Binary Adder Will Give You Slivers

October 13, 2009 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

marble_adder

A while back we looked at [Matthias’] one-pin dot matrix printer. Now we’re jumping over to his woodworking website to feast on his wooden binary adding machine. His creation uses glass marbles as the data for this device. A resolution of up to six bits can be set on the top of the adder, then dropped into the machine as one number. With each new drop, the number is added to the total stored in the machine. The device is limited to totals less than 64. If a larger number is enter, the device wraps around back to zero by dumping the 7th bit off the end. He’s even got a master clear that allows you to easily read the stored total and evacuate the “data” from the machine.

This has quite a few less wires than the last binary adder we looked at… wait, it has no wires! But we still love it. A physical representation of what is going on with binary math really helps grasp what the magic blue smoke inside those silicon chips is all about. Don’t miss his video walk through of the adding machine embedded after the break. Can’t get enough of marbles interacting with wood? He’s got a few more projects you might enjoy. Continue reading “Binary Adder Will Give You Slivers” →

Robot Einstein Could Save Humans From Killbot Destruction

October 13, 2009 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

einstein-robot

Earlier this year we saw the Einstein robot that is being developed to facilitate human facial emotions in robots. [David Hanson], the man in charge of this project, has given a TED talk on his work that includes a show-and-tell of his most recent progress. We’ve embedded the video after the break for your enjoyment.

The Einstein robot (head only in this video) shows off the ability to recognize and mimic the facial emotions of the person in front of it. There is also video of a Bladerunner-esque robot looking around a room, recognizing and remembering the faces of the people it sees. [David] makes a very interesting proclamation: he’s trying to teach robots empathy. He feels that there is a mountain of R&D money going into robots that can kill and not much for those that can sense human emotions. His hope is that if we can teach empathy, we might not be annihilated when robots become smarter than us.

That’s not such a bad idea. Any way you look at it, this talk is interesting and we wish the five-minute offering was five-times as long. But [Mr. Hanson’s] facial hair alone is worth clicking through to see.

Continue reading “Robot Einstein Could Save Humans From Killbot Destruction” →

How To Populate A Surface Mount PCB

October 13, 2009 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

Reflow_08

Let’s face it friends, everything is moving toward surface mount components. We’ve seen quite a few features here that cover using stencils to populate boards and using ovens to reflow. [Oleg] has put together a tutorial on the process he uses to populate and reflow his own boards.

[Oleg] is the creator of the USB Isolator and therefore has a need to frequently populate the same board. He’s using an acrylic frame that fits the PCB perfectly to hold it in place so that paste and be applied right up to the edges of the board. He ordered a laser cut Kapton stencil for applying the solder. The paste is squeegeed into the stencil holes, the stencil is removed, and parts are placed with tweezers and a steady hand. For the final step, the boards go into an old toaster oven for reflow.

[Oleg] uses temperature marker on his boards to monitor the progress of the reflow. This marker is basically a crayon that begins to melt at a specific temperature. When the board has cooled, the melted mark can be scraped away or removed with alcohol.

Of course this is only really useful if you have a bunch of high-quality boards to populate. But with the relatively low cost of getting professionally made boards we think the need for this type of assembly process is on the rise.

Take The Python Challenge

October 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

python-challenge-level-1

It’s hard to believe that we haven’t covered this one before. If you enjoyed out Barcode challenges from last week, perhaps now is the time for you to take the Python Challenge. We made it through the first 18 levels about a year back but with a total of 33 levels we’re not even close to being finished.

This is an excellent opportunity to learn Python if you’ve never tried it, or test your skills if you’ve already got them. We’d suggest using IDLE which is available as part of the Python language download. Because Python is an interpreted language, IDLE allows you to try out each line of the code you are writing and add it to your program as you get different sections working.

The levels start out fairly easy and require some sniffing around, such as looking at the source code, and dissecting images with Python’s various libraries. As you pass each level, you will be granted access to the Python Challenge forums in order to see how others solved the level. By solving each level and then seeing what different solutions entail you grow your knowledge of the language and reinforce your understanding of how to use it.

Underwater Laser, Just Add Shark

October 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

underwater-laser-beam

[iskor12] put together a blu-ray laser that is waterproof and packs quite a punch. At 182 mW there is enough power here to pop dark colored balloons (see the video after the break). To make this happen, he found an LED flashlight that has rubber o-rings for waterproofing. Although small, there is enough space in the case to house the battery, driver, and laser diode. A thick ring of aluminum is placed around the laser diode to act as heat sink.

We’ll admit, we don’t know that much about lasers. This is probably the wrong question to ask, but now that he has this what do you do with it? Leave us a comment about your plans for this diabolical creation.

Continue reading “Underwater Laser, Just Add Shark” →

Emulator In NES Cartridge – So Clean It Looks Factory Made

October 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 36 Comments

nesP_NES-emulator-in-game-cartridge

We extend our congratulations to [airz] over at the ben heck forums. He put together a mod that fits an emulator into an original NES cartridge and utilizes a butchered original NES controller; and he did an amazing job!

He is using a cheap but full featured emulator board. It comes with 4 gigs of memory but also has an SD card slot. NES, Game Boy, and Game Boy color ROMs can all be played on the 2.8″ color LCD but the system also features a TV out connector for use with a larger screen as well.

The cuts that [airz] made in the case are amazing, easily eclipsing the last cartridge emulator mod we saw. The holes for the controls look as if the plastic was molded that way. For realism he also cut off the PCB interface on the business end of the cartridge and glued it in place. Apparently it took three cartridges, two controllers, and two of the emulators to make it this nice, but if you want to make an omelet…

Continue reading “Emulator In NES Cartridge – So Clean It Looks Factory Made” →

Cheap And Easy Top-down Camera Quadpod

October 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

camera-quad-pod

We keep waiting for evolution to give us that third arm but in the mean time, this may be the solution for holding the camera while you document your projects. [DHagen] has made a four legged tripod (quadpod) for his camera in order to use it as a digital copy machine. We’ve spent many a night trying to get a steady and sharp video of an LCD or array of LEDs in action to document our weekend tinkering and this will make that all a lot easier.

His build uses materials that will total between $10-$20 at the hardware store down the street. A chunk of scrap wood is connected to the camera using a bolt in the threaded tripod hole of the camera. Two L-brackets are attached to the wood so that one is on either side of the camera lens. This leaves two mounting holes on either side of the lens to attach threaded rod using nuts. The assembly is capped off with a square of acrylic (plexiglas).

Quick and clean. It’s not the cheapest camera mounting solution we’ve seen, but it sure does a good job.