Light Start – Drone sensor, automatic breakfast, Apple UFO, and musical balls

Since drones are everywhere, it makes sense that drone trackers are hitting the market

Just because we’re paranoid doesn’t mean that anyone with a drone can’t do a flyover and spy on us, okay? It’s no surprise that companies are starting to come out with drone-tracking hardware, which could find itself fitted to more than just stadiums and prisons in future. A company called Dedrone does work for outdoor venues and incarceration er… venues with their tracker and jamming system. It’s possible to fit just a tracker to a building, so you know what has been making passes over your property and when it has happened, but they also offer a jamming system that will prevent drones from getting too close. The systems are expensive how, veering into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but as soon as they get cheaper, we’re investing. When the robot war starts, we’re going to be able to repel the first air-based drone waves. Unless the anti-drone system also gains sentience…

Source: Dedrone via Ars Technica

This is the Sunday Morning Breakfast Machine

We thought that things like this were the sole preserve of cartoons and comics but apparently it’s possible to create a machine that is able to make breakfast on its own out of household objects. At least, it’s possible if you’re retired pilot Peter Browne, who built the Sunday Morning Breakfast Machine with his friend Mervyn Huggett. As goofy as the machine looks, it’s perfectly capable of making a cup of tea (or coffee), while delivering a newspaper, making some toast and making a soft-boiled egg. Each breakfast component is delivered to the table as it is completed. A bit pointless? Yes. At 1,000 hours claimed for the design and build, it’s also less effort to make the breakfast yourself but there’s no denying that we’d sit down for some tea, eggs and toast in front of this thing at least once.

Source: SWNS TV (YouTube)

Apple’s new Campus is shaping up – Here’s a fresh drone flyover

Looking for something even more relaxing to start off your week? How about an update of Apple’s Campus, that UFO-shaped building that is coming along nicely since we last saw it in February this year. The 11,000-car parking lot (yes, really) in nearing completion, as is the installation of over 3000 PV panels that will win up generating part of the Campus’ eventual 20 megawatt output. Whatever the solar panels don’t create with be supplied with fuel cells. Something tells us that Apple won’t be paying any electricity bills when this building is done. As for when that is, we’re not totally sure. But Apple will likely start hosting their events in their own auditorium once the Campus is ready for liftoff.

Source: Matthew Roberts

The hearO Bluetooth speaker, now on Kickstarter, has balls

Well, one ball at least. We’ve seen a few speaker designs but very few that have tried to turn actual sporting equipment into sound equipment. That’s some serious YouTube potential right there, if you want to play tennis with the hearO speaker. That’s because it’s an actual Bluetooth speaker built into a tennis ball, though at £45 (R970, the pre-order price on Kickstarter) you probably don’t want to spike this into the court with a tennis racket. Technically, you don’t even need the tennis-ball casing for the hearO but it does give this speaker, which uses one button for operation and pairing and which features magnetic charging, a unique look. The hearO has a claimed five hours of playback per charge. As an added bonus, you’re giving new life to a tennis ball that otherwise would go lonely and neglected until it was recycled or eaten by someone’s dog. At the time of writing the hearO has scored £4,285 of its £40,000 total. There are 26 days to go to back this Kickstarter that has its own balls. Ball. That thing.

Source: Kickstarter