Two researchers, a white woman and dark-skinned man look at a large monitor with a crystal structure displayed in red and white blocks.

AI On The Hunt For Better Batteries

January 23, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 18 Comments

While certain dystopian visions of the future have humans power the grid for AIs, Microsoft and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) set a machine learning system on the path of better solid state batteries instead.

Solid state batteries are the current darlings of battery research, promising a step-change in packaging size and safety among other advantages. While they have been working in the lab for some time now, we’re still yet to see any large-scale commercialization that could shake up the consumer electronics and electric vehicle spaces.

With a starting set of 32 million potential inorganic materials, the machine learning algorithm was able to select the 150 most promising candidates for further development in the lab. This smaller subset was then fed through a high-performance computing (HPC) algorithm to winnow the list down to 23. Eliminating previously explored compounds, the scientists were able to develop a promising Li/Na-ion solid state battery electrolyte that could reduce the needed Li in a battery by up to 70%.

For those of us who remember when energy materials research often consisted of digging through dusty old journal papers to find inorganic compounds of interest, this is a particularly exciting advancement. A couple more places technology can help in the sciences are robots doing the work in the lab or on the surgery table.

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A black plastic trim piece from a vehicle interior. It has slight flecking in its texture. It is sitting on an off-white bench overlooking a workshop.

Can Car Parts Grow On Trees?

January 19, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 27 Comments

Cars don’t grow on trees, but Ford is designing car parts from olive tree cuttings. [via Electrek]

Ford is no stranger to designing parts from plants for their vehicles. Henry famously liked to beat on the Soy Bean Car with a blunted axe to tout the benefits of bioplastic panels. Researchers at Ford’s Cologne, Germany facility have detailed their work to use waste from olive orchards as part of a new biocomposite from the LIVE COMPOLIVE program.

Fibers from the olive tree cuttings are mixed with recycled plastic and injection molded to form panels. The video below features interior panels that are currently made with traditional plastics that could be swapped over to the new composite. Since these cuttings are a waste product from food production, there isn’t the tension akin to that presented via biofuels vs food. We’re curious what Precious Plastics could do with this, especially if the fibers are able to reinforce the matrix.

If you want to see some other unusual uses for waste wood, why not checkout a “paper” bottle or 3D printing with sawdust?

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You Wouldn’t Download A House

January 19, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 62 Comments

Shelter is one of the most basic of human needs, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that we continually come up with new ways to build homes. Most building systems are open source to an extent, and the WikiHouse project tries to update the process for the internet age.

WikiHouse is a modular building system similar to structural insulated panels (SIPs) but designed to be made on a CNC and insulated in the shop before heading to the site. Using this system, you can get the advantages of a manufactured home, but in a more distributed manner. Plywood or oriented strand board (OSB) can be used to make up the chassis of the blocks which can then be assembled very quickly on site versus traditional wooden construction.

One of the more interesting aspects of WikiHouse is that it takes design for disassembly seriously. How many houses have parts that are still good when they’re demolished to make way for something new? In most places, the good is hauled to the dump along with the bad because it isn’t economical to separate the two. Building with end of life in mind makes it so much easier to recover those materials and not waste them. There are certainly examples of careful material recovery, but they’re few and far between.

If you’re looking for some other ways to quickly build a house from wood, checkout the PlyPad or Brikawood.

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a) Schematic illustration of energy storage process of succulent plants by harnessing solar energy with a solar cell, and the solar cell converts the energy into electricity that can be store in APCSCs of succulent plants, and then utilized by multiple electrical appliances. b–d) The energy is stored in cactus under sunlight by solar cell and then power light strips of Christmas tree for decoration.

Succulents Into Supercapacitors

January 11, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 17 Comments

Researchers in Beijing have discovered a way to turn succulents into supercapacitors to help store energy. While previous research has found ways to store energy in plants, it often required implants or other modifications to the plant itself to function. These foreign components might be rejected by the plant or hamper its natural functions leading to its premature death.

This new method takes an aloe leaf, freeze dries it, heats it up, then uses the resulting components as an implant back into the aloe plant. Since it’s all aloe all the time, the plant stays happy (or at least alive) and becomes an electrolytic supercapacitor.

Using the natural electrolytes of the aloe juice, the supercapacitor can then be charged and discharged as needed. The researchers tested the concept by solar charging the capacitor and then using that to run LED lights.

This certainly proposes some interesting applications, although we think your HOA might not be a fan. We also wonder if there might be a way to use the photosynthetic process more directly to charge the plant? Maybe this could recharge a tiny robot that lands on the plants?

Digital Master Tapes Seek Deck

January 5, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 16 Comments

As a nerdy kid in the 90s, I spent a fair bit of time watching the computer-themed cartoon Reboot. During the course of making a documentary about the show, [Jacob Weldon] and [Raquel Lin] have uncovered the original digital master tapes of the show.

This is certainly exciting news for fans of the show, but there’s a bit of a wrinkle. These digital masters are all on D-1 digital cassette tapes which the studio doesn’t have a player for anymore. The dynamic duo are on the hunt for a Bosch BTS-D1 to be able to recapture some of this video for their own film while also heavily hinting to the studio that a new box set from the masters would be well-received.

As the first CGI TV series, Reboot has a special place in the evolution of entertainment, and while it was a technical marvel for its time, it was solid enough to last for four seasons and win numerous awards before meeting a cliffhanger ending. If you’re an expert in D-1 or have a deck to lend or sell, be sure to email the creators.

Feeling nostalgic for the electromechanical era? Why not check out some hidden lyrics on Digital Compact Cassettes (DCC) or encoding video to Digital Audio Tapes (DAT)?

[via Notebookcheck]

A red circuit board with four wires running from an IMU to a Pi Pico W. This is all attached to a clear plastic baton.

An Electronic Orchestra Baton

December 31, 2023 by Navarre Bartz No comments

The conductor of an orchestra may look unassuming on the street, but once they step onto their podium, they are all powerful. If you’ve ever wanted to go mad with power in the comfort of your own home, try this electronic orchestra baton by [Larry Lu] and [Kathryn Zhang].

The wireless baton “peripheral” part of the system uses a Pico W and an IMU to detect the speed of conducting a 4/4 measure. That information is then transmitted to the “central” Pico W access point which plays a .wav at the speed corresponding to the conductor’s specified beats per minute (BPM). Setting the baton down will pause the visualizer and audio playback.

The “central” Pico W uses direct memory access (DMA) and SPI communication to control the audio output and VGA visualization. Since most .wav files have a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, this gave the students a reference to increase or decrease the DMA audio channel timer to control the playback.

Want some more musical hacks? Checkout this auto-glockenspiel or how the original iPod was hacked.

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An exploded view render of a red 3D printed case with a green PCB is inside with visible USB-A connectors with a mouse and keyboard graphic above each and "A" and "B" labels above USB-C connectors on the other side.

Building A Better Keyboard And Mouse Switch

December 26, 2023 by Navarre Bartz 38 Comments

Switching inputs between desktops seems like something that should be simple but can prove to be a pain in reality. [Hrvoje Cavrak] decided to take matters into his own hands and build a better keyboard and mouse switch.

DeskHop is built from two Raspberry Pi Pico boards connected via UART and separated by an Analog Devices ADuM1201 dual-channel digital isolator. Through the magic of Pico-PIO-USB these RP2040s can be both host and device. To keep things simple, the PCB is single-sided, and the BOM only has five distinct components.

Once hooked up to your Windows, Mac, or Linux device, your mouse pointer “magically” goes from one screen to the other when dragged across the screen edge. Keyboard LEDs can be reprogrammed to indicate which device is active, and the real beauty of the device is that since it’s a hardware solution, you don’t have to install any software on a computer you might not have admin access to.

If you want to see some more ideas for keyboard and mouse switching, check out this Pi KVM with ATX signaling, this USB triplexer, or this Pi KVM on a PCIe card.