Kevin Cook documented the building of his Red and Black Sky Attack Rocket. There is no time-line but I am guessing that the build page represents months of work. The electronics are documented near the bottom of the page and there are some linked videos at the top of the page. Thanks for the tip Kevin.
Will O’Brien over at Hack a Day posted this cool iPhone Hack. The guys over at The Part Foundry have made a device that allows you to use GPS with your iPhone. “The iphone GPS module allows jail broken iphones to finally have GPS functionality. This module is in development and will be shipping in February. All software is open source and more applications are being written every day. This
Evil Mad Scientists have put together a nice Darkness Sensing LED Circuit that senses darkness using a phototransistor to detect light. “When light falls on the phototransistor, it begins to conduct up to about 1.5 mA, which pulls down the voltage at the lower side of the resistor by 1.5 V, turning off the transistor, which turns off the LED. When it’s dark, the transistor is able to conduct about
Congratulation to the last contest winner. The prize this week is a SD card reader. This contest will run for this weekend only (December 15 – 16, 2007) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it. Please do not give the answer in the comments. Send an email to contest
There is something about spinning displays that is mesmerizing. Not a big fan of the music, but the audio effects are well done! “Mechanical scanned display rotating in a 160mm diameter plastic ball. This is the monichrom version with realtime data transferring over a rotating transformer.”
So when you think Toyota what comes to mind? Cars? Well after watching these videos your outlook may change… Seems like Toyota is spending lots of time and effort in the robotics area. The results are spectacular! Another video after the jump. “Toyota Motor on Thursday unveiled a robot that can play the violin as part of its efforts to develop futuristic machines capable of assisting humans in Japan’s greying
Apparently Toyota omitted placing a EV push button switch on North American Prius 2004+ models. This push button, is normally pre-installed at the factory for Japan and European versions. Here is a well documented hack that shows Prius users how to install their own EV push button. It appears that placing the Prius in EV mode could, possibly, improve fuel efficiency. But the owner’s manuals of the European and Japanese
