Saturday, January 30, 2010

Remarkably small antennas


NIST engineers are working with scientists from the University of Arizona (Tucson) and Boeing Research & Technology (Seattle, Wash.) to schedule antennas incorporating metamaterials â€" materials engineered with narrative, often microscopic, structures to engender weird properties. The new antennas disseminate as much as 95 percent of an input radio gesticulate and yet defy standard schedule parameters. Standard antennas deprivation to be at least half the size of the gesticulate wavelength to dispense efficiently; at 300 MHz, for designate, an antenna would deprivation to be half a meter predisposition. The pragmatic antennas are as meagre as one-fiftieth of a wavelength and could cringe supplementary. [via]

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Monday, January 25, 2010

Measuring alternator current with a Hall Effect Sensor


Josh from imsolidstate build an voguish sensor to touchstone the voguish the vehicle is using and comming from alternator. Current sensor is based on a Hall generate sensor. Schematics and root notation are available on his website. [via]

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Sunday, January 24, 2010

Car Remote Start using Cell Phone


“Davehacks” build a gear to remote provoke a car using a cell phone. He removed the tremor motor and connected some circuitry to remote provoke the car’s engine, so it’s wanrmed up before you transcribe the car. [via]

Car Remote Start using Cell Phone – [Link]

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Saturday, January 23, 2010

Dimming Techniques for Switched-Mode LED drivers


The exponential swelling of LED lighting has ushered in a giant allusion of integrated lap devices to provide controlled power to LEDs. This something describes some radical LED philosophy and several techniques used to provide dimming unconditional to switched-means LED drivers. Read additional on the ten on beneath

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Friday, January 22, 2010

LTC3108 ? Ultralow Voltage Step-Up Converter


LTC3108 is a highly integrated stride-up DC/DC converter designed to torment-up and run from acutely low input voltage sources such as thermoelectric generators (TEGs), thermopiles and paltry solar cells. Its self-resonant topology steps up from input voltages as low as 20mV. View LTC3108 presentation

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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Muon detector using Geiger counter tubes

Robert Hart posted a inspection run of his Cosmic Ray Muon Detector which uses three leeway Geigerâ€"Müller Tubes. Simultaneous readings on all three pipe sensors indicates the impermanent presence of cosmic radiation. Robert built this emblem to assist in testing a equivalent unit which uses usual fluorescent tubes for detection. [via]

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Nice WiFi radio build


Inspired by Jeff Keyzer, Gary Dion pronounced to build his attain WiFi radio. He constructed it using an Asus WL-520gu wireless router, an terminated USB audio headset, and a troupe of bony parts from his filth mass. After next Jeff’s recipe to enlist the fundamental radio working, he added some extra niceties such as an infrared remote! [via]

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Friday, January 15, 2010

World?s first personal hydrogen station


“A hydrogen station in every home” is a futuristic dram that is about to become reality this week as Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies unveils what could be its biggest breakthrough to date: a meagre home hydrogen refueling and storage answer that could begin our transition to a hydrogen-based economy.

Named HYDROFILL(TM) unveiled at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The meagre desktop badge neatly plugs into the AC, a solar panel or a meagre wind turbine, automatically extracts hydrogen from its dampen container and stores it in a oppressive press in meagre refillable cartridges. The cartridges contain metallic alloys that absorb hydrogen into their crystalline cloth, and free it back at low pressures, removing concerns about storing hydrogen at lofty pressure. This storage style also creates the paramount volumetric enthusiasm density of any press of hydrogen storage, even higher than serum hydrogen. Unlike conventional batteries, these cartridges transact supplementary enthusiasm capacity, are cheaper, and do not contain any environmentally-nocuous ponderous metals. 

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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Duino644: Arduino clone powered by ATmega644


Compatible with Arduino software environment (thanks to the Sanguino board, from which it was inspired), Duino644 offers supplementary capabilities than a cyclical, ATmega328-based Arduino, in the duplicate fee scope.

Duino644 was originally designed to be used in an advanced new version of Wise Clock. It features the duplicate combo RTC + EEPROM as Wiseduino, and also an SD card socket and connectors for the 24×16 LED matrix exhibit from Sure Electronics.

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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Open source swarm robot project


This is the district portal for the formica think which has developed and built a mob of miniature robots. The robots, only 30×28x15mm are quite autonomous with programmable and normal emergent behaviour. The robots chore using biological algorithms to entire a massage as a confederation. They also pageant a collective mob memory.

The robot designs are quite unbolted author and have also been released as a engine which is an nonpareil beginners soldering think for persons or groups. The robots are currently programmed using an inexpensive programming appliance. [via]

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Saturday, January 09, 2010

Protostack update their AVR Development board


Back in July 2009, we reviewed Protostack’s ATMEGA8 gestation utensils . The centre of the utensils was Protostack’s 28 pin AVR board. This week Protostack released a new version of that board and it includes a perfect bunch of improvements. You can peruse the original review here.

This unshackle is the 3rd one to date and includes the subsequent improvements over the one we previously looked at.

  • Addition of power supply obstruct
  • ISP-6 interface is now 2×3 pin instead of 1×6 pin
  • Addition of a empire for equivalent rumpus headers and IDC connectors
  • Clearer labeling of power busses

The board is available on its obsess or as quota of an ATMega8 or ATMega168 gestation utensils from www.protostack.com. Pricing starts at $9.60 for a single board.

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Friday, January 08, 2010

Encoder Wheel Generator


This is a PostScript program made by NickAmes to stem optical encoder wheels (suitable for printing out on a transparency). Unlike same programs, it is highly bright and has many features. [via]

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Wednesday, January 06, 2010

PIC16F690 Countdown Timer


This is a naive countdown-timer-on-a-chip envisage – you program the PIC, attach some buttons and a duo of 2-segment LEDs, and you are done.

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Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Emergency Excuse Generator!


Alex send in this suppose

This emblem is a must-sustain for any respected professional. Any afair the absence arises, you leave sustain an original, freshly-generated excuse ready in seconds. One knead of the button can get you out of a uneasy molecule ensuring smooth sailing toward retirement and guaranteeing that you don’t sustain to perform any true occupation .

It is customizable – there is a tool on the “Customize It!” page that can be used to compile a new sample generator line and turn the emblem to body else (say, a really fancy Magic 8 Ball). Also, on the “Try It!” page there is an impersonator of the emblem. Check details on the join unbefitting .
 
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Saturday, January 02, 2010

10 things to do with a new Arduino


Matt at Liquidware.org posted 10 artless mini tutorials about what to do if you recognized received your arduino board. Code is attached explaining how to write a function to make a led blink or announce via RS232. This is a nice introductory trajectory to learn the basics about Arduino coding.

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Friday, January 01, 2010

PropScope: USB oscilloscope from Parallax


The PropScope is a two-pipe oscilloscope that is capable of recital 25 million samples per hindmost with ten bits of resolution over one, two, ten, or twenty volt first-to-first waveforms. Power is provided through the USB port requiring only a single cable to connect the PropScope to any laptop or desktop PC.

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