[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/5989780]
[Andrew Rapp] sent in this project called Droplet. He’s been doing work with Xbees and Arduinos together and built this little toy. He describes it as “sort of like a Chumby”. It has built in services for Twitter, Google Calendar, News, Gmail, etc. You can download the full source code and plans on his site. His next planned revisions include possibly running it from a sheevaplug, making a nice case for it, and utilizing the unused pins of the arduino.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nAeftaUWYw]
Recently, analog displays have come back in vogue. This is partially due to the common steam punk theme that is popular right now. [Cristiano] has done an analog display, but instead of brass and polished wood, he’s gone automotive themed (Internet Archive Cache) with it. He purchased a cheap tachometer from ebay. A circuit had to be designed to give the tach the signals needed for it to operate, and you can download the schematic from his site. As you can see in the video above, it works well. We think that “shift” light might get annoying pretty quickly.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nEeVA02MM]
These Autonomous Underwater Vehicles are all competing in the 12th annual AUVSI competition. They have to complete an underwater obstacle course that involves some tight maneuvering, retrieval of a briefcase, dropping bombs, and firing torpedoes. We’ve seen several UAVs before, but we haven’t ever seen them weaponized and in action. Yeah, those weapons don’t look lethal, but isn’t that just a matter of ammunition?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-P1zZAcPuw]
As you watch that video, you’ll probably find yourself wondering several things about the tangible hologram project. Why haven’t we seen these simple hologram setups used more often? Where did that cool air puff system come from and why haven’t we seen more on that? When will this be integrated into the latest Xbox/PS3/Wii? We don’t know the answers to those questions, but we would really love to play with this in person to see how convincing it is.
[Sprite_tm] automated a portion of serial hacking by sniffing out the baud rate using an ATtiny2313 and FT232 breakout board. The firmware assumes 8 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit (8N1). This is pretty much defacto among serial ports so it should work well, though some devices do use different settings. The auto detection routine can sniff rates as low as 110 baud and supports non standard rates. Released under GPLv3, the software is also supplied in hex format. [Sprite_tm] has provided great project in past such as Working with VFDs, Controllable bristlebot, and AVR boost converter. Additional information regarding serial hacking after the break.
“The Manga Guide to Electricity”, part of “The Manga Guide” series by No Starch Press, is a novel approach to the old problem of getting over the initial mental block when trying to learn electronics.
We decided to compare this book to another introductory text: “Getting Started in Electronics” by [Forrest M. Mims]. [Mims]’ book is a handwritten masterpiece of electronic literature. The writing style is friendly and concise, the examples are simple, and the drawings are excellent. It also makes sure to keep the learning process as application based as possible. Unlike other books, it doesn’t bog the reader down with math and theory that is only useful to advanced students. Since its original printing in 1983, [Mims]’ has become the de facto standard for beginner electronic literature. Continue reading “Review: The Manga Guide To Electricity”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPHpMonoC8]
Yo dawg, we heard you liked accelerometers… Apparently people have been wanting this for a while. We’re not completely sure why, so we’ll wait and see what gets done with it. [Ubiq_01] has connected a WiiMote to his iPhone and is using it to control and OpenGL application. He has released a tutorial (which seems to be down currently) if you want to try to reproduce it yourself.
[via Makezine]
