The Mouth-Watering World Of NIST Standard Foods

December 23, 2020 by 48 Comments

The National Institute Of Standards and Technology was founded on March 3, 1901 as the National Bureau of Standards, taking on its current moniker in 1988. The organisation is charged by the government with ensuring the uniformity of weights and measures across the United States, and generally helping out industry, academia and other users wherever some kind of overarching standard is required.

One of the primary jobs of NIST is the production and sale of Standard Reference Materials, or SRMs. These cover a huge variety of applications, from steel samples to concrete and geological materials like clay. However, there are also edible SRMS, too. Yes, you can purchase yourself a jar of NIST Standard Peanut Butter, though you might find the price uncompetitive with the varieties at your local supermarket. Let’s dive into why these “standard” foods exist, and see what’s available from the shelves of our favourite national standards institute. Continue reading “The Mouth-Watering World Of NIST Standard Foods” →

Hyundai Mini 45 EV Is A Small Car With Grand Ambitions

December 23, 2020 by 20 Comments

One of Hyundai’s recent concept cars was an electric vehicle named “45” in honor of its inspiration, another concept car from 45 years ago. When footage of a child-sized “Mini 45” surfaced, it was easy to conclude the car was a motorized toy for children. But Jalopnik got more information from Hyundai about this project, where we learned that was not nearly the whole picture.

The video (embedded below) explained this little vehicle is a concept car in its own right, and most of the video is a scripted performance illustrating their concept: using technology to help calm young patients in a hospital, reducing their anxiety as they faced treatment procedures. Mini 45 packs a lot more equipment than the toy cars available at our local store. The little driver’s heartbeat and breathing rate are monitored, and a camera analyzes facial expressions to gauge emotional stress. The onboard computer has an animated avatar who will try to connect with the patient, armed with tools like colorful animations, happy music, candy scent dispenser, and a bubble-blowing machine.

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A Tiny LED Matrix Is Better With Friends

December 23, 2020 by 8 Comments

When we last heard from [lixielabs] he was building Nixie tube replacements out of etched acrylic and LEDs. Well he’s moved forward a few decades to bring us the Pixie, a chainable, addressable backpack for tiny LED matrix displays.

Each Pixie module is designed to host two gorgeous little Lite-On LTP-305G/HR 5×7 LED dot matrix displays, which we suspect have been impulse purchases in many a shopping cart. Along with the displays there is a small matrix controller and an ATTINY45 to expose a friendly electrical interface. Each module is designed to be mounted edge to edge and daisy chained out to 12 or more (with two displays each) for a flexible display any size you need. But to address the entire array only two control pins are required (data and clock).

[lixielabs] has done the legwork to make using those pins as easy as possible. He is careful to point out the importance of a good SDK and provides handy Arduino libraries for common microcontrollers and a reference implementation for the Raspberry Pi that should be easy to crib from to support new platforms. To go with that library support is superb documentation in the form of a datasheet (complete with dimensions and schematic!) and well stocked GitHub repo with examples and more.

To get a sense of their graphical capabilities, check out a video of 6 Pixie’s acting as a VU meter after the break. The Pixie looks like what you get when a hacker gets frustrated at reinventing LED dot matrix control for every project and decided to solve it once and for all. The design is clean, well documented, and extremely functional. We’re excited to see what comes next! Continue reading “A Tiny LED Matrix Is Better With Friends” →

The World Is Your Green Screen

December 22, 2020 by 9 Comments

This year has been the year of home video conferencing. If you are really on the ball, you’ve managed to put some kind of green screen up so you can hide your mess and look as though you are in your posh upper east side office space. However, most of the consumer video conferencing now has some way to try to guess what your background is and replace it even without a green screen. The results, though, often leave something to be desired. A recent University of Washington paper outlines a new background matting procedure using machine learning and, as you can see in the video below, the results are quite good. There’s code on GitHub and even a Linux-based WebCam filter.

The algorithm does require a shot of the background without you in it, which we imagine needs to be relatively static. From watching the video, it appears the acid test for this kind of software is spiky hair. There are several comparisons of definitely not bald people flipping their hair around using this method and other background replacers such as the one in Zoom.

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Adding Space Music To The Astronomy Toolbox

December 22, 2020 by 4 Comments

Astronomy fans were recently treated to the Great Conjunction, where Jupiter and Saturn appear close together from the perspective of our planet Earth. Astronomy has given us this and many other magnificent sights, but we can get other senses involved. Science News tells of explorations into adapting our sense of hearing into tools of astronomical data analysis.

Data visualization has long been a part of astronomy, but they’re not restricted to charts and graphs that require a trained background to interpret. Every “image” generated using data from radio telescopes (like the recently-lost Arecibo facility) are a visualization of data from outside the visible spectrum. Visualizations also include crowd pleasing false-color images such as The Pillars of Creation published by NASA where interstellar emissions captured by science instruments are remapped to colors in the visible spectrum. The results are equal parts art and science, and can be appreciated from either perspective.

Data sonification is a whole other toolset with different strengths. Our visual system evolved ability to pick out edges and patterns in spatial plots, which we exploit for data visualization. In contrast our aural system evolved ability to process data in the frequency domain, and the challenge is to figure out how to use those abilities to gain scientifically relevant data insight. For now this field of work is more art than science, but it does open another venue for the visually impaired. Some of whom are already active contributors in astronomy and interested in applying their well-developed sense of hearing to their work.

Of course there’s no reason this has to be restricted to astronomy. A few months ago we covered a project for sonification of DNA data. It doesn’t take much to get started, as shown in this student sonification project. We certainly have no shortage of projects that make interesting sounds on this site, perhaps one of them will be the key.

V12 Corvette Gets Electronic Gauge Mod

December 22, 2020 by 21 Comments

[Wesley Kagan] is building a Corvette with a V12 engine swap. Much of the driveline will be entirely replaced, which means the components to drive the mechanical speedometer and tachometer will no longer be present in the final car. Instead, [Wesley] came up with his own electronic gauge conversion to do the job.

It’s a build that respects the original aesthetic of the car, reusing the original gauges but driving them differently. In place of the original mechanical drives from the transmission and distributor respectively, the speedometer and tach instead get servos installed in the back with a 3D printed gear train. The odometer gets its own continuous rotation servo, too. An Arduino Nano is used to drive the servos, using data from a GPS module and the car’s ignition system.

Files are available for anyone wishing to 3D print parts to modify their own gauges. We can’t wait to see how the gauges look when finally installed. We can imagine some teething problems with slew rate or update speed, but we’re sure it’s nothing [Wesley] can’t engineer out with a few revisions. Custom gauges are something we’ve seen a few times around these parts; this digital setup is particularly useful for engine data. Video after the break.

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Watch This Scaly Gauntlet’s Hypnotizing, Rippling Waves

December 22, 2020 by No comments

[Will Cogley]’s mechanized gauntlet concept sure has a hypnotizing look to it, and it uses only a single motor. Underneath the scales is a rod with several cams, each of which moves a lever up and down in a rippling wave as it rotates. Add a painted scale to each, and the result is mesmerizing. This is only a proof of concept prototype, and [Will] learned quite a few lessons when making it, but the end result is a real winner of a visual effect.

The gauntlet uses one motor, 3D printed hardware, and a mechanical linkage between the wrist and the rest of the forearm. Each of the scales is magnetically attached to the lever underneath, which provides some forgiveness for when one inevitably bumps into something. You can see the gauntlet without the scales in the video, embedded below the break, which should make clear how the prototype works.

The scales were created with the help of a Mayku desktop vacuum former by making lightweight copies of 3D printed scales. Interestingly, 3D printing each scale with full supports made for a useful mold; there was no need to remove supports from underneath the prints, because they are actually a benefit to the vacuum forming process. When vacuum forming, the presence of overhangs can lead to plastic wrapped around the master, trapping it, but the presence of the supports helps prevent this. 3D prints don’t hold up very well to the heat involved in vacuum forming, but they do well enough for a short run like this. Watch it in action and listen to [Will] explain the design in the video, embedded below.

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