Last year Dr Smith and Alanson Sample, a researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, powered a small humidity and temperature sensor using nothing more than the energy gleaned from a television station 4.1km (2.5 miles) away.
Twine itself is a block of plastic containing an accelerometer (which senses motion or vibration), a temperature sensor and a processor much like Botanicalls.
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At its most fundamental level, what you have is an oven mitt for your radiator that's augmented with a temperature sensor and an exhaust fan.
These include a rechargeable battery, a temperature sensor and a built-in radio that allows one Pinoccio with a WiFi shield to communicate wirelessly with other Pinoccios.
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That's the case with StickNFind - circular stickers the size of a few 10p pieces stuck together which contain a Bluetooth chip, temperature sensor and battery.
The little creature's also got four additional touch sensors, a temperature sensor, a gravity sensor and an internal clock to tell the time of day, improved motors, and basic voice recognition -- and the Hong Kong packaging suggests the dinos will even come in two different sexes.
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In recent weeks Dr Smith and Dr Sample, working with Scott Southwood, another researcher at the University of Washington, have built a weather sensor that measures temperature and light levels and sends a packet of data every five seconds by radio.
Cao Gadgets is attempting to fill that niche with its functionally named Wireless Sensor Tags -- small devices which monitor movement and temperature, notifying you if anything's amiss.
ENGADGET: Wireless Sensor Tags alert you to movement and temperature changes, fit on your keyring
Each patch contains a microprocessor and memory along with either a radio transmitter, a sensor reactive to light or temperature, a microphone, batteries or a display.
Based on the Phoenix lander, the craft is tasked with giving us a peek beneath the planet's surface, armed with tools that include a geodetic instrument from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will be used to calculate Mars' rotation axis, a seismic wave sensor and a subsurface heat probe, to measure the planet's internal temperature.
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