Enjoy Music While Swimming With The FINIS Duo

Listening to music is great for working out, as it helps elevate mood, distract from fatigue, and gives you that extra boost of motivation to keep on moving. And while there are plenty of ways to enjoy music while running, cycling, or pumping iron in the gym, there aren’t quite any options for people who take laps in the pool for exercise. At least, we thought so until the FINIS Duo came across our radar.

A music player designed for underwater use, it lets you listen to music while you swim, dive, and goof around the pool. That way, you can rock out to your favorite playlists while doing your morning swim, then try to sing along and end up swallowing a heck of a lot of water instead. Or something like that.

The FINIS Duo doesn’t quite work the same way as the iPod Shuffle you used to rock years back. Instead of headphones (which will be problematic in the water), it uses bone conduction to transmit sound your way. To use, simply clip the music player to the strap of your swimming goggles in a way that rests the backside to your cheekbone, press the playback buttons (all controls are on the outer side), and enjoy.  It’s waterproof up 3 meters and can be submerged up to 30 minutes straight, so as long as you’re not deep sea diving or retrieving pirate treasure, this should work great. Features include 4GB of onboard storage, MP3 and WMA support, and a battery rated at 7 hours of playback.

Available now, the FINIS Duo is priced at $94.99.

Check It Out

This Curved, Wooden iPad Stand Works On Both Hard And Soft Surfaces

Most iPad stands look like… stands, which is to say, they don’t look all that sightly when merely sitting on your desk. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, wouldn’t you rather have something that looks like a display piece when it sits there empty? That’s exactly what you get when you trade in that wireframe stand for the Yohann iPad Stand.

Designed by Swiss architect Berend Frenzel, the stand features a curved body behind the dock that holds the actual tablet. That curved body can be set down in one of three angles, giving you different options for propping up your iPad in both portrait and landscape orientations.    Even better, the curved shape allows it to work not just on hard surfaces like tables and floors, but on soft surfaces, too, so you can stand your iPad in bed, on a pillow, or even on a hammock.

The Yohann iPad Stand comes in three different sizes: one for the standard iPad, another for the Mini, and a large one for the 12-inch Pro. All three are available in a wooden construction, each of which is individually milled from a single piece of wood before being sanded, polished, and waxed by hand. The Pro model also comes with magnets under the dock, where you can snap on your Apple Pencil for a handy storage spot. All the stands are strictly for iOS tablets, although they do make a 9.7-inch version made from polymer that uses adapters to accommodate other brands of tablets.

Pricing for the Yohann iPad Stand starts at $129.

Check It Out

Philips Noodle Maker Turns Fresh Ingredients Into Ready-To-Cook Noodles In Just 15 Minutes

If you spend a good portion of the grocery budget on pasta and noodles, it might be a good idea to just consider making your own at home.  And while making your own noodles sound like laborious work, it doesn’t have to be with the Philips Noodle Maker.

A dedicated countertop appliance that churns out fresh noodles from scratch, it will do everything that’s needed to turn your base ingredients into ready-to-cook noodle strips.  Just dump in the flour, eggs, water, and whatever else you want to mix in (like Hipster Dust), press a button, and sit back.  The machine will take care of mixing the ingredients and kneading them into a dough before extruding into the familiar-looking ribbon-like tubes you can then use to make your favorite recipes.

The Philips Noodle Maker comes with four different extrusion caps that will automatically cut the noodles into a specific shape, either in the likeness of udon, soba, ramen, or spaghetti.  Since you control all the ingredients, you can get creative with this thing, mixing in unconventional items to change up the taste and nutritional contents of your favorite noodle dishes.  Like, throw in some meatsauce along with the dough, so your pasta already tastes like cooked spaghetti as soon as it comes out or something.  Yeah, that probably won’t work (but should be fun to try).  It can make up to 500 grams of noodles in one go, which should be enough to feed up to four people, with one batch taking just 15 minutes to make.

Currently, the Philips Noodle Maker is only available in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan but we are pretty sure to we'll see some variant of this in US market soon. Price is ¥32,000 (a little over $300).

Pictar Turns Your iPhone Into A Point-And-Shoot With Physical Controls

It’s not the first camera grip to come out for the iPhone. The Pictar, however, makes a solid case by turning your iPhone into a veritable point-and-shoot. Beyond providing a grip for comfortably holding your phone while taking pictures, it comes with physical controls to deliver a camera-like experience.

When attached to your phone, the grip transforms the lower half of your phone into a conventional camera that you can comfortably hold with one hand. That way, you can take quick shots without worrying about dropping your phone at any point during the process.

Aside from offering an ergonomic grip, the Pictar comes with a shutter release button for quickly pulling the trigger, complete with a half press mode to lock focus and exposure before taking the final capture. A zoom ring out front lets you zoom in and out on the display without having to touch the screen, all while doubling as a quick way to switch from the rear cam to the front cam and vice versa with a single press. Two knobs along the top let you adjust brightness level and shooting mode, respectively.

Both the zoom ring and the shooting mode knob can be programmed separately, allowing you to use them to adjust any settings you want easy access to when shooting. The app also comes with a virtual wheel that you can quickly turn with your thumb for flipping through a variety of settings. Other features include a tripod socket, accompanying neck and wrist straps, and a cold shoe mount.

A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the Pictar. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $90.

DJI Matrice 600: Finally, A Drone That Can Lift Professional-Grade Cameras

Yes, you can use any drone to shoot aerial videos. If you want cinema-grade footage, though, you’re going to need a drone with enough lift to carry heavier professional-quality gear. That’s exactly what the DJI Matrice 600 brings to your filmmaking arsenal.

Designed for professional cinematography, the drone can carry payloads up to 13.2 pounds, ensuring you can use it with a wide range of cameras, from smaller micro-four thirds shooters to DSLRs to high-end cameras like the Red Epic. Granted, it still won’t let you shoot aerial scenes from the larger end of the spectrum, like the Blackmagic URSA or the For.A FT-One, but this does allow you to fly with more compact filmmaking gear.

The DJI Matrice 600 uses a new flight controller called the A3, a self-adaptive flight system that can automatically adjust the parameters based on whatever payload it’s carrying, along with options to add two extra GPS radios and two extra IMUs for redundancy and real-time data comparison (basically, it takes readings from all three to ensure accuracy). It pairs that with a new video downlink called Lightbridge 2, which streams 1080p footage at 60fps over a distance of up to three miles, along with extended flight time that allows it to hit the air for up to 36 minutes with a DJI Zenmuse camera and up to 15 minutes if you max out the payload capacity with something like the RED Weapon.

Along with the new drone, DJI is releasing an accompanying gimbal, which can similarly work with most any of the cameras in the market. Like the outfit’s previously releases, the gimbal gives users the ability to move and rotate the camera while in the air, apart from keeping the footage steady.

Available now, the DJI Matrice 600 is priced at $4,599.

Use Intel’s New RealSense Kit To Build Powerful Vision-Armed Robots

We’re starting to see products using Intel’s RealSense technology (e.g. the Naked 3D Scanner) and we’re betting that we’ll see a lot more throughout the year. Intel, naturally, wants to hasten the process and what better way to do that than to encourage home tinkerers to experiment with the tech in their upcoming projects? The Intel RealSense Robotic Development Kit is the company’s attempt to make that happen.

No, they didn’t quite make a robot that you can program and customize like Willow Garage did a while back. Instead, it’s a kit consisting of a camera and a development board that Intel describes as a combo for bridging “the gap between rapid prototyping and productization.” Basically, it’s meant to provide makers with powerful building blocks for robotic and technological applications, so you can finally put together that Godzilla robot you’ve been meaning to build to take over the world. Or something like that.

The Intel RealSense Robotic Development Kit consists of the outfit’s RealSense 200 Camera and a development board similar in size to the Raspberry Pi. Designed to provide decent computing power, it comes with a quad-core Intel Atom x5 CPU, Intel HD 400 graphics, and 4GB of DDR3 RAM, with built-in support for Ubuntu, although it should easily handle Windows, Android, and other Ubuntu flavors since this is just a standard Atom-based SoC. It comes with multiple built-in interfaces (USB 2, USB 3, Ethernet, eDP, CSI, HDMI, and I2S audio), along with a 40-pin general purpose bus for custom additions.

Slated to ship in June, the Intel RealSense Robotic Development Kit is priced at $249.99.

Enjoy 96TB Of RAID Storage With The LaCie 12big Thunderbolt 3

Serious digital hoarders need serious storage space. The massive amount of movies, shows, and games you’ve downloaded off torrent need to make room somewhere, after all. And when it comes to off-the-shelf storage boxes, it’s tough to find something with more space than LaCie’s 12big Thunderbolt 3.

Clad in a form factor similar to PC towers, the system comes with 12 front-loaded drive bays that can each be stuffed with 8TB hard disks for a massive 96TB capacity. Whether you’re a serious hoarder who never deletes anything, a filmmaker who edits 4K clips on a regular basis, or just an eccentric dude who wants to make an offline copy of the entire internet just in case of an apocalypse, this thing should offer your best shot at never running out of space.

The LaCie 12big Thunderbolt 3’s 12 hard drives all work together as one system, giving you a massive space to dump up to 100 hours of 4K footage without having to manually break files up. With a hardware RAID controller and 7,200 RPM drives, it boasts input/output speeds of up to 2,600 MBps, so even working with 6K videos won’t slow down your hardware. It comes with two Thunderbolt 3 ports, so you can hook one up to a computer and the other to a second 12big storage box, with the ability to daisy chain up to six boxes together for a mind-blowing 576TB of storage. Features include hot-swappable drive bays, a USB-C slot, four redundant fans for cooling, and multiple indicator LEDs to keep you informed of what’s going on.

No pricing yet, but the LaCie 12big Thunderbolt 3 will come out in the summer.

URB-E Electric Scooter Can Run 20 Miles, Then Fold For Convenient Storage

For all intents and purposes, the URB-E isn’t the kind of product that you look at and think it’s a must-have. I mean, it looks goofy. With an e-bike function that lets you ride it around and a folding design that lets you drag it anywhere, though, it just might be the personal transport device you’ve wanted all along. I mean, it looks better than a hoverboard.

Described as a folding electric scooter, you can ride it while comfortably sitting down at speeds of up to 15 mph. It’s got decent range, too, letting you cover up to 20 miles with a full charge, making it a viable alternative for daily commutes to and from the office (unless you work in another city, in which case, take the car). And since it folds, you can bring it inside the office, allowing you to charge it at work (takes just four hours from zero to full), so you can ride it all the way back to the house after clocking out.

When folded, the URB-E is compact enough to either drag behind you (like luggage) or carry by hand, with its 35-pound frame allowing you to do so without requiring superhuman strength. You can also throw it in the trunk of the car when folded, apart from fitting comfortably in a corner of a train or bus during commutes.  Features include carbon fiber and aluminum construction, a 250-watt brushless motor, optional sport-tuned controller for increased torque and acceleration, and cross-drilled disc brake for guaranteed stopping power.  They also sell a selection of accessories, including cup holders, phone mounts, baskets, and more.

Available now, the URB-E is priced at $1,699.

PancakeBot 3D-Prints Your Flapjacks In Any Design You Want

That Darth Vader Pancake Maker is awesome. Problem is, it only makes Darth Vader pancakes and even the mighty Sith Lord can get boring after a while. If you want endless creativity with your morning cakes, ditch that single-purpose appliance and pick up the PancakeBot instead.

A 3D printer for pancakes (really), it can automatically make flapjacks in any design you like. Want a robot pancake? Not a problem. How about a pancake that looks like pizza? Yes, please. A pancake in the likeness of your favorite comic book character? If you can make the design, it can be done.

Unlike regular 3D printers, you don’t need 3D modeling skills to create designs for the PancakeBot. Since you’re making flat cakes, you’re designing in 2D anyway, so it should be a whole lot simpler to get creative-looking pancakes every day of the week. It comes with its own software for fashioning your own designs, with plenty of pre-made designs available for download from the website, so you don’t even have to bother making your own.

The PancakeBot has a build area that’s actually a removable, non-stick griddle, so it will cook the batter as soon as it lands onto the hot surface. Batter is extruded from a container at the top, which is held on an arm that travels along the build area. Instead of being hooked up to a computer, it comes with an SD card slot, so all you have to do is save the design on a card and pop it into the slot for printing.

Available now, the PancakeBot is priced at $299.

Orah 4i Is A 360-Degree Camera For Virtual Reality Live Streaming

There’s a growing number of options in 360-degrees cameras, from entry-level rigs like the Kodak Pix Pro and the Ricoh Theta to professional gear like the GoPro Odyssey and the Nokia Ozo. If you’re looking for something with more power than entry-level options but isn’t quite as expensive as the professional solutions, you might want to take a look at the Orah 4i.

Made by VideoStitch, it’s a VR camera that can capture 360-degree videos. Unlike other VR cameras, however, it’s designed for live streaming, automatically stitching spherical video on the fly and broadcasting it to any content delivery network in real time. Whether you’re filming a live concert, a sports event, or a table tennis match in the kitchen, this thing will let you do that in highly-immersive virtual reality.

The Orah 4i records its 360-degree video in 4K at 30fps, complete with four-channel ambisonic 3D sound for truly immersive content. It does that while measuring a mere 3.1 x 2.7 x 2.5 inches, making for a compact camera with some serious capabilities. That compact aluminum housing contains four fisheye 8-layer f2.0 lenses, four Sony Exmor image sensors, four dynamic-range microphones, and two Armbarella processors calling the shots, along with a thermal pad for high heat dissipation, allowing it to stay cool during long streaming sessions.

Since it’s so small, actual stitching isn’t done right on the camera. Instead, you’ll need to attach it to a small computer called “Stitching Box” during live streaming, leaving it to handle all the video processing and broadcasting duties.

Slated to ship in July, the Orah 4i is now available for preorder, priced at $1,795.

Revl Arc 4K Action Cam Uses Built-In Gimbal For Stabilized Video Capture

Action cameras are great, allowing you to record first-person view of high-speed action, so you can relieve your adventures over and over.  The Revl Arc does the same. Unlike other action cams, though, it comes with a built-in gimbal to ensure even the shakiest action is captured in a steady and enjoyable manner.

That’s right, no more editing your sports and adventure videos to remove some of the shakes post-production. And no more pairing your GoPro with a gimbal in a complicated setup to stabilize things, either. Instead, this thing does it all on its own, whether it sits on your helmet during skiing, on your handlebars while riding downhill, or on your surfboard while catching waves.

The Revl Arc uses electronic image stabilization to correct the pitch and yaw, while relying on the integrated gimbal to stabilize the roll, ensuring it captures your videos like no other action cams could. It’s quite the powerful action cam, too, with a 12-megapixel sensor that allows it to shoot 4K video at 30 fps and 1080p at 120 fps, along with onboard Bluetooth and WiFi for automatically streaming files to your phone. Aside from shooting videos, the camera also logs speed, rotation, altitude, and G-Force data, which it can automatically superimpose onto videos, so you can check out your stats while the action happens.

Features include a 150-degree field of view, waterproofing up to 3 meters, and a battery life of 1.5 hours (it’s swappable, so you can stock on backups). Oh yeah, the app comes with an AI mode that can automatically edit your videos to isolate highlights from the action to make it easier to share (and brag) about your activities on social media.

An Indiegogo campaign is currently running for the Revl Arc. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $399.

Festo’s Flying Robot Balloon Can Move Stuff Around Autonomously

Remember Festo’s gripping robot, which uses a mouth-like hand to grab a hold of a wide variety of objects?  Well, they took that gripping mechanism, slapped it on the bottom of a balloon drone, and this goofy-looking flying robot, the Festo FreeMotionHandling, is the result.

A gripping and flying autonomous robot, it combines two common robot functions in one, turning out an automaton that can pick up objects from one location and drop them off at another spot. Oh yeah, the balloon portion can rotate in any direction, allowing it to point the gripper tip exactly to where an object is located. According to Festo, this makes it potentially useful for job sites and workplaces, with the robot able to transport tools and supplies instead of having workers retrieve it on their own.

The Festo FreeMotionHandling consists of a helium-filled balloon measuring 54 inches in diameter, a gripping mechanism, and a ring-shaped frame around the center of the balloon. This carbon fiber frame houses four horizontal rotors, four vertical steering drives, and all the electronic components required by the system, essentially serving as its primary flight control mechanism. Designed for autonomous operation, the robot uses a GPS-based indoor tracking system and two onboard cameras to sense its exact position and the location of any object it’s tasked to pick up, reacting to the environment and planning flight routes all by its lonesome.  It can grab more than one object at a time, although total weight needs to be well under a pound.

Check out Festo’s website to learn more about the FreeMotionHandling robot.

Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 Brings Self-Lacing Shoes To Life

Well, it came a year too late, but Nike finally has real self-lacing shoes. Called Nike HyperAdapt 1.0, it’s also way more normal-looking than Marty McFly’s fictional kicks, making for a real pair of sneakers that regular people might actually wear out on the street.

Instead of actually tying the shoe laces as if with an invisible hand like in the movie, the sneakers come with non-removable laces that can loosen and tighten all on their own. A sensor on the heel alerts the system once you’ve slipped into the shoe, triggering the laces to tighten automatically. It’s smart, too, determining whether you’re heavy on the heel or heavy on the forefoot, then cinching the shoe’s throat to deliver the best fit based on that.

Tiny pulleys installed on the upper take care of winding the laces around a spool, with plus and minus buttons on either side of the shoe allowing you to tighten or loosen the fit as you require. Holding down the minus button loosens the laces in full, allowing you to slip out of the footwear with ease. An onboard battery (of course, it has batteries) allows you to operate the laces for two weeks on a single charge, at which point you’ll have to plug it like you do with your cellphone to get it ready for another go. Oh yeah, the battery is integrated into a translucent midsole that lights up in blue when turned on, giving it a definite sci-fi twist.

No pricing has been announced, but the Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 will go on sale at the end of the year.

Future Gadgets

This page is about future gadgets - smartwatches and waterproof phones.

Whether accidentally dropped in a sink, toilet or swimming pool; soaked by a rainstorm or a beverage; sent through a washing machine or victimized by a water gun - this is how over a million smartphones are water-damaged each year.

Touch screens, apps, web access and voice recognition are some of the reasons smartphone sales are through the roof every year. But buyer beware, the devices are not waterproof - not even close.

Water in electronic gadgets is catastrophic. Warranties rarely cover the damage and new contracts are usually required. You lose your information, contacts, apps, and photos. Not fun.

But we may soon have waterproof phones because of a new technology that uses nanotec coatings.

Two companies leading the research and development into this technology are HzO and Liquipel.

HzO won the CES 2012 Innovations, Design and Engineering Award for its nano coating technology while Liquipel received a 2012 Edison Award in material science for its nano coating technology.

Both companies use a vapor deposition process to coat electronic devices with a very thin film. This film is hydrophobic, which means that it repels water, humidity, perspiration, coffee, wine, soda and even acid.

The coating doesn't trap heat, is virtually weightless, invisible and non-toxic, which makes it great for protecting electronic devices.

This is how it works: a device is placed within a vacuum chamber. A vacuum is created and a specially formulated vapor is introduced into the chamber.

This vapor seeps into the electronic components of devices depositing a uniform layer of molecules that repel water.

These coatings are not meant to protect smartphones during deep sea dives or for any extended underwater use.

They will protect devices against damage caused by accidental immersions even if the device has been left submerged in water for a few hours.

Though HzO and Liquipel both use vapor deposition for application, their respective coatings and applications are different from one another.

Both HzO and Liquipel provide their services to manufacturers but Liquipel will also provide services directly to consumers.

Sources: hzoinside.com;liquipel.com

Smart Watches

Inventor Eric Migicovsky, a 25-year-old University of Waterloo graduate, presold 85,000 of his future gadgets for delivery to users later this year.

The Pebble is a smartwatch that wirelessly connects via bluetooth to an iPhone or Android smartphone and uses smartphone apps. It's the only smartwatch that does so.

The Pebble has various applications that allow users to access information or control devices from their wrist.

Besides checking calls, emails, text messages or social media updates, the smartwatch has potentially unlimited applications.

Migicovsky will release an open software development kit for it's pebble technology, which will allow developers to design watch apps similar to what Apple did with it's iPhone developer kit.

Current Pebble applications include a music control app; a fitness tracker app that monitors stats related to cycling or jogging; a golfing range finder app for 25,000 golf courses; and a sensor app that connects with a device you attach to things you want to communicate with.

Migicovsky developed his prototype from cell phone parts but used a high resolution, customizable (different watchfaces) e-paper display, which is a technology that allows the face to be read in direct sunshine or use backlighting when reading in the dark.

Battery life is 7 days and is USB rechargeable. It's water resistant, vibrates and will be available in white, black, or red. It will sell for $125.

Sources: forbes.com; getpebble.com

Cell Phone Watch

Cell phone watches operate as a fully functional, fully featured mobile devices with multiple capabilities.

One potential capability is to extend or project (known as body interfacing) a interactive screen onto a body part or other surface.

A cell phone watch conveniently attaches to your wrist and not in your pocket, bag or elsewhere, so these gadgets do offer some interesting possibilities. Most of these watches feature video and still camera capability.

You wouldn't miss an opportunity to record anything because all you have to do is point your arm and click.

Features such as touch screen, radio, texting video/audio recorder-players, handwriting recognition, ebook readers, internet access, and call setting options make these watches competitive with phones.

The average talk time for a cell phone watch is about 2-4 hours, stand by is 120-150 hours. Most of these watches have rechargeable batteries and loads of applications.

Since Samsung introduced the world's first cell phone watch in 1999, there is more financing and development being done with these future gadgets.

If you're thinking of getting one, make sure you review the specifications to ensure your service provider supports the technology your choosing.

Similar to smartphones, different manufacturers use different competing technologies that may not be compatible with your cell phone service.

Sources: lg.com; samsung.com

- See more at: http://www.inventor-strategies.com/future-gadgets.html#sthash.VydVnBKr.dpuf

The Trillion-Frame-Per-Second Camera

Splitting a single light pulse into a fast barrage of rainbow-colored daughter pulses allows scientists to capture movies of complex, ultrafast physical and biological processes
 

STAMP splits an ultrashort pulse of light into a barrage of different colored flashes that hit the imaged object in rapid-fire succession. Each separate color flash can then be analyzed to string together a moving picture.Credit: Keiichi Nakagawa/ University of Tokyo

WASHINGTON — When a crystal lattice is excited by a laser pulse, waves of jostling atoms can travel through the material at close to one sixth the speed of light, or approximately 28,000 miles/second. Scientists now have a new tool to take movies of such superfast movement in a single shot.

Researchers from Japan have developed a new high-speed camera that can record events at a rate of more than 1-trillion-frames-per-second. That speed is more than one thousand times faster than conventional high-speed cameras. Called STAMP, for Sequentially Timed All-optical Mapping Photography, the new camera technology "holds great promise for studying a diverse range of previously unexplored complex ultrafast phenomena," said Keiichi Nakagawa, a research fellow at the University of Tokyo, who worked to develop the camera with colleagues from an array of Japanese research institutions.

Conventional high-speed cameras are limited by the processing speed of their mechanical and electrical components. STAMP overcomes these limitations by using only fast, optical components.

Another optical imaging technique, called the pump-probe method, can create movies with an even higher frame rate than STAMP, but can only capture one frame at a time — limiting its use to processes that are exactly reproducible.

Researchers from Japan have developed a new high-speed camera technology, called STAMP, that can record events at a rate of more than 1-trillion-frames-per-second. The prototype camera is shown here in the lab. Credit: Keiichi Nakagawa/ University of Tokyo

“Many physical and biological phenomena are difficult to reproduce,” said Nakagawa. “This inspired me to work on an ultrafast camera that could take multiple frames in a single shot.”

Nakagawa himself experienced the need for such a camera while he was a master's student studying how acoustic shock waves changed living cells. Scientists believe mechanical stress, like that caused by acoustic waves, might increase bone and blood vessel growth, but they had no tools for capturing the dynamics of such a fast, transient event as a shock wave passing through a cell.

"Since there was no suitable technique, I decided to develop a new high-speed imaging technique in my doctoral program," Nakagawa said.

STAMP relies on a property of light called dispersion that can be observed in the way a misty sky splits sunshine into a rainbow of colors. Similarly, STAMP splits an ultrashort pulse of light into a barrage of different colored flashes that hit the imaged object in rapid-fire succession. Each separate color flash can then be analyzed to string together a moving picture of what the object looked like over the time it took the dispersed light pulse to travel through the device.

In the first iteration of STAMP, which the team described in a paper published in Nature Photonics in August 2014, the number of frames that the camera could take in a single shot was limited to six.

Currently, the team is constructing an improved STAMP system that can acquire 25 sequential images. Nakagawa believes the number of frames could eventually be increased to 100 with current technology.

Nakagawa notes that because STAMP operates on the assumption that all the differently colored daughter pulses interact with the imaged object in the same way, the camera should not be used to image samples whose optical properties change over the range of wavelengths STAMP uses.

Even given STAMP's limitations, the technology has enormous potential, Nakagawa says. His team has already used it with image electronic motion and lattice vibrations in a crystal of lithium niobate and to observe how a laser focused onto a glass plate creates a hot, rapidly expanding plume of plasma.

Nakagawa notes that the camera could be used to explore a wide range of ultrafast phenomena for the first time, including the laser ignition of fusion, the phase transition of materials, and the dynamics of a Coulomb explosion, an event in which intense electromagnetic fields (for example from a narrow laser beam) can force a small amount of solid material to explode into a hot plasma of ionized atomic particles.

"I think it is important to note that there might be many potential applications of STAMP that I have not imagined," Nakagawa said. "I hope more researchers will become interested in STAMP."

About the Presentation

The presentation, "Motion Picture Femtophotography with Sequentially Timed All-optical Mapping Photography," by Keiichi Nakagawa, Atsushi Iwasaki, Yu Oishi, Ryoichi Horisaki, Akira Tsukamoto, Aoi Nakamura, Kenichi Hirosawa, Hongen Liao, Takashi Ushida, Keisuke Goda, Fumihiko Kannari, Ichiro Sakuma, will take place from 16:00 – 18:00, Tuesday, 12 May 2015, in Salon IV, San Jose Marriott, adjacent to the San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California, USA.

Media Registration: A media room for credentialed press and analysts will be located on-site in the San Jose Convention Center, 11-14 May 2015. Media interested in attending the event should register on the CLEO website media center: Media Center.

About CLEO

With a distinguished history as the industry's leading event on laser science, the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) is the premier international forum for scientific and technical optics, uniting the fields of lasers and opto-electronics by bringing together all aspects of laser technology, from basic research to industry applications. CLEO: Expo showcases the latest products and applications from more than 300 participating companies from around the world, providing hands-on demonstrations of the latest market innovations and applications. The Expo also offers valuable on-floor programming, including Market Focus and the Technology Transfer program.

Sponsored by the American Physical Society's (APS) Laser Science Division, IEEE Photonics Society and The Optical Society (OSA), CLEO provides the full range of critical developments in the field, showcasing the most significant milestones from laboratory to marketplace. With an unparalleled breadth and depth of coverage, CLEO connects all of the critical vertical markets in lasers and electro-optics. For more information, visit www.cleoconference.org. CLEO 2015 takes place 10-15 May 2015 at the San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California, USA. Follow developments and updates on CLEO 2015 on Twitter @CLEOConf, #CLEO15.