The Death Of Surplus

December 7, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 147 Comments

I thought the surplus electronics market in Dallas was a byproduct of local manufacturing, after all we have some heavy hitters in our back yard: Texas Instruments, Maxim (Dallas Semiconductor), ST Micro (at one time), Diodes Incorporated. If we widen our radius to include Austin (3 hours down the road) we can make a much more impressive list by including: National Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor, better yet I’ll just insert the graphic I’m pulling data from right here:

texas_companies_map — Texas Electronics Map Source: Texas.gov

Granted, not all of these are companies that manufacture silicon, or even have manufacturing facilities here in Texas. That doesn’t necessarily matter for surplus to exist. Back to my point of where surplus originated. While I wasn’t completely wrong (these companies certainly have helped contribute to the surplus electronics market) the beginnings of surplus storefronts date back to World War II. Did anyone see that coming? Neither did I. However it does make sense, the US government would have had a large stock of “stuff” to get rid of at the end of the war.

Enter the sale of government surplus all over the nation, usually near air force bases. So this is how the more generalized concept of a surplus shop came to be in existence; mix in the domestic manufacturing of electronics in the 1970’s and we have electronics surplus shops aplenty.

My First Hand Experience

I didn’t really appreciate how valuable my local electronics shop was until watching Beers in Bunnie’s Workshop – Workshop Video #36. If you haven’t seen the video you only need to know that [Ian] of Dangerous Prototypes and [bunnie] of Andrew [bunnie] Huang are standing in [bunnie]s work-space in Singapore drinking beer and talking about the lab that is [bunnie]s life. You with me now? Okay, there is a point in the video where the two discuss the ability to run down the street and buy a connector as something only available in Singapore or Shenzhen. Let me briefly pause here to clarify that I’m not comparing my local electronics shop to the Shenzhen market or Sim Lim Tower in Singapore, only stating that I too can hold parts in-hand before purchasing them. I’m also not [brandon] of Dangerous Prototypes or Andrew [brandon] Huang, clearly.

I do however have an electronics selection at my disposal that is unmatched until you get to the west coast shops. I went on a bit of an adventure with the owner [Jim Tanner] of my local shop [Tanner Electronics] to take some pictures of the retail floor and a few behind the scenes (warehouse) shots that you can check out after the break.

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REM Detection Lets You Boss Around Your Dreams

December 7, 2015 by Bryan Cockfield 33 Comments

[Michael] has been working on projects involving lucid dreaming for a long time. The recurring problem with most projects of this nature, though, is that they often rely on some sort of headgear or other wearable which can be cumbersome to actually sleep with. He seems to have made some headway on that problem by replacing some of the offending equipment with a small camera that can detect eye movements just as well as other methods.

The idea behind projects like this is that a piece of hardware detects when the user is in REM sleep, and activates some cue which alerts the sleeper to the fact that they’re dreaming (without waking them up). Then, the sleeper can take control of the dream. The new device uses a small camera that dangles in front of an eye, which is close enough to monitor the eye’s movement. It measures the amount of change between each frame, logs the movements throughout the night and plays audio tracks or triggers other hardware when eye movements are detected.

[Michael]’s goal is to eventually communicate from inside of a dream, and has gone a long way to achieving that goal. Now that this device is more comfortable and more reliable, the dream is closer to reality. [Michael] is looking for volunteers to provide sleep logs and run tests, so if you’re interested then check out the project!

Shark Vs. Robot

December 7, 2015 by Gregory L. Charvat 17 Comments

In laymen’s terms they built a shark-chasing robot. You can guess what happened next…

The back story is a little more reputable. I recently attended the Center for Marine Robotics meeting at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and learned about a very interesting robot. For the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week the network partnered with [Amy Kukulya] at WHOI to develop an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that locates, follows, and films sharks in their natural habitats, swimming, patrolling, doing their thing.

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