New ICOP eBox 2300 - and Windows Embedded Student Challenge Projects.

Yesterday evening I took delivery of a shiny, new eBox 2300, the box is pretty small (see image below compare to a Windows Vista "Talking Rain" soda can) - This box has all the functionality of the eBox-II except for no parallel port - everything seems to be there, 128MB Ram, ethernet, video, audio in/out, CF Card slot, PS/2 keyboard/mouse, 3xUSB (great for Phidgets or USB Digital I/O). 

Here's the eBox from the front...

I spent some time over at the Windows Embedded Student Challenge 2006 today - unfortunately not as long as I would have hoped, I ended up covering meetings for Dan, the Windows CE Product Manager, who's wife had a baby yesterday!.

Teams each take turns presenting their projects to a panel of 4 judges who score the project. Each team gets 15 minutes, 10 minutes to present, 5 minutes to demo, and some time for Q&A (see image below).

This years projects looked awesome (and I'm sorry I didn't have enough time to get around the whole room to see all 30 teams projects), so here's a brief sample...

First up is a robot to be used in nuclear power stations, this robot is capable of climbing stairs (and descending them) has a 360 degree camera and a remote controlled arm, very cool.

Next up is an intelligent street lighting system - if it's 3am and there aren't any cars on the road then why do we need to have street lights on? - imagine the amount of power that could be saved if streetlights only came on if cars were on the road - the system below turns on a series of lights ahead of the vehicle and then turns the lights off after the vehicle has passed - quite interesting!

Here's a team that have built an intelligent scarecrow - the unit has an IP camera which sends images to the eBox which uses a C# application to determine motion - but with a twist, if the person/thing that's moving is wearing a specific (configurable) color garment then the scarecrow doesn't come to life - when it does come to life it can either make a loud noise or fire water cannons to scare away the bird/animal.

I also captured a photo of an intelligent windscreen/windshield - this would display dots on the windscreen that exacrly covered your eyes to mask the headlights of oncoming cars so you, as a driver wouldn't be blinded by oncoming cars, very neat - unfortunately the image didn't come out :O(

Oh, at lunchtime, outside the presentation room, there were a stack of Pizza's that were made with 100% "real cheese"... I wonder what other pizzas are made from??

- Mike