July 2007

Inside the iPhone CPU

Our friend Nick Chernyy from uBlog has got his hands on an Apple iPhone and worked his magic to get a shot of the CPU wafer image. “The chip contains both the ARM CPU and the RAM, three dies to be exact. The CPU had what looked to be a model number and the RAM chips had what looked to be part of a model number on the cut-away part

Name the Thing Contest - 11

Congratulation to winner last week. The prize this week is a watch with a built in TV remote, have fun driving your friends nuts with this device. 🙂 This contest will run for this weekend only (July 7 – 8, 2007) . To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it. Please note that this item is sold by one of

Light LEDs in a Hot Dog

Have you ever seen LEDs powered through a hot dog before? Well Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has been having some fun running some juice through a hot dog and lighting LEDs that were simply stuck into the hot dog. “If you’re *not* going to eat the hot dog, a neat trick is to stick a bunch of standard LEDs into it. (Yes, this really works!) Apparently the voltage between nearby

Exploding a Potato with Defibrillator Capacitor

  This video of a Potato Exploding with the discharge of a Defibrillator Capacitor is very impressive. The 54uF/4200V capacitor was charged up to 3000VDC prior to the discharge. If I ever have a heart attack I think I might just tough it out and hope for the best. 🙂

Holographic Video

Could the technology that MIT’s Michael Bove is working on change computer displays as we know them today? It wasn’t long ago that LCD flat screens took the market over. Are we going to see a similar change when Holographic Video technology matures? “The Media Lab’s video holograms appear to float above a piece of frosted glass. An electronic device behind the glass, called a light modu­lator, reproduces interference patterns

DIY Laser Engraver / Cutter

If you ever wanted to do some laser engraving, this project might be of some interest to you. The circuit is basically a variable voltage regulator that is powering a high power laser. I would highly recommend laser goggles when experimenting with devices like this. “This laser will immediately BURN AND CUT anything you put in front of it faster than a hot knife through soft butter. And, a laser

LEGO NXT Rubik's cube solver

Daniele Benedettelli made a LEGO robot that can solve the Rubik’s Cube automatically. Looks like the robot has been well thought of and constructed. Video after the jump. “A motor actuates a prismatic joint that pushes the side of the cube; another rotates the cube’s support; the third one has the double function to help the pusher arm to accomodate the cube on the support and to hold the cube