November 2008

Name the Thing Contest - 67

We have a returning contest sponsor! Thanks to USB Fever for the FM Transmitter with hands-free functions prize. They have an amazing sale on their Universal Slim USB Car Charger, you might want to pick one up while they are only a penny! This contest will run for one week (Nov 15 – Nov 20, 2008) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item

Tour of the Large Hadron Collider

  Tours are always interesting. It is great to see how others have put together assembly lines or come up with a way to automate the processing of a widget. The Hadron Collider is a project that is so complex and at a scale that is almost unbelievable. A select few got to go on a tour and lucky for us a group from Bad Astronomy recorded their experience! "The

RoboFoot - Robot Football

  These football playing robots look simple at first until you see how they operate. Robofoot is one of the competitors in the annual Robocup challenge. "Robofoot is a student initiative devoted to the development of autonomous and cooperative multi-robots systems. The main goal of the project is to be the first Canadian team to participate in the Robot World Cup Soccer Games, the RoboCup (www.robocup.org), in the Middle Size

Flat Bulb - Why are bulbs round?

  This Flat Bulb an interesting bulb design. It seems like when something revolutionary is developed future designs tend to be very similar. Is there a good reason for light bulbs to be round? "flat bulb is designed by korean designer joonhuyn kim. unlike ordinary bulbs its volume is 1/3 smaller, reducing the cost of packaging and transport. its slim shape allows bulbs to be easily stacked and prevents breakage

easypport.bi - FreeBasic Parallel Port to LCD Display

  Eric (Turd) from the Hacked Gadgets Forum has shared a project that he has been working on. He has made a FreeBasic program that interfaced to a custom circuit board that he designed and built. This will allow a computer to control an LCD display. This gives you lots of possibilities such as having a temperature monitor or CPU usage display for easy viewing. All the code and schematics

DIY Ethernet Picture Viewer

   This is a proof of concept project that contains lots of great code and helpful tips that could help us out when we are working on a similar Ethernet / microcontroller project. Project abstract (pdf)  Entire Project Details (zip) The “Ethernet Picture Viewer” is a low cost device that allows a user to visualize graphic content stored on a computer in an LAN. A server application that runs on

RFID Beer Cooler Lockdown

  The Revision 3 show Systm has been on and off since it was introduced many years ago. It looks like it’s now here to stay so we can expect to see videos on a  regular basis. Patrick Norton will be joined by  David Calkins which should make the shows very interesting and informative. This episode talks about installing a RFID lock in your bar fridge, the locking mechanism is