MakerFaire North Carolina, We’ll see you there!

This weekend, June 16th, the North Carolina Maker Faire will be happening. This is the 3rd year for this event and from what we’ve seen in the past, it should be pretty good.

We realize that every site has its niche of event coverage that they should deliver. Engadget/Gizmodo need to show new phones and got to big apple announcements. … Read the rest

MITx 6.002x wraps up; here’s a review from one of the students

[Jorge] just finished MITx 6.002x with the fine score of 99.1%. Congratulations! We just finished reading through this review of his experience (translate) with the 14-week class and it sounds like the program is extremely well executed. For those that don’t remember, this is an intro to circuits and electronics course offered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. … Read the rest

The effect of code on power consumption

Of course putting a microcontroller into sleep mode or changing the clock rate has an effect on the power consumption of the chip, but what about different bits of code? Is multiplying two numbers more efficient than adding them, and does ORing two values consume more power than NOPping? [jcw] wanted to compare the power draw of a microcontroller running … Read the rest

Hands on with Raspbmc

Have you heard of the Raspberry Pi? Surprisingly enough, they’re starting to trickle into the hands of thousands of hackers, and we were fortunate to get our hands on one (second-hand since we didn’t jump in time for the initial preorder). We’ve longed for a tiny embedded option for running XBMC and this is one of the best opportunities we’ve … Read the rest

Counting bees

This is the bee counter which [Hydronics] designed. It’s made to attach to the opening for a hive, and will count the number of bees entering and exiting. We’re not experienced bee keepers ourselves (in fact we’re more of the mind of getting rid of stinging beasties) but we understand their important role in agriculture and ecosystem so we’re … Read the rest