[Limor Fried] (Adafruit) Up For Entrepreneur Of 2012 Award

August 8, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 56 Comments

[Limor Fried], the brains behind Adafruit is one of the five finalists for the Entrepreneur of 2012 award in Entrepreneur magazine. We’ve always been big fans of how she chooses to run her business. Adafruit supplies open source hardware and compiles tons of great tutorials on the pieces. Not only that but they have pushed very hard to build a community that shares information and encourages others to build things, with their “ask an educator” series and the community “show and tell” that we hope to emulate at some point.

You’ll notice she’s the only engineer in the list. Not only would your vote go toward getting an engineer to win, it would also be shedding light on the open source hardware movement.

Unfortunately, the voting is being done through facebook. We know many of you will opt not to participate due to this fact. It is unfortunate that this is becoming so common. I’ll be voting though. We could use more companies like Adafruit.

Southwest Tour: OhmSpace In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

August 6, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

OhmSpace in Oklahoma City is the very first stop on our southwest tour.

When we arrived it was around 2 in the afternoon and the temperature outside was nearly 110 degrees. It was HOT. [Stan] met up with us to give us a tour of the space. As you can see, the facility is huge. While at first glance it may appear somewhat disheveled, there is order to the madness. There is a nice community work area set up in the middle as well as several different stations throughout. Since the facility is almost just one giant room, storage is out in the open giving the illusion of a mess. We were there in the early afternoon, so there wasn’t anyone around working on anything, but you can see projects in various states of progress throughout the tour.

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ReactionWare 3D Printed Medicine

August 5, 2012 by Richard Steele 33 Comments

The University of Glasgow has released a Chemistry research paper covering the applicational process of printing pharmaceutical compounds.

Yes thats correct actually printing medication. Using various feedstock of chemicals they see a future where manufacturing your medication from home will be possible. Using standard 3D printing technology it is possible to assemble pre-filled “vessels” in such a way that the required chemical reactions take place to produce the required medication. This will be like having a minature medication manufacturing facility in your home. The possible implications of this could be far reaching.

There would need to be a locked down software etc or certain chemcials restrictions to prevent the misuse of this technology. Prof [Lee Cronin], who came up with the paper’s principal has called this process “reactionware”

Professor [Cronin] found, using this fabrication process, that even the most complicated of vessels could be built relatively quickly in just a few hours.

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Mars Science Laboratory Lands Today

August 5, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 37 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw&w=470]

Since launching on November 26, 2011, the newest Mars rover Curiosity has been speeding towards the red planet. Its days in the harsh vacuum of space are numbered as Curiosity prepares to land in just a few hours.

The landing of Curiosity at Gale crater is scheduled to be received on Earth at Aug 5, 10:31 pm PDT / Aug 6, 1:31 am EDT / Aug 6, 5:31 am UTC. The latest updates on the success or failure of ramming into the Martian atmosphere should be available on NASA TV and this feed from JPL. There’s a huge bunch of feeds on spaceindustrynews.com, and of course the Twitter for the wonderfully anthropomorphized Curiosity.

If landing a Volkswagen-sized, nuclear powered robot on the surface of Mars isn’t cool enough, we’ll also see a picture of the descent from Martian orbit via the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The Atlantic has a bunch of awesome pictures showing off Curiosity’s preparation for launch. Of course there are videos after the break including one by [Stan Love] explaining why it’s soooooo hard to get to Mars.

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Electromagnetic Field Camp

August 3, 2012 by Richard Steele 7 Comments

Emf Electromagnetic Field Camp is a three-day camping festival for people with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things: hackers, geeks, scientists, engineers, artists, and crafters.

There will be people talking about everything from genetic modification to electronics, blacksmithing to high-energy physics, reverse engineering to lock picking, crocheting to carpentry, and quadcopters to beer brewing. If you want to talk, there’ll be space for you to do so, and plenty of people who will want to listen.

EMF is a volunteer effort by a non-profit group, inspired by European and US hacker camps like CCC, HAR, and toorcamp. This year on Friday 31st August – Sunday 2nd September 2012 Will hold the first Uk meeting of its kind.

Events and activities will run throughout the day and into the evening, everything else (chats, debates, impromptu circus performances, orbital laser launches) will run as long as your collective energy lasts.

The Event is to be held at Pineham Park, Milton Keynes, UK.

As a Hackaday viewer you can get discounted tickets.

[thanks Jonty]

Artificial Skin Lets Robots Feel

August 2, 2012 by Richard Steele 32 Comments

BioTac Artificial Skin Technology is sure to be a storm with Robotics Designers. Giving them the opportunity to add a third sense to there robotic marvels. Now they can have the sense of touch to go along with existing technologies of sight and of sound. Thanks to the technology coming out of the University of Southern California making this possible.

They have chosen to call their sensor BioTac, which is a new type of tactile sensor designed to mimic the human fingertip with its soft flexible skin. The sensor makes it possible to identify different types of texture by analyzing the vibrations produced as the sensor brushes over materials. This sensor is also capable of measuring pressure applied and ambient temperature around the finger tip, expect to see this technology in next gen prosthetics. Let us know your thoughts on it.

[via technabob]
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Automated Turret Gives You The Upper Hand In Office Warfare

July 31, 2012 by Mike Nathan 17 Comments

TI-office-turret

When your co-workers get on your nerves, the mature recourse is to be the bigger person and simply ignore the obnoxious individual. A team of engineers from TI show us a slightly alternative means of dealing with office mates which is not quite as mature, though far more entertaining.

The office toy cum mechanized weapons system relies on a TI MSP430 LaunchPad, coupled with a custom Turret430 breakout board. The former is the brains of the operation, while the latter houses motor drivers for the motorized turret. The system can be steered throughout its 300 degree range of rotation using an attached joystick, but in the interest of catching their target by surprise, they added an automated mode as well. The automated targeting system uses an attached webcam to pick out victims by the color of their clothing, which seems to work pretty well.

To see the system in action, check out the video embedded below.

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