TC_Chu's Point

Electric imp

http://www.electricimp.com/

In essence, the Imp provides an easy, integrated way to connect almost any hardware device both to other devices and to internet services. It's more than just a WiFi card, or even a WiFi module with processing built in - it's an integrated platform that deals with the drudgery of connectivity, allowing you to concentrate on the application instead of the mechanics.

The Imp itself is very small - 32mm x 24mm x 2.1mm - but packs a lot inside.

For starters, there's industry standard 802.11b/g/n WiFi, complete with WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption, along with a great antenna.

Next, there's the processor. A Cortex-M3 core gives great performance combined with low power consumption, allowing the Imp to deal with both maintaining a secure connection to the service and also executing the developer's code in a stable environment.

Finally, there's the I/O. Though there are only six pins available for application use, they're six very capable pins. UARTs, I2C, SPI, analog in and out, PWMs, GPIOs... all selectable under software control.

 

 

Hartverdrahtet – Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

Check the Video

'TeleHuman' uses Kinect for 3D holographic chat

via Engadget (check the video)

National Geographic Vision of Earth 2012 (美麗的照片)

更多照片

Touchy: The Human Camera

http://www.fashioningtech.com/profiles/blogs/touchy-the-human-camera

3D Printing as an Art Form

The world of Chicago based digital artist Sophie Kahn is firmly embedded in 3D. Originally from Australia, Sophie trained as a photographer and came to perceive 3D scanning and 3D printing as post-photographic processes. Much of her work over the last eight years has revolved around these digital processes, either in the course of project progression or form of project resolution.

http://blog.ponoko.com/2012/04/19/3d-printing-as-an-art-form/

Happy 35th birthday Apple II

哇 Apple II 已經35歲了 

我的第一台Apple II (不是真的Apple II 是Clone 盜版的）

應該是我去念工專時買的吧 

http://macdailynews.com/2012/04/17/happy-35th-birthday-apple-ii/

Not-quite-so elementary, my dear electron

Isolated electrons cannot be split into smaller components, earning them the designation of a fundamental particle. But in the 1980s, physicists predicted that electrons in a one-dimensional chain of atoms could be split into three quasiparticles: a ‘holon’ carrying the electron’s charge, a ‘spinon’ carrying its spin (an intrinsic quantum property related to magnetism) and an ‘orbiton’ carrying its orbital location¹.

“These quasiparticles can move with different speeds and even in different directions in the material,” says Jeroen van den Brink, a condensed-matter physicist at the Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics in Dresden, Germany. Atomic electrons have this ability because they behave like waves when confined within a material. “When excited, that wave splits into multiple waves, each carrying different characteristics of the electron; but they cannot exist independently outside the material,” he explains.

http://www.nature.com/news/not-quite-so-elementary-my-dear-electron-1.10471

太厲害了 原來電子還不是基本粒子ㄚ 

 

Curious iPhones by InteractiveLab – Arduino, Processing, CIDetector iOS

Fun little experiment by the InteractiveLab group utilising a pair of iPhones, four servos controlled by Processing which receives openCV CIDetector face detection information via OSC from a custom iPhone app created in openFrameworks using iOS5 SDK. In other words, 2 iPhones observe and follow the face of the viewer.

via creativeapplications.net

Cell Phone Spectrophotometer

Include all data and software to build it.

http://www.asdlib.org/onlineArticles/elabware/Scheeline_Kelly_Spectrophotometer/index.html

http://www.news.illinois.edu/news/10/1007scheeline_spectrophotometry.html

Cool Cafe , FabCafe in Japan

http://www.fabcafe.com/blog/

Ocean Optics (Miniature Spectrometer)

http://www.oceanoptics.com/

How Does a Spectrometer Work?

更方便的輪椅

http://tekrmd.com/

via core77

超棒的設計 一定會有市場 （只要不要太貴）

Animated LED Necklace

http://www.fashioningtech.com/profiles/blogs/animated-led-necklace

Warehouse Robots Get Smarter With Ant Intelligence

What Fraunhofer is trying to do is mimic the ant swarm system with robots. For example, instead of having one central computer control the movements every robot (as with Kiva), Fraunhofer's system utilizes robots that make their own decisions with onboard computers. Each robot communicates with all the other robots in the swarm simultaneously using WLAN, and they use algorithms based on a model for how ants forage for food to cooperatively decide which of them should go where and do what. 

The robots don't need fixed localization points, but instead rely on "integrated localization and navigation technology" (including signal-based location capability, distance and acceleration sensors and laser scanners) to find the most direct routes to their destination without crashing into anything or each other. This makes them very efficient, and it also makes the system easily scalable, since you can introduce new things and the robots won't freak out.

via IEEE Spectrum

 

QuadCopters – How to get started (很棒的教材）

via http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/2012/03/quadcopters-how-to-get-started/

This blog post is divided into 3 parts

1. What is a QuadCopter
   1. Brushless motors
   2. Propellers
   3. Roll, Pitch and Yaw
   4. ESC – Electronic Speed Controller
   5. Battery
   6. The frame
   7. Frame configuration
   8. Inertial Measurement Unit
   9. Controller electronics
2. Initial decisions
   1. Theoretical calculator
3. Conclusion

via http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/2012/03/quadcopters-how-to-get-started/

 

WikiPainting 繪畫Wiki

http://www.wikipaintings.org/

How Another NXT Aids Scientific Research

via the nxt step

Face-recognizing billboard ad identifies gender

A new face recognition ad will only reveal its full contents to women. It uses a "high-definition" camera to scan people's faces, detecting their gender with an apparent 90 percent success rate. The charity, Plan UK, is looking to raise funds to sponsor education for girls living in developing countries; the outdoor display will run the full advert for female viewers, while men will get a brief glimpse followed by directions to the charity's website. It's aiming to demonstrate the limits put on young women in some countries -- and is a pretty admirable use of facial recognition technology. Well, it's not withholding pudding from minors. Check the bus display in action on the streets of London right after the break. 

via Engadget

我想加上Internet access 應該就可以認人了吧！

Picopter

The control board seen in the foreground has an edge connector which mates with a Wii classic controller connector. This is what you use for flight control. But there’s even more. The pinheader just visible on the left side of the controller mates with a socket on the ‘copter board. This allows you to sync the two so that there’s no radio frequency interference, and recharge the batteries from a USB connection. Speaking of those wireless communications, [Frank] chose to use an ATmega128RFA1. This is a newer microcontroller from Atmel that has a radio built into it. Add a gyroscope sensor and some motor control and you’re in business.

via Hack A Day

http://www.instructables.com/id/Picopter/

Incredible Robot Arm Made Entirely of LEGOs

http://gajitz.com/toybotics-incredible-robot-arm-made-entirely-of-legos/

Single atom transistors

 A single phosphorus atom was placed into a silicon lattice and read with a pair of extremely tiny silicon leads that allowed them to observe both its transistor behavior and its quantum state. 

via Engadget

Analog Video Mixer for iPhone

via Make

Android USB Host + Arduino: How to communicate without rooting your Android Tablet or Phone

This example consists of two parts:

• The Android application that makes use of the USB API
  A simple Android app that let’s you regulate the brightness of an LED on the Arduino using a slider. It also features a button to “enumerate” the USB device.
• Firmware for the Arduino that does some serial I/O with the Android app
  Very basic firmware for the Arduino. An interrupt is generated when a new byte is received. The received data controls the brightness of the Arduino’s on-board LED.
  (implemented via usleep-style software pwm in the main loop).

vi android.serverbox.ch

iModela from Roland

iModela Home Page

Chinese Dragon Year Lego

via brothersbrick

Shoe Tree Tulips

via bookofjoe

Augmented Reality with Processing [Tutorial, Processing]

CAN Augmented Reality Tutorial from Amnon Owed on Vimeo.

All of the visuals in the above video were created using NyArtoolkit for Processing. NyARToolkit is an augmented reality toolkit built with 100% pure Java. It is derived from ARToolkit-2.72.1. Like Processing itself it’s open source and free! In this tutorial you will learn how to use it to place computer generated imagery correctly onto real world footage. To do this in real-time NyArtoolkit uses markers – black and white images – to determine the three-dimensional position and orientation in the real world. Most likely you will have seen something like this before, but now you will learn how to do it yourself using freely available software.

via creative applications.net

Assembly: The New BUI

...

develop a new interaction language — a new BUI (Bodily User Interface) of sorts arises. Assembly, a research project by Emily Carr University student Lorea Sinclaire, explores different bodily gestures to interact with a mobile phone.

Interactions such as buttoning a coat, sends a signal of your location while stroking your hemline will send out a call to a friend. My personal favorite, hugging yourself and swiping your outer arms, signals you need help.

Assembly just skims the possible gestural and bodily interactions a user may use to interface with their mobile devices but it does begin to imagine a world where body language becomes a novel way to communicate with our electronic objects.

http://www.fashioningtech.com/profiles/blogs/assembly-the-new-bui

DrinKlip — The car cupholder comes indoors at long last

via bookofjoe

這是好東西!

Laser cutting technique makes plywood bendable

via HackaDay

真是聰明ㄚ!!

Next-generation electronic printing technologies

3D-printed antenna made from silver ink. The curved surface of the antenna makes it dramatically more efficient than the typical flat antenna you might find in your cellphone.

via Ponoko

 

Implementing bidirectional interface with a single common LED

It’s called LEDComm and requires only two pins of a microcontroller and a current limiting resistor to function. It works by making use of the fact that LEDs, once reverse biased, are also pretty efficient photodiodes, or light sensors.

Reversed biased LEDs can be modeled with a current source proportional to the light received, and a parallel capacitor. To read the amount of light the LED has received one must first charge the capacitor, and t

via Dangerous Prototype

Gusho - A Reactive Dress that Responds to RF Radiation

Designed by  Laura Malinverni and Cora Belloto, GUSHO is an electro-mechanical dress that reacts to increasing levels of electromagnetic radiation.

http://www.fashioningtech.com/profiles/blogs/gusho-a-reactive-dress-that-responds-to-rf-radiation

 

MIT Chip mimics brain synapse

MIT researchers have fabricated a computer chip that uses 400 transistors to mimic the activity of a single brain synapse, the junction between neurons. The device is a step toward in silico simulation of plasticity, the ability of neurons to adapt based on new input.

via MIT Technology Review