Day: February 22, 2019

What Happens When You Cross A Brick With A Pixel?

February 22, 2019 by 19 Comments

There are a great many technologies we use to display information every day. We’re all familiar with plasma displays and LCDs, and then there’s more esoteric hardware like the split flap displays on municipal buses and around train stations.  However, Breakfast have been working on something that turns architectural features into a display at the same time. Enter Brixels.

The name is a portmanteau of brick and pixel, indicating that each individual brick can be independently addressed as a visual element. A Brixel installation consists of a series of columns, stacked with Brixel elements. Each individual brick on the column contains a stepper motor which can set the rotational position of the brick. The outer appearance of the individual bricks is highly customizable, as the motor hardware is integrated into the column itself. A Linux machine is used as a primary controller, which passes commands to each column’s controller over RS485, and the column controllers then pass instructions to each individual Brixel.

The Brixels are capable of continuous 360 degree rotation and also contain LEDs for various illumination based effects. The largest current installation is the Brixel Mirror, standing at 18 feet wide, 6 feet high, and containing 540 individually addressable Brixels. These are built with one half covered in a mirror finish, and combined with a depth-sensing camera for all kinds of fun interactive effects.

Brixels show that architectural features don’t have to be static – they can become kinetic, living things that can be aesthetically beautiful and also useful. Breakfast are known for their installations which use modern electronics to push the limits in their artistic installations. Their work on high-speed flip dot displays is particularly impressive. Video after the break.

[Thanks to Sheldon for the tip!]

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Drops Of Jupyter Notebooks: How To Keep Notes In The Information Age

February 22, 2019 by 32 Comments

Our digital world is so much more interactive than the paper one it has been replacing. That becomes very obvious in the features of Jupyter Notebooks. The point is to make your data beautiful, organized, interactive, and shareable. And you can do all of this with just a bit of simple coding.

We already leveraged computer power by moving from paper spreadsheets to digital spreadsheets, but they are limited. One thing I’ve seen over and over again — and occasionally been guilty of myself — is spreadsheet abuse. That is, using a spreadsheet program to do something I probably ought to write a program to do. For those times that you want something quick but want something more than a spreadsheet, you should check out Jupyter Notebooks. The system is most commonly associated with Python, but it isn’t Python-specific. There are over 100 languages supported — many community-developed. You can even install a C++ interpreter backend for it. Because of the client/server architecture, it is very simple to share notebooks with other users.

You can — in theory — use Jupyter for anything you could use Python for. In practice, it seems to get a lot of workout with people analyzing large data sets, doing machine learning, and similar tasks.

The Good: Simple, Powerful, Extensible

The idea is simple. Think of a Markdown-enabled web page that can connect to a backend (a kernel, in Jupyter-speak). The backend can run on your machine or remotely and will support some kind of language — often Python. The document has cells that line up vertically (like a single wide spreadsheet column). For example, here’s a simple notebook I created to explain how a bunch of sine waves add up to a square wave:

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12 Year Old Builds Successful Fusor At Home

February 22, 2019 by 54 Comments

Nuclear fusion, as a method of power generation, continues to elude humanity. It promises cheap, virtually limitless energy, if only we could find a way to achieve it. On the other hand, achieving nuclear fusion of a few atoms just for the fun of it is actually quite doable, even in the home lab. [Jackson Oswalt] is one of the youngest to pull it off, having built a working fusor at home at the age of 12.

The fusor consists of a cross-shaped chamber, which is pumped down to a high vacuum to enable the fusion reaction to occur. Deuterium is then pumped into the chamber, and confined by an applied electric field from a power supply in the vicinity of 50 kV. With the right combination of geometry, vacuum and other factors, it’s possible to fuse atoms and observe the characteristic glow of the reaction taking place.

In order to be recognised as having achieved fusion by the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium, one must typically have proof of the release of neutrons from the fusion reaction. [Jackson] showed this with a neutron detector setup, by inserting and removing it during a run to demonstrate the fusor was the source of the signal. Photos of the glowing fusor don’t go astray, either, and [Jackson] was more than happy to deliver.

We’ve seen fusor builds before – [Erik]’s build got him into the Plasma Club back in 2016.

[via Fox News]

Radiation Detector Eschews Tubes, Uses Photodiode

February 22, 2019 by 13 Comments

When the topic is radiation detection, thoughts turn naturally to the venerable Geiger-Müller tube. It’s been around for ages, Russian surplus tubes are available for next to nothing, and it’s easy to use. But as a vacuum tube it can be somewhat delicate, and the high voltages needed to run it can be a little on the risky side.

Luckily, there are other ways to see what’s going on in the radioactive world, like this semiconductor radiation detector. [Robert Gawron] built it as a proof-of-concept after having built a few G-M tube detectors before. His solid-state design relies on a reverse-biased photodiode conducting when ionizing radiation hits the P-N junction. The tiny signal is amplified by a pair of low-noise op-amps and output to a BNC connector. The sensor’s analog output is sent to an oscilloscope whose trigger out is connected to a Nucleo board for data acquisition. The Nucleo is in turn connected to a Raspberry Pi for totalizing and logging. It’s a complicated chain, but the sensor appears to work, even detecting alpha emissions from thoriated TIG electrodes, a feat we haven’t been able to replicate with our G-M tube counter.

[Robert]’s solid-state detector might not be optimal, but it has promise. And we have seen PIN diodes used as radiation detectors before, too.

[via Dangerous Prototypes]