberry Pi.

You can read more on their website www.startrobo.com.

From a launch on 21 September, the project successfully raised $246,00 on KickStarter at the end of October, and you can place pre-orders for three kit variations: Starter Kit (9 Modules for $149.99), Advanced Kit (15 Modules for $299.99) and Professional Kit (25 Modules for $599.99).

If you are interested in this for your kids, you could also check out systems from the likes of littleBits, LEGO Mindstorms, SAM blocks and Sony Mesh tags, among others.

Toshiba has launched a single-chip 15W wireless power receiver IC with the Qi v1.2 specifications defined by the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC).

The receiver, TC7766WBG, has been designed for use in mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and a range of mobile industrial devices.

The TC7766WBG enables fast wireless charging, with charging times similar to, and in some cases less than, wired charging. It accomplishes this by increasing the power reception capability by a factor of three compared to existing products[3], while maintaining a small footprint.

In addition, a receiver side I2C interface] compatible host controller can exchange information with a compatible transmitter to enable user-notification of wireless charging status via the mobile device display.

Housed in a WCSP28 package measuring 2.4mm by 3.67mm by 0.5mm, the TC7766WBG features a host of protection functions as well as all the rectifier circuits and controllers needed to construct a standalone wireless power transfer RX system. The device is constructed using Toshiba’s original cutting-edge CD-0.13 process.

With a maximum output current of 1.7A and adjustable output voltage settings of 5V-14V, the new receiver is compatible with Toshiba’s 5W transmitter IC TB6865AFG, as well as with other 15W wireless charging transmitters complying with the Qi v1.2 standard.

I must be honest. I’ve never used the Google Cardboard camera myself, or seen it in action, and I’m not a particularly keen advocate of Virtual Reality. Which kind of explains my scepticism about Google’s low-cost device.

But I do salute its low-fi approach and potential ingenuity, and it does seem a good fit with Gadget Master. More importantly, there is new functionality with the new Cardboard Camera app for Android.

Apparently you now just have to move your phone in a circular fashion and when the photo is later seen inside the viewer it will come to life as a "VR photo", according to Google.

These are described as "three-dimensional panoramas" with slightly different views for each eye. The idea is that near things look nearer and far things further distant. The key point is that you can "look around" to explore the image in multiple directions.
Carlos Hernandez, Software Engineer for Cardboard Camera at Google introduces the app on the official Google blog. He writes:

Cardboard Camera turns the smartphone in your pocket into a virtual reality (VR) camera. It’s simple to take a photo: just hold out your phone and move it around you in a circle. Later, when you place your phone inside a Google Cardboard viewer, you'll get to experience something new: a VR photo.

You can find the Cardboard Camera on Google Play. It requires Android 4.4 and up.