The pace of smart home innovation hasn't slowed a whit in 2024, with new products such as the Amazon Echo Show 21 being unveiled just this week. The better news is that the smart home is no longer a niche market appealing only to enthusiasts willing to tolerate steep learning curves. We are, however, still living in a world of smart home silos; namely, Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google Home. The increasingly important Matter standard will unify those ecosystems one day, but that won't happen until Matter incorporates every smart home category. Considering that, we've picked more than one product in several categories, based primarily on which silo your smart home is in.

In a new study, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) show how a brain-inspired image sensor can go beyond the diffraction limit of light to detect miniscule objects such as cellular components or nanoparticles invisible to current microscopes. Their novel technique, which combines optical microscopy with a neuromorphic camera and machine learning algorithms, presents a major step forward in pinpointing objects smaller than 50 nanometers in size. The results are published in Nature Nanotechnology. Since the invention of optical microscopes, scientists have strived to surpass a barrier called the diffraction limit, which means that the microscope cannot distinguish between two objects if they are smaller than a certain size (typically 200-300 nanometers). Their efforts have largely focused on either modifying the molecules being imaged, or developing better illumination strategies--some of which led to the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Neuromorphic vision sensing has demonstrated impressive results for its use in machine vision applications and is gaining broader commercial traction. Several companies have introduced multiple generations of neuromorphic visions sensors and a true ecosystem has evolved. Developers recognize its data-efficient approach to sensing and acquisition. As a result, we expect to see a greater proliferation of its use thanks to its ability to significantly improve the functionality, performance and power consumption for machine vision-enabled systems. At its essence, neuromorphic sensing applies techniques drawn from neurobiology that mimic the efficiency and adaptability to change of the human brain, eye and connected systems.

Whether you're a PC, console or smartphone gamer, there's a wealth of accessories that promise to improve your experience – and your score. But from mechanical keyboards to high dynamic range monitors the choices and jargon can be confusing. Here is our selection of the best gaming peripherals, whatever you play on. There are as many "ultimate" PC gaming set-ups as there are PC gamers – because the range of possibilities is vast and it's such a subjective process. With the mouse, for example, a lot will depend on how big your hands are and whether you prefer to lay your hand flat across the mouse or hold it in a claw-like grip.

In the last 20 years, flatscreen TVs have gone from high-priced novelty item to household mainstay. Not even counting Black Friday, you can get perfectly acceptable TVs for just a couple hundred bucks, and really astounding ones for not much more. It's no secret that along the way, the flatscreen market has become absolutely saturated. This has lead to what I would call "feature jousting." Almost every year, flatscreen TVs ship with some new "must-have" feature: The ability to play 3D movies (including dork-tastic 3D glasses), or built-in web browsers and streaming apps, or remotes with built-in voice search.

We want to share with you our recent breakthrough teaching drones to fly using an eye-inspired camera, which opens the door to them performing fast, agile maneuvers and flying in low-light environments, where all commercial drones fail. Possible applications include supporting rescue teams with search missions at dusk or dawn. We submitted this work to the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. How it works Event cameras are bio-inspired vision sensors that output pixel-level brightness changes instead of standard intensity frames. They do not suffer from motion blur and have a very high dynamic range, which enables them to provide reliable visual information during high speed motions or in scenes characterized by high dynamic range. However, event cameras output only little information when the amount of motion is limited, such as in the case of almost still motion.

Columnist Kim Komando helps you navigate services, hardware and content if you're ready to ditch the TV bill. The new Apple TV 4K device ($179-$199) brings Ultra HD 4K video with high dynamic range (HDR) to the iTunes store and other apps. Apple TV is ready to take on 4K. The newest Apple TV devices, out Friday starting at $179, deliver 4K video for the first time. So if you have one of these high-end TVs, you are not taking full advantage of its capabilities if your Internet streaming device only delivers HD resolution.

Microsoft's mini Xbox games console will go on sale on August 2nd, the firm has revealed. The Xbox One S, which comes in a colour called'robot white', is 40 per cent smaller than the original Xbox One and has abandoned the bulky power external supply seen in previous consoles. It also supports 4K Ultra HD video, but will also come with up to 2TB of internal hard disk space - and boasted it will be'the first and only console that allows you to watch Blu-ray movies and stream video in stunning 4K Ultra HD with High Dynamic Range (HDR).' The Xbox One S, which comes in a colour called'robot white', is 40 per cent smaller than the original Xbox One and has abandoned the bulky power external supply seen in previous consoles. Rumours that Sony is working on a more powerful version of the PlayStation 4 have been confirmed.