In the new edition of the Arduino Cookbook, Michael Margolis gives a great step-by-step explanation of how to read a schematic and build a breadboard prototype from it. The following excerpt is adapted from Appendix B of the Cookbook…
via … Read More → "Going from schematic to breadboard"
Tinkerforge offers open source electronic building blocks. There are sensing-, motor controlling- and wireless building blocks. You can select the modules you need for your project, plug them together and with only a few lines of code you can program your system. You can control it from your PC/Mac, tablet or smartphone.
via Boing Boing
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There’s a flying car coming to the New York International Auto Show this week. The Terrafugia Transition is a two seat airplane with foldable wings, four wheels and turn signals. Over the past few years the Massachusetts company has called its creation a “roadable aircraft” and lately, a “street legal airplane.” But ahead of the Transition’s first appearance at an auto show, it’s perhaps more appropriate … Read More → "A street-legal airplane?"
[Zenta] has been building his MorpHex rolling hexapod for nearly a year now, and good things come to those who wait. After a ton of development and fabrication, [Zenta] finally has his mechanical jellyfish robot rolling and walking around.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen [Zenta]‘s MorpHex robot in action. A year ago, we saw the beginnings of the project with that included 25 servos mounted on a custom chassis. Last winter, the top hemisphere of the MorpHex was added, but … Read More → "Sphere morphing hexabot now rolls around"
The U.S. Navy has just taken the wraps off a sexy new robotics facility. The bots created and refined there will be automated wonders, some of them amphibious, some able to fight fires or fly, and ever so much more.
The Naval Research Laboratory has opened its Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (LASR — see what they did there?), what the Navy is calling the “nerve system” for … Read More → "Like robots? Then you’ll love these pics from a new military robotics lab"
This is a very cool, behind-the-scenes peek at how researchers at the Smithsonian deal with the problem of studying meteorites without contaminating said meteorites.
via Boing Boing
Scientists have created a sensor so accurate it can now measure the weight of a single proton. The super scale uses the smallest unit of mass as a measurement, a single yoctogram, whereas previous sensors could only get within 100 yoctograms — a large margin at that scale.
The scale uses nanotubes to detect weight. The nanotubes vibrate at different frequencies depending on the mass of the particles or molecules on them. To achieve the more precise measurement short nanotubes — which are thought to give the best resolution & … Read More → "How do you weigh a proton? With the world’s most sensitive scale"
Once when I was in Hawaii I went on a catamaran sail off of the beach in Oahu. There were about 8 people on the boat and Telly Savalas was one of them. I was only 7 when Kojak was on, but I totally knew who he was.
Say what you will of Telly Savalas’ work on the crime drama Kojak: at least he got to wear this … Read More → "The 1974 Kojak Omega Time Computer 1 watch"
It wasn’t a Darwin Award alert, but serious science as NASA recently trialed a rocket sled in the California desert. Cameras were strapped on to the apparatus so we can feed our need for speed while NASA uses the sled to test the forces felt by supersonic spacecraft when landing.
The sled is part of the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Project (LDSD), testing various inflatable and parachute decelerators that might be attached to spacecraft. It allows NASA to create varying levels of force, weight of payload and other factors as a way to hone … Read More → "See what it’s like to ride on NASA’s new rocket sled"
Will Pearson’s 360 Interactive Panoramas are fantastic, especially this one of Sheikh-Zayed Road in Dubai.
via < … Read More → "Gorgeous interactive 360 panoramas by Will Pearson"
