When you walk through a factory full of automated machines that are doing repetitive tasks you will usually see a large metal electrical cabinet beside each machine. Inside that box will most likely be a PLC that is controlling the machine by monitoring inputs and controlling motors and valves. This all sounds fine until you look at the price of this equipment, $10 or $20K will get you a
 Today we have lots of battery free electronic devices such as RFID which in most cases gets powered wirelessly from the reader. What would the world of electronics be like if our small electronics that only consumed a small amount of energy could be powered by the RF signals that are already around us. Ambient Backscatter does just this and has an endless number of interesting applications. Just
If you have never seen wire bonding in action you have to see this. Gold is the most common wire that is used for bonding but the wire is very thin so there isn’t much gold wire by weight that is actually used. Check out the 1:20 minute mark to see a how the wire is actually shaped and formed as it comes out to add the bends that
Martin Stromer made a great looking Hard Disk Clock that is actually very easy to read and looks like a great art piece at the same time. It is based around the ATMega16 Microcontroller. “The time is set by turning the disk and setting the read/write head to the desired time by hand. Then you push the reset button on the back (the upper one of the tree on
We saw a Hexacopter Delivery Platform yesterday. If your RC vehicle is flying in an environment that is a bit more hostile why not implement a few of these Machine Gun Quadrotors. With a few of these able to step in when enforcement was needed I don’t think anyone would be messing with the delivery of books.
Do you have a boat and are looking for the next toy? I think this Flying hovercraft might be high on the list, just imagine not needing to drive your trailer down the dock to unload your craft, just drive it down the ramp. If there is some pesky land and trees in the way from one water way to the next just launch and fly over. If these
This Nanoscope was built during a 5 day LEGO workshop, LEGO and Makeblock allowed for some rapid building but some custom 3D printed parts were also needed. It can sense very small structures and scan them in. Via: Make and Wired “The microscope they constructed is built upon a metal base, with housings built from Lego and the various component holders 3D-printed to ensure a perfect fit between the
