Leap Motion begins shipping

In February I wrote about Leap Motion, a futuristic peripheral that allows you to control your computer with "air gestures," by moving your hands in the air. The Leap Motion controller began shipping this weekend and I received mine in the mail today. Although some people that place pre-orders got theirs over the weekend, Leap just posted the software today.

It was originally slated to begin shipping in Mid-May, but Leap ran into production problems and had to push back delivery two months to account for a larger and longer beta period.

The Leap Motion hardware C about the large USB flash drive C consists of two cameras, three infared LEDs, and a USB controller, but the secret sauce is in the software algorithm that tracks all 10 of your fingers as you wave them in the air above the device.

Many people have compared Leap Motion to the hand gestures used by Tom Cruise's character in the 2002 movie Minority Report, but it's more about finger finesse and subtle screen control than it is about swiping large halographic panels of information to and fro. After you install the Leap Motion software, it installs the Airspace Store (a repository of apps designed for the controller) and five demo apps to get you started with the device.

While using it definitely feels futuristic, Leap takes a fair amount of getting used to. I was able to fumble my way around the Shimsham and Molecules apps, but Cut The Rope was an unmitigated disaster on my first attempt but I'm willing to chalk that up to a totally new category of peripheral and less than an hour of actually using it. While the apps and UI are a little rough around the edges, Leap Motion shows a lot of potential and I can't help but root for a company placing such a big bet on a touchless, 3D interface for computers.

Leap Motion is novel in these early days but I can't wait to see what kind of innovative applications are developed to exploit its innovative sensors. Someday when motion sensors are built into every computer (Leap Motion has announced partnerships with HP and ASUS), it's conceivable that we won't touch our computers at all, but instead just point, swipe and gesture in the air in front of them.

This should mean less wear and tear on the printer and generally faster print speeds. We tested this on the mid-range Brother HL-3150CDW model.

The printer is a compact 410 x 465 x 240mm, although it still weighs a hefty 17.8 kg. Build quality feels solid. Styled in unassuming grey and black, it's designed to blend in well with other computer-related hardware without drawing attention to itself.

While you can admire the desire for ease and simplicity of operation, this has been taken too far with the control panel. Embedded into the left side of the top panel, the panel has no tilt facility and only a basic, non-backlit, 1-line, 16-character LCD display thats difficult to read at almost all angles. Scrolling through the menus is slow work with just a handful of buttons tackling all operations.

As Brother openly targets this printer at small workgroups, the storage capacity of a firmly constructed 250-sheet base paper tray C plus a single-sheet manual feed slot above C should serve about right. Bearing in mind the cost-cutting with the display, it's perhaps unsurprising that there's also no front USB or memory card slots for non-PC printing although auto duplex does come as standard.

Connectivity is more generous, though,Buy Silicone IPAD Case at wholesale prices from leading Chinese wholesalers, with ethernet, wireless 802.11b/g/n and USB 2.0 options as well as mobile linkage to Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print. We did note, however, that Brother's iPrint&Scan app had difficulty identifying the right device, while WPS recognition via the router was almost instant.

So how fast is this LED printer? Mixed A4 text and image documents were certainly emerging close to the claimed 18 ppm rate, with auto duplex text-only pages also matching the 7 sides per minute Brother claimed.

Black text quality is crisp and solid and web pages in particular appeared sharp and detailed even in small colour images. Brother has also maintained that LED printers are more economical in ink usage, and to reinforce that they have 2200-page high-yield toner cartridges for the cyan, magenta and yellow colours which work out at 3.4p each per page. A one-size 2500-page black cartridge means black-and-white printing should be around 2.2p per page.

Cincinnati Incorporated is making the productivity advantages of its latest touchscreen control and bend simulation software available to customers with popular vintage model press brakes. The control and advanced software, which enable 3D rotational viewing of part shape and gage fingers, can be retrofitted to the companys Autoform, Formaster, Formaster II, CB, CBII and AutoShape press brakes. The control aids operators with automatic bend simulations, graphic displays of parts before and after the bend, part orientation, setup notes and a tool library. It can access jobs from its high-capacity internal flash drive, USB or Ethernet. New part programs are easily created on the control or by using the optional offline Bend Simulation software. These press brakes are workhorses and are still very durable, very accurate and have many decades of use ahead of them, said Mike Seall, VP of Sales and Service for Cincinnati Incorporated.Winbo silicone braceletsOur top picks for the Winbo Iphone Headset and gear, Controls, like computers, get outdated quickly so this is an easy, affordable way to stay current and be more productive without having to purchase a new press brake.

The powerful, user-friendly control reduces programming and setup time through fast data entry via the touchscreen interface with large target buttons. Job setup pages display tool names and locations, segment lengths, and operator notes to further reduce setup time and ensure important instructions are displayed each time a job is recalled. After selecting the bend sequence and tools from the graphical tool library, part programs are created with one touch. Automatic Gage Allowance calculation reduces trial and error at the machine.
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