Community Highlights: 27th edition

The 27th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting
things popped up around our community, which we thought was worth sharing.

But first I have one more announcement. My internship is (almost) over and I’m
happy to say that I passed and completed it with a good grade. That also means that
this community highlight is the last one from me as an intern, time will tell
when the next one will appear.

Do you want to share something for the next edition?
Information on how to share.

./Klaas
Intern on Home Assistant Energy

Blueprint of the week

This week’s blueprint is that of bfranke1973,
who has created a blueprint with which you can receive a notification when
a device loses connection with the network. Try it out! Read more about it
on the community forum or install this automation in your
instance with a click on the My button!

Love Lock Card

Do you ever accidentally turn on a light or switch? Then try the
love lock card made by
CyrisXD. With this, you can create a card
that is locked and you can unlock it with, for example, a pin code or a
simple click on the card.

Lovelace Dashboard

This week again we have a new Lovelace dashboard for the necessary portion
of inspiration 😄 This time the one from swake88
who is improving his dashboard
for use on a mobile device. If you want to know more about it, check out
the comment part on Reddit.

Would you also like your dashboard to be in the community highlight? Drop it
on Reddit and maybe I’ll pick it out for the next edition.

Statistic Tools

Home Assistant has a number of tools for working with statistics, but the
question is how can you best approach this. Carlos
has written a very good guide on
how to get started and how to make cards that use this data.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing,
inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

nixie-dip

Nixie’s drone-based water sampling could save cities time and money

Regularly testing waterways and reservoirs is a never-ending responsibility for utility companies and municipal safety authorities, and generally — as you might expect — involves either a boat or at least a pair of waders. Nixie does the job with a drone instead, making the process faster, cheaper and a lot less wet.

The most common methods of testing water quality haven’t changed in a long time, partly because they’re effective and straightforward, and partly because really, what else are you going to do? No software or web platform out there is going to reach into the middle of the river and pull out a liter of water.

But with the advent of drones powerful and reliable enough to deploy in professional and industrial circumstances, the situation has changed. Nixie is a solution by the drone specialists at Reign Maker, involving either a custom-built sample collection arm or an in-situ sensor arm.

The sample collector is basically a long vertical arm with a locking cage for a sample container. You put the empty container in there, fly the drone out to the location, then submerge the arm. When it flies back, the filled container can be taken out while the drone hovers and a fresh one put in its place to bring to the next spot. (This switch can be done safely in winds up to 18 MPH and sampling in currents up to 5 knots, the company said.)

Image Credits: Reign Maker

This allows for quick sampling at multiple locations — the drone’s battery will last about 20 minutes, enough for two to four samples depending on the weather and distance. Swap the battery out and drive to the next location and do it all again.

For comparison, Reign Maker pointed to New York’s water authority, which collects 30 samples per day from boats and other methods, at an approximate cost (including labor, boat fuel, etc) of $100 per sample. Workers using Nixie were able to collect an average of 120 samples per day, for around $10 each. Sure, New York is probably among the higher cost locales for this (like everything else) but the deltas are pretty huge. (The dipper attachment itself costs $850, but doesn’t come with a drone.)

It should be mentioned that the drone is not operating autonomously; it has a pilot who will be flying with line of sight (which simplifies regulations and requirements). But even so, that means a team of two, with a handful of spare batteries, can cover the same space  that would normally take a boat crew and more than a little fuel. Currently the system works with the M600 and M300 RTK drones from DJI.

Image Credits: Reign Maker

The drone method has the added benefits of having precise GPS locations for each sample and of not disturbing the water when it dips in. No matter how carefully you step or pilot a boat, you’re going to be pushing the water all over the place, potentially affecting the contents of the sample, but that’s not the case if you’re hovering overhead.

In development is a smarter version of the sampler that includes a set of sensors that can do on-site testing for all the most common factors: temperature, pH, troubling organisms, various chemicals. Skipping the step of bringing the water back to a lab for testing streamlines the process immensely, as you might expect.

Right now Reign Maker is working with New York’s Department of Environmental Protection and in talks with other agencies. While the system would take some initial investment, training, and getting used to, it’s probably hard not to be tempted by the possibility of faster and cheaper testing.

Ultimately the company hopes to offer (in keeping with the zeitgeist) a more traditional SaaS offering involving water quality maps updating in real time with new testing. That too is still in the drawing-board phase, but once a few customers sign up it starts looking a lot more attractive.

Community Highlights: 26th edition

The 26th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting
things popped up around our community, which we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition?
Information on how to share.

./Klaas
Intern on Home Assistant Energy

Power-up your ESPHome Projects

Speaking of interesting stuff, have you seen what cool new stuff has come to
ESPHome? Read more about it in this blog.

Blueprint of the week

This week’s blueprint is that of danielbook,
who created a blueprint that turns on the lights of a room based on a motion
and brightness sensor. You will no longer be in the dark when you get
home 😉 Try it out! Read more about it on the community forum
or install this automation in your instance with a click on the My button!

Floor3D Card

Last time we shared a dashboard with floorplan, this time the
floor3D card from adizanni,
which you can use to get started with your own floorplan.

Lovelace Dashboard

This week again we have a new Lovelace dashboard for the necessary portion
of inspiration 😄 This time the one from suckfail
which has a dashboard
with a variety of cards. If you want to know more about it, check out the
comment part on Reddit.

Would you also like your dashboard to be in the community highlight? Drop it
on Reddit and maybe I’ll pick it out for the next edition.

Chore Tracker

Are you tired of doing those household chores all the time, or do the kids
just don’t want to unload the dishwasher? Make it more fun with the
chores tracker made by djbrooks022,
where you can earn points for every chore you complete!

Do you want to get started? Then find all the information here.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing,
inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Quindor and DrZzs playing with an ESP32-based QuinLED running WLED

Power-up your ESP8266 and ESP32 projects: browser-based installation and configure Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

ESP8266 and ESP32 are microcontrollers made by the Chinese company Espressif.
Microcontrollers are teeny tiny computers with little processor power,
memory and space that can interact with sensors, send infrared commands
and many other things.

With the ESP devices Espressif has achieved something formidable: their devices
have Wi-Fi, are compatible with code for the popular Arduino microcontroller
and they are cheap. Like, $5-including-shipping-from-China-cheap
(AliExpress) or $15 for 2 on Amazon cheap.
So cheap that they are the de facto standard for microcontrollers used in
IoT products, both for manufacturers and creators in the DIY space.

Quindor and DrZzs playing with an ESP32-based QuinLED running WLED
Quindor and DrZzs playing with an ESP32-based QuinLED running WLED
(YouTube)

Microcontrollers are just computers and so are nothing without their software.
Open source software like ESPHome, WLED and
Tasmota allow users to turn their ESP8266 and ESP32 devices into
powerful little machines that can gather information and control devices.
In your home, microcontrollers are the eyes and ears while Home Assistant
is the brain.

But these projects all have a common problem: it is difficult to get started.
We identified three pain points:

  1. Installing the software on the microcontroller.
  2. Connecting the microcontroller to your wireless network.
  3. Configure the software on the microcontroller.

These pain points stand in the way for creators to reach a wider audience. It’s
our mission to make local home automation succeed, and these projects,
and all the possibilities that they unlock, are an important part of this.

Today, we are introducing some things to make using microcontrollers easier.

Using terms everybody understands

We are going to start using words that a user understands instead of forcing
the technical terms on them. Terms like “firmware” and “flashing” are the
correct terminology but for inexperienced users they do more harm than good.
They will make the user feel uncomfortable before they even start.

So instead of “upload firmware” we’ve updated the ESPHome dashboard to talk
about “installing”. We are encouraging other projects to do the same.

Things will get more technical as a user continues playing with microcontrollers.
But this change might just be that little thing why they will actually continue.

ESP Web Tools: Installing projects on your microcontroller via the browser

We have created ESP Web Tools. ESP Web Tools allows project
websites to offer a great onboarding by enabling users to install the software
on their microcontrollers via their browser. All the user has to do is connect
their microcontroller to their computer and hit the install button on the
website. ESP Web Tools will automatically select the right build for your
microcontroller and install it.

This works for both the ESP8266 and ESP32 and with any project for these
devices. This technology is powered by Web Serial, a web standard for serial
communication that is part of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

ESP Web Tools Web has already been adopted as part of the onboarding by
WLED and ESPEasy.

Learn how to add ESP Web Tools to your website

If you have an ESP32 or ESP8266 device handy, you can try it out right here:

ESP Web Tools uses code written by
@MakerMelissa from Adafruit. We’re currently relying
on an enhanced fork that can fit a wider range of use cases, including ours.
We have a pull request open to get our changes contributed back.

ESP Web Tools website

Note: We don’t like to use technology that is not available in all browsers
and cannot be made available in other ways. However, in this case the benefits
outweigh the cons. We hope that Firefox and WebKit add support for Web Serial
in the future.

Improv Wi-Fi: Open standard to provision Wi-Fi credentials via Bluetooth Low Energy

We have created Improv Wi-Fi. Improv Wi-Fi is a free and open standard
that anyone can use to offer a user-friendly way for users to connect their
devices to the wireless network.

Improv Wi-Fi logo

For open source firmware there are two popular ways of getting a device to
connect to your wireless network. The device sets up a wireless network and you
need to connect to it via your phone or laptop, or the user compiles the
network and password into the firmware before installing it on the ESP.
Both methods are difficult and error prone, they offer a bad user experience.

If you look at off-the-shelf products, you see another approach:
send Wi-Fi credentials to the device via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). BLE allows
the user to get instant feedback if something goes wrong. This technology is
used in many products, but there is no open standard that is free to implement.
Improv Wi-Fi is an open standard that is free to implement.

Open source projects often host their control interface as a website on the
ESP device. Improv Wi-Fi supports this and when provisioning is done, the user
can be redirected to a URL to finish onboarding.

Improv Wi-Fi can be used today to provision ESP32 microcontrollers running
ESPHome (ESP8266 devices do not support BLE). Users will soon be
able to provision devices with the Improv Wi-Fi service via the Home Assistant
Android and iOS apps. All these implementations are open source and can be used
in your projects.

Improv Wi-Fi is also available for the web in the form of a button that can be
added to your website. This will allow users to configure and set up a device
from any browser that supports Web Bluetooth.

If you’ve used the installation button in the previous section but have not yet
connected it to the wireless network, you can onboard that device here:

Improv Wi-Fi website

ESPHome Dashboard: simplified and streamlined

With ESPHome users don’t program microcontrollers, they configure
them. Tell ESPHome there is a temperature sensor on pin 3 of your ESP device
and ESPHome will install custom software on your ESP device that makes this
information available in Home Assistant.

# Example ESPHome configuration
sensor:
  - platform: dht
    pin: D2
    temperature:
      name: "Living Room Temperature"
    humidity:
      name: "Living Room Humidity"
    update_interval: 60s

Result of how it shows up in Home Assistant with the example ESPHome above

The ESPHome Dashboard has been updated with a simplified and streamlined wizard
for new configurations. You now enter the name of your project and your Wi-Fi
credentials and it will install it on your ESP device via the browser. After
that all further updates will happen wirelessly.

ESPHome: embracing projects

We want to make it easy for creators to sell ESPHome powered products that offer
a great user experience. ESPHome projects embrace local control and integrate
nicely with Home Assistant, and so each extra ESPHome product that our users
can buy is a win.

To make it easier to keep creators and users connected once a product is
installed, projects can now add a project identifier and version to their
firmware (docs). With
today’s release this information will be available in the device information,
logging output and the mDNS discovery info.

The goal is to integrate the projects tighter into the ESPHome dashboard by
showing the project’s logo, link to the documentation and issue pages and allow
installing updates.

Why we build this

Home Assistant’s mission is to make local home automation a viable alternative
to cloud based solutions and accessible to everyone.

To make this mission a reality, we started the company Nabu Casa. Together with
the community, Nabu Casa develops Home Assistant and ESPHome and is funded
solely by people that support this mission. No investors or loans.

If you want to help fund our work, subscribe to Home Assistant Cloud.

metroid-dread

Nintendo teases 2022 release for Breath of the Wild sequel and releases Zelda Game & Watch to tide us over

Nintendo defied expectations today with an E3-timed Direct showing off not the hoped-for new Switch hardware but a dozen or so new games — as well as a general release window for the much-anticipated next Zelda game. And to celebrate the original’s 35th anniversary, it will sell a new Game & Watch featuring the first three games in the series.

Among other things, Nintendo showed off remasters or remakes of titles from the “Monkey Ball,” “Mario Party,” “Advance Wars, “Wario Ware” and other series, and announced new entries in the “Mario + Rabbids” and “Shin Megami Tensei” worlds. Other newly announced or teased games will be making it to Switch as well, like the new “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Perhaps most surprising was the inclusion of a new side-scrolling Metroid game, the first in nearly 20 years — and in fact, it has been in and out of development for half that time. “Metroid Dread,” the fifth in the mainline series that began on the NES, will release October 8, and we’ll see if Nintendo has managed to keep pace in a genre it pioneered but others have refined.

Image Credits: Nintendo

Everyone was hoping for Zelda news, however, and Nintendo… only slightly disappointed us. As the announcers noted, it’s the 35th anniversary of the NES original, and the perfect time to announce something truly special, but they have “no campaigns or other Nintendo Switch games planned.”

Instead, they offered an admittedly tempting Game & Watch in the style of the one we saw released last year for the Mario series. I had lots of good things to say about that device, and the new one will no doubt be just as fun. The ability to pause the game and pick it up later (but not rewind or save states) should make for a fun, authentic playthrough of the first three games in the Zelda series: “The Legend of Zelda” and “Zelda II: The Adventure of Link” for NES, and “Link’s Awakening” for Game Boy (recently remade).

Image Credits: Nintendo

The last item on the list was a new look at the follow-up to Breath of the Wild, which years after its debut still shines as one of the, if not the, best game on the Switch. Its sequel has a lot to live up to!

While the first trailer was all cinematic, this one showed gameplay and the overworld, including a new level of verticality that brings flying fortresses and castles in the air into play. It certainly looks impressive, but one wonders how much further the company can push its Switch hardware. After all, “Breath of the Wild” pushed the system to its limits at its debut, and even then it was not as powerful as its rivals from Microsoft and Sony — both now replaced by a new generation.

One hopes that Nintendo is simply being weird and has a trick up its sleeve, as it has many times before. The Switch was announced out of nowhere, and previous hardware updates have also dropped with little or no warning and seemingly arbitrary timing. What’s expected is an updated Switch that’s physically the same dimensions but considerably updated inside and using a larger, better display. Perfect backwards compatibility, like with the 3DS series of handhelds, also seems only logical. But Nintendo has always done its own thing and its fans wouldn’t have it any other way.

Kai-Fu Lee’s Sinovation bets on Linux tablet maker Jingling in $10M round

Kai-Fu Lee’s Sinovation Ventures has its eyes on a niche market targeting software developers. In April, the venture capital fund led a $10 million angel round in Jingling, a Chinese startup developing Linux-based tablets and laptops, TechCrunch has learned. Other investors in the round included private equity firm Trustbridge Partners.

Jingling was founded only in June 2020 but has quickly assembled a team of 80 employees hailing from the likes of Aliyun OS, Alibaba’s Linux distribution, Thunder Software, a Chinese operating system solution provider, and China’s open source community.

The majority of the startup’s staff are working on its Linux-based operating system called JingOS in Beijing, with the rest developing hardware in Shenzhen, where its supply chain is located.

“Operating systems are a highly worthwhile field for investment,” Peter Fang, a partner at Sinovation Ventures, told TechCrunch. “We’ve seen the best product iteration for work and entertainment through the combination of iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard, but no tablet maker has delivered a superior user experience for the Android system so far, so we decided to back JingOS.”

“The investment is also in line with Sinovation’s recognition and prediction in ARM powering more mobile and desktop devices in the future,” the investor added.

Jingling’s first device, the JingPad A1 tablet based on the ARM architecture, has already shipped over 500 units in a pre-sale and is ramping up interest through a crowdfunding campaign. Jingling currently uses processors from Tsinghua Unigroup but is looking into Qualcomm and MediaTek chipsets for future production, according to Liu.

On the software end, JingOS, which is open sourced on GitHub, has accumulated over 50,000 downloads from users around the world, most of whom are in the United States and Europe.

But how many people want a Linux tablet or laptop? Liu Chengcheng, who launched Jingling with Zhu Rui, said the demand is big enough from the developer community to sustain the startup’s early-phase growth. Liu is known for founding China’s leading startup news site 36Kr and Zhu is an operating system expert and a veteran of Motorola and Lenovo.

Targeting the Linux community is step one for Jingling, for “it’s difficult to gain a foothold by starting out in the [general] consumer market,” said Liu.

“The Linux market is too small for tech giants but too hard for small startups to tackle… aside from Jingling, Huawei is the only other company in China building a mobile operating system, but HarmonyOS focuses more on IoTs.”

Launching a new operating system is surely an audacious move and has been done before. Linux laptops have been around for years, but Jingling wanted to offer something different by enabling both desktop and mobile experiences on one device. That’s why Jingling made JingOS compatible with both Linux desktop software like WPS Office and Terminal as well as the usual Android apps on smartphones. The JingPad A1 tablet comes with a detachable keyboard that immediately turns itself into a laptop, a setup similar to Apple’s Magic Keyboard for iPad.

“It’s like a gift to programmers, who can use it to code in the Linux system but also use Android mobile apps on the run,” said Liu.

Jingling aspires to widen its user base and seize the Chromebook market about two from now, Liu said. The success of Chromebooks, which comprised 10.8% of the PC market in 2020 and have been increasingly eating into Microsoft’s dominance, is indicative of the slowing demand for Windows personal computers, the founder observed.

The JingPad A1 is sold at a starting price of $549, compared to Chrome’s wide price range roughly between $200 and $550 depending on the specs and hardware providers. Tablets, along with PCs, got a bump in sales during the pandemic, thanks to more people working and learning remotely, but in the long term, Jingling will have to get its pricing right and pin down where it sits in the market.

Chromebooks had a banner 2020

Home Assistant OS Release 6 Logo

Home Assistant OS Release 6


Home Assistant OS Release 6 Logo

Home Assistant OS 6.0 stable is available now!

Highlights:

  • OS Agent for better OS integration with Supervisor

  • Support for additional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices

  • Smaller virtual machine disk images

  • Improved: Generic x86-64 system support

Table of contents

Operating System Changes

OS Agent

Operating System release 6 comes with a new, Go written daemon called OS Agent.
This allows the Supervisor to access more aspects of the OS. One such aspect is
to move the data to an external data disk or wipe data to start over without
reinstalling. Note however that at this point, the required logic in the
Supervisor and Frontend is still being developed.

Under the Hood

Under the hood, the OS was updated to the latest upstream Linux 5.10 kernel
as well as Buildroot 2021.02.1. The latest Buildroot release brings tons of
new software versions along with bug and security fixes. Some key components
which received an update were systemd 247 and the Docker Container Engine
20.10.6.

Other Changes

  • The short name of the OS used throughout the software stack was renamed to
    “haos”. From a users perspective not much changes, but it leads to new file
    names.
  • The Home Assistant CLI is now started on tty1 instead of the login prompt. The
    HA CLI banner shows the IP and other device information without the need
    to attach a keyboard to login.
  • The default shell of the root user is now the Busybox ash. This allows to use
    scp and similar tools using SSH.
  • The system start is now delayed until the system time has been synchronized
    with an NTP server. This avoids connection issues to SSL/TLS enabled servers
    when the system time is off. In practice, the delay should only be a few
    seconds. The system proceeds with startup after 90s in case the NTP server was
    not reachable (e.g. if no Internet connectivity is available).

Device Support

Raspberry Pi

All Raspberry Pi versions were updated to use the Linux Kernel 5.10 from the
Raspberry Pi team, just like Raspberry Pi OS. The latest Bluetooth firmware for
CYW43455 (Raspberry Pi 3 B+/4) with security fixes is now part of the Raspberry
Pi images.

Generic x86-64

In Home Assistant OS 6 the board/image “Intel NUC” was renamed to “Generic
x86-64”. Existing “Intel NUC” installation will automatically migrate to the
“Generic x86-64” image on update.

Already with OS 5 the “Intel NUC” image was usable for most UEFI capable x86-64
systems. With the rename that fact is emphasized. Home Assistant OS is open
to changes to add drivers to extend support for other x86-64 platforms. However,
keep in mind that we don’t have access to all x86-64 hardware, so support for
devices is on a best effort basis.

Other Changes:

  • The Intel IGC network driver supports Intel network cards such as I225-LM/I225-V
    used on some newer Intel NUC devices.

  • With Home Assistant OS 6 the latest version of the Barebox bootloader 2021.05.0
    which fixes boot from hard disks larger than 2TB.

  • The ACPI kernel driver for Thinkpad devices is enabled.

Open Virtualization Appliance

The virtual disk images are now built from a sparse file as source, which leads
to smaller effective disk image sizes. Disk images are now also distributed in
the more common zip file format (except the qcow2 images which are mostly used on
Linux, they continue to be in the xz compression format).

By default, the image now has a serial console enabled which is useful to access
Home Assistant OS on headless host systems.

Additional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Device Support

Ralink rt27xx/rt28xx/rt30xx, as well as Realtek 87xx/88xx devices, are now
supported on boards that don’t have onboard Wi-Fi/Bluetooth. This is also
true for the OVA image for virtualized environments (when using hardware
passthrough functionality). For the OVA image, also Intel firmwares are now
part of the image so that Intel Wi-Fi/Bluetooth devices can be used in
passthrough mode as well.

Homematic IP Support

@jens-maus contributed OS support for Homematic/Homematic IP dual-stack support
for RPI-RF-MOD or HM-MOD-RPI-PCB devices. This together with the
RaspberryMatic CCU Add-On
offers the full functionality of RaspberryMatic embedded in Home Assistant.

Google Coral PCIe AI Accelerator Support

@ryddler enabled the driver for Google Coral PCIe TPU devices. This allows to
use Google Coral Mini PCIe Accelerator or M.2 Accelerator on all boards
supporting PCIe.

That’s all Folks! Now go out and update!

Community Highlights: 25th edition

The 25th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting
things popped up around our community, which we thought was worth sharing.

Also, keep an eye out for the ESPHome release next week Wednesday. We’re
going to have some great announcements!

Do you want to share something for the next edition?
Information on how to share.

./Klaas
Intern on Home Assistant Energy

Blueprint of the week

Are there more people who turn their lights on and off at certain times
when they go on holiday?

This week’s blueprint is that of timgiwo,
who created a blueprint that can repeat the behavior of your lights from
the past week, so it seems like you are still at home. Try it out! Read more
about it on the community forum or install this automation
in your instance with a click on the My button!

Slider Button Card

Mattieha made a button card
that also included a slider, so you could, for example: switch a light but
also immediately adjust the brightness with the slider. Useful for those who
want to keep their dashboard compact.

Floorplan Dashboard

This week again we have a new Lovelace dashboard for the necessary portion
of inspiration 😄 This time the one from theone11
who has a dashboard with a
floorplan, definitely recommended to take a look at the repository because
there is a lot of explanation on it.

Would you also like your dashboard to be in the community highlight? Drop it
on Reddit and maybe I’ll pick it out for the next edition.

Ispindel

Between the community submissions, we came across a nice project
that works with ESPHome, it’s a sensor with which you can
monitor your own homebrew, for example, the alcohol percentage and the
temperature. Cheers Alexander! 🍻

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing,
inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Microsoft plans to launch dedicated Xbox cloud gaming hardware

Microsoft will soon launch a dedicated device for game streaming, the company announced today. It’s also working with a number of TV manufacturers to build the Xbox experience right into their internet-connected screens and Microsoft plans to bring cloud gaming to the PC Xbox app later this year, too, with a focus on play-before-you-buy scenarios.

It’s unclear what these new game streaming devices will look like. Microsoft didn’t provide any further details. But chances are we’re talking about either a Chromecast-like streaming stick or a small Apple TV-like box. So far, we also don’t know which TV manufacturers it will partner with.

It’s no secret that Microsoft is bullish about cloud gaming. With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, it’s already making it possible for its subscribers to play more than 100 console games on Android, streamed from the Azure cloud, for example. In a few weeks, it’ll open cloud gaming in the browser on Edge, Chrome and Safari, to all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers (it’s currently in limited beta). And it is bringing Game Pass Ultimate to Australia, Brazil, Mexico and Japan later this year, too.

In many ways, Microsoft is unbundling gaming from the hardware — similar to what Google is trying with Stadia (an effort that, so far, has fallen flat for Google) and Amazon with Luna. The major advantage Microsoft has here is a large library of popular games, something that’s mostly missing on competing services, with the exception of Nvidia’s GeForce Now platform — though that one has a different business model since its focus is not on a subscription but on allowing you to play the games you buy in third-party stores like Steam or the Epic store.

What Microsoft clearly wants to do is expand the overall Xbox ecosystem, even if that means it sells fewer dedicated high-powered consoles. The company likens this to the music industry’s transition to cloud-powered services backed by all-you-can-eat subscription models.

“We believe that games, that interactive entertainment, aren’t really about hardware and software. It’s not about pixels. It’s about people. Games bring people together,” said Microsoft’s Xbox head Phil Spencer. “Games build bridges and forge bonds, generating mutual empathy among people all over the world. Joy and community — that’s why we’re here.”

It’s worth noting that Microsoft says it’s not doing away with dedicated hardware, though, and is already working on the next generation of its console hardware — but don’t expect a new Xbox console anytime soon.

Why I left edtech and got into gaming

audio-switch

Apple’s latest accessibility features are for those with limb and vocal differences

Apple announced a batch of accessibility features at WWDC 2021 that cover a wide variety of needs, among them a few for people who can’t touch or speak to their devices in the ordinary way. With Assistive Touch, Sound Control and other improvements, these folks have new options for interacting with an iPhone or Apple Watch.

We covered Assistive Touch when it was first announced, but recently got a few more details. This feature lets anyone with an Apple Watch operate it with one hand by means of a variety of gestures. It came about when Apple heard from the community of people with limb differences — whether they’re missing an arm, or unable to use it reliably, or anything else — that as much as they liked the Apple Watch, they were tired of answering calls with their noses.

Apple Watch gets a motion-controlled cursor with ‘Assistive Touch’

The research team cooked up a way to reliably detect the gestures of pinching one finger to the thumb, or clenching the hand into a fist, based on how doing them causes the watch to move — it’s not detecting nervous system signals or anything. These gestures, as well as double versions of them, can be set to a variety of quick actions. Among them is opening the “motion cursor,” a little dot that mimics the movements of the user’s wrist.

Considering how many people don’t have the use of a hand, this could be a really helpful way to get basic messaging, calling and health-tracking tasks done without needing to resort to voice control.

Speaking of voice, that’s also something not everyone has at their disposal. Many of those who can’t speak fluently, however, can make a bunch of basic sounds, which can carry meaning for those who have learned — not so much Siri. But a new accessibility option called “Sound Control” lets these sounds be used as voice commands. You access it through Switch Control, not audio or voice, and add an audio switch.

Image Credits: Apple

The setup menu lets the user choose from a variety of possible sounds: click, cluck, e, eh, k, la, muh, oo, pop, sh and more. Picking one brings up a quick training process to let the user make sure the system understands the sound correctly, and then it can be set to any of a wide selection of actions, from launching apps to asking commonly spoken questions or invoking other tools.

For those who prefer to interact with their Apple devices through a switch system, the company has a big surprise: Game controllers, once only able to be used for gaming, now work for general purposes as well. Specifically noted is the amazing Xbox Adaptive Controller, a hub and group of buttons, switches and other accessories that improves the accessibility of console games. This powerful tool is used by many, and no doubt they will appreciate not having to switch control methods entirely when they’re done with Fortnite and want to listen to a podcast.

Image Credits: Apple

One more interesting capability in iOS that sits at the edge of accessibility is Walking Steadiness. This feature, available to anyone with an iPhone, tracks (as you might guess) the steadiness of the user’s walk. This metric, tracked throughout a day or week, can potentially give real insight into how and when a person’s locomotion is better and worse. It’s based on a bunch of data collected in the Apple Heart and Movement study, including actual falls and the unsteady movement that led to them.

If the user is someone who recently was fitted for a prosthesis, or had foot surgery, or suffers from vertigo, knowing when and why they are at risk of falling can be very important. They may not realize it, but perhaps their movements are less steady toward the end of the day, or after climbing a flight of steps, or after waiting in line for a long time. It could also show steady improvements as they get used to an artificial limb or chronic pain declines.

Exactly how this data may be used by an actual physical therapist or doctor is an open question, but importantly it’s something that can easily be tracked and understood by the users themselves.

Image Credits: Apple

Among Apple’s other assistive features are new languages for voice control, improved headphone acoustic accommodation, support for bidirectional hearing aids, and of course the addition of cochlear implants and oxygen tubes for memoji. As an Apple representative put it, they don’t want to embrace differences just in features, but on the personalization and fun side as well.