Author: Navarre Bartz

253 Articles

An artist's depiction of a lystrosaurus munching on a prehistoric plant. It looks kind of like a hippo with a beak. The main body of the animal is grey-ish green and it's beak is ivory with two tusks jutting out from its top jaw.

Mammalian Ancestors Shed Light On The Great Dying

November 22, 2024 by 31 Comments

As we move through the Sixth Extinction, it can be beneficial to examine what caused massive die-offs in the past. Lystrosaurus specimens from South Africa have been found that may help clarify what happened 250 million years ago. [via IFLScience]

The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, or the Great Dying, takes the cake for the worst extinction we know about so far on our pale blue dot. The primary cause is thought to be intense volcanic activity which formed the Siberian Traps and sent global CO2 levels soaring. In Karoo Basin of South Africa, 170 tetrapod fossils were found that lend credence to the theory. Several of the Lystrosaurus skeletons were preserved in a spread eagle position that “are interpreted as drought-stricken carcasses that collapsed and died of starvation in and alongside dried-up water sources.”

As Pangea dried from increased global temperatures, drought struck many different terrestrial ecosystems and changed them from what they were before. The scientists say this “likely had a profound and lasting influence on the evolution of tetrapods.” As we come up on the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, perhaps you should give thanks for the prehistoric volcanism that led to your birth?

If you want to explore more about how CO2 can lead to life forms having a bad day, have a look at paleoclimatology and what it tells us about today. In more recent history, have a look at how we can detect volcanic eruptions from all around the world and how you can learn more about the Earth by dangling an antenna from a helicopter.

 

An image of a black carabiner-esque frame surrounding a round, yellow bezeled digital watch. A black paracord lanyard is attached to the top right of the black frame and a yellow button is visible near the top left of the frame.

A Cyberpunk Pocketwatch

November 20, 2024 by 20 Comments

For a time, pocketwatches were all the rage, but they were eventually supplanted by the wristwatch. [abe] built this cyberpunk Lock’n’Watch to explore an alternate history for the once trendy device.

The build was inspired by the chunky looks of Casio sport watches and other plastic consumer electronics from the 1980s and 90s. The electronics portion of this project relies heavily on a 1.28″ Seeed Studio Round Display and a Raspberry Pi 2040 XIAO microcontroller board. The final product features a faux segmented display for information in almost the same color scheme as your favorite website.

[abe] spent a good deal of the time on this project iterating on the bezel and case to hold the electronics in this delightfully anachronistic enclosure. We appreciated the brief aside on the philosophical differences between Blender, TinkerCAD, and Fusion360. Once everything was assembled, he walks us through some of joys of debugging hardware issues with a screen flicker problem. We think the end result really fulfills the vision of a 1980s pocketwatch and that it might be just the thing to go with your cyberdeck.

We’ve seen accelerometers stuffed into old pocketwatch cases, a more useful smart pocketwatch, or you could learn how to repair and restore vintage watches.

Continue reading “A Cyberpunk Pocketwatch” →

The Diablo Canyon NPP in California. This thermal plant uses once-through cooling. (Credit: Doc Searls)

US DOE Sets New Nuclear Energy Targets

November 14, 2024 by 63 Comments

To tackle the growing electrification of devices, we’ll need to deploy more generation to the grid. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled a new target to triple nuclear generating capacity by 2050.

Using a combination of existing Generation III+ reactor designs, upcoming small modular and micro reactors, and “legislation like the ADVANCE Act that streamlines regulatory processes,” DOE plans to add 35 gigawatt (GW) of generating capacity by 2035 and an additional 15 GW installed per year by 2040 to hit a total capacity of 200 GW of clean, green atom power by 2050.

According to the DOE, 100 GW of nuclear power was deployed in the 1970s and 1980s, so this isn’t an entirely unprecedented scale up of nuclear, although it won’t happen overnight. One of the advantages of renewables over nuclear is the lower cost and better public perception — but a combination of technologies will create a more robust grid than an “all of your eggs in one basket” approach. Vehicle to grid storage, geothermal, solar, wind, and yes, nuclear will all have their place at the clean energy table.

If you want to know more about siting nuclear on old coal plants, we covered DOE’s report on the matter as well as some efforts to build a fusion reactor on a decommissioned coal site as well.

A light grey box about the size of a brick with exposed screws held in a person's hand. There are two illuminated push buttons on the bottom left of the top panel. One is illuminated blue while the other is green. A small square screen sits next to a bank of nine different sections with an LED indicator and text of "HW, BAT, HBEAT, ECG, LOD +, LOD -, PPG, Pump, Valve."

Open Cardiography Signal Measuring Device

November 13, 2024 by 10 Comments

Much of the world’s medical equipment is made by a handful of monopolistic megacorps, but [Milos Rasic] built an open cardiography signal measuring device for his master’s thesis.

Using a Pi Pico W for the brains, [Rasic]’s device can record, store and analyze the data from an arm cuff, stethoscope, electrocardiograph (ECG), and pulse oximeter. This data can be used for monitoring blood pressure in patients and he has results from some of his experiments to determine the optimal algorithm for the task on the GitHub if you really want to get into the nitty gritty details.

Inside the brick-sized enclosure is the custom PCB, an 18650 Li-ion cell, and a pneumatic assembly for the arm cuff. Medical sensors attach via GX12 connectors on the back, a USB type B connector is used for data, and a USB C connector provides power for the device. The brightly colored labels will no doubt come in handy in a clinical setting where you really want to be sure you’ve got everything plugged in correctly.

Want more open medical equipment? How about an open ECG or this less accurate, but more portable, credit card ECG? We’d be remiss not to mention the huge amount of work on ventilators during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic as well.

A light grey background with white and black line drawings of three different bicycles on one page and three different tire levers and three different valve covers for bikes on the other.

A Beautifully Illustrated Guide To Making

November 10, 2024 by 13 Comments

If you’ve ever been wondering what you should make next, it can be a daunting task to decide with the firehose of inspiration coming straight from the series of tubes that makeup the World Wide Web. Perhaps a more curated digital catalog of projects would help?

Featuring “1000 Useful Things to Make,” [NODE]’s Make it Yourself is a beautifully-illustrated catalog of open source and DIY projects spanning a number of domains including camping gear, furniture, music, and maker tools. Each image is a link to the original project and there’s a handy icon by each denoting what skills are needed, such as sewing or 3D printing.

If you haven’t seen [NODE]’s work before, he uses line art to illustrate his projects and has given all of these projects the same treatment on the (virtual) page with credits to the original creators in the footnotes. We hope a future edition will include tractors and houses to truly rival the Sears catalog of yore, but it’s hard to complain when we already have so many projects we could choose to build.

Many of the projects may seem familiar, if slightly fancier when illustrated in line art, like the Ploopy headphones, this retro audio player, or the Keybon adaptive macro pad.

Continue reading “A Beautifully Illustrated Guide To Making” →

A set of brass safety glasses sit on a marred black workbench. The top and earpiece sections of the frames are in squarish brass plate and have ruler marks on them.

Combination Safety Glasses And Measurement Tool

November 8, 2024 by 19 Comments

While rulers and tape measures are ubiquitous, they always seem to disappear when you need them. We know you’d never forget your safety glasses (safety first!), so what if they were also a measuring tool?

Starting by snapping pieces from a folding yardstick, [Simone Giertz] and [Laura Kampf] worked out a rough prototype before letting [Giertz] complete the project in brass. Some initial issues with the weight of the frames were alleviated by switching to a lighter weight plate material and using thinner frames and weight-saving holes near the ear pieces.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we’ll let somebody else decide whether or not these will be the newest fashion craze. But it’s hard to argue with the timelessness of brass unless you have a copper allergy. We could definitely see a less expensive plastic version catching on in makerspaces for the PPE bin.

Want some other cool wearable gear? How about [Giertz]’s grocery bag hat, an evening gown with servo-driven flowers, or a shirt that reflects heat out the atmospheric window?

Continue reading “Combination Safety Glasses And Measurement Tool” →

An image of a desert with dramatically cloudy skies. In the middle of the image is a series of clay doorways with vertically-oriented wooden slats surrounding a central pole. These form the basis of a panemone windmill.

Help Wanted: Keep The World’s Oldest Windmills Turning

November 7, 2024 by 36 Comments

While the Netherlands is the country most known for its windmills, they were originally invented by the Persians. More surprisingly, some of them are still turning after 1,000 years.

The ancient world holds many wonders of technology, and some are only now coming back to the surface like the Antikythera Mechanism. Milling grain with wind power probably started around the 8th Century in Persia, but in Nashtifan, Iran they’ve been keeping the mills running generation-to-generation for over 1000 years. [Mohammed Etebari], the last windmill keeper is in need of an apprentice to keep them running though.

In a world where vertical axis wind turbines seem like a new-fangled fad, it’s interesting to see these panemone windmills are actually the original recipe. The high winds of the region mean that the timber and clay structure of the asbad structure housing the turbine is sufficient for their task without all the fabric or man-made composites of more modern designs. While drag-type turbines aren’t particularly efficient, we do wonder how some of the lessons of repairability might be used to enhance the longevity of modern wind turbines. Getting even 100 years out of a turbine would be some wicked ROI.

Wooden towers aren’t just a thing of the past either, with new wooden wind turbines soaring 100 m into the sky. Since you’ll probably be wanting to generate electricity and not mill grain if you made your own, how does that work anyway?

Continue reading “Help Wanted: Keep The World’s Oldest Windmills Turning” →