IEEE Spectrum November, 2007 - 37

motors that draw on good old-fashioned
lead-acid batteries. The oxygen supply and
the CO2 filters could, in an emergency,
keep a person alive for 36 hours.
Juijn and his company's employees have
taken their sub to speeds of 2.5 to 3 nautical miles per hour for as long as 2.5 to
3 hours, two figures that together define
its range of about 6 nautical miles. It can
descend as far as 50 meters, "which is fine,
because most of the interesting stuff is
under 20 meters," he says. That diving
floor is not a suggestion but a requirement: try to go lower and the submarine's
depth-control system will stop you.
You might think an undersea voyager
could just sneer at the weather, but that is
not the case, Juijn says. You need to be able
to get into and out of the sub without getting swamped-which means sailing only
when the short waves (as opposed to long
swells) measure less than half a meter.
The natural customers are marine
biologists, environmentalists, and tour

orEgoN SCIENTIfIC

provides weather forecasts 12 to 24 hours into
the future and indicates
whether nea rby road
conditions are dry, slick,
or very wet. The 9.65by 18.8-centimeter unit
also displays the temp eratu re a nd hu m idity of the room it's in
a nd t h e s a m e i n fo rmation for up to three
other locations as far as
30 meters away. You can
set the base unit's alarm
to go off if a remote unit
detects that it is too cold
in the baby's room or so damp in your
greenhouse that mold will grow on your
plants. One battery-powered wireless
sensor comes with the clock; you can
purchase others separately.
The unit automatically synchronizes
itself with the standard U.S. atomic clock
in Boulder, Colo., and it adjusts itself for
daylight saving time.
Ambient Devices of Cambridge, Mass.,
which began as a data aggregator, has
brought the all-things-to-all-people
ambitions of cellular handset makers to
bedside tables and desktops with a line
of satellite-connected, battery-operated

www.spectrum.ieee.org

guides. Guides will be particularly interested in a $190 000 two-seat model, the
CQ2, which is in development.
Of course, the truly wealthy may enjoy
such a bauble if they can use it to entertain a guest: "Perhaps you would like to
see my little underwater operation before
I kill you, Mr. Bond."
One thing affluent owners will be able
to afford is a crew to maintain the sub
between dives and to watch over it while
it's running. Nobody should ever dive
without a surface vessel and crew standing
at the ready with a crane and other rescue
equipment, Juijn says. A pilot who loses
wireless contact with the surface crew
must surface immediately-a person who
gets stuck has no way to get out.

-Philip E. Ross
The C-Quester 1 costs about US $130 000,
plus taxes, import duties, and registration
fees. Contact the manufacturer at http://
www.uboatworx.com.

gadgets that also go far
beyond telling the time.
Its Weather Wizard [far
lef t] station d isplays
c o n d i t i o n s re p o r t e d
by meteorolog ists at
AccuWeather.com, along
with local predictions-
including high and low
temperatures-for the
next four days. It can
also give weather readings for any U.S. ZIP
code and any major world
city. And oh, yes, it tells
time, too.
The Ambient MarketMaven allows you to track the performance of the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500
stock indexes all at once. You can also
customize it to track single stocks. The
main drawback is that data displayed on
the device lags the market by 20 minutes.
Of course, it also works as a clock.
-Willie D. Jones

The Weather Station costs US $200 at
http://w w w.partshelf.com/osfaw101ak.
html. The Weather Wizard sells for $85;
see http://www.ambientdevices.com. The
marketmaven costs $130 at http://www.
hammacher.com.
November 2007 | IEEE Spectrum | NA

http://http:// http://www.uboatworx.com http://www.AccuWeather.com http://www.partshelf.com/osfaw101ak http://www.ambientdevices.com http://www http://www.hammacher.com http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum November, 2007