NeatTrix

Ok, I can’t take credit for this one, but it’s one that always stuck with me.  As far as I know it is the brain child of Robert J. Sawyer, my favorite living Sci-Fi author (to answer your next question, Asimov).  I am a heavy sleeper and have been all my life.  I not only can sleep though most things, but I can carry on full conversations with people, sometimes on the phone, and never remember it.  My wife is a much lighter sleeper, so I have to be very careful when coming to bed or getting up, if I don’t want to wake her.  Usually I can’t manage it.  This is where Sawyer’s invention comes in.  In one of his books, the main character has a brain wave monitor on the ceiling above his bed.  It displays the current and projected brain states of him and his wife.  He can tell, what cycle of sleep his wife is in, by reading the display.  He knows if she’s in a deep sleep and unlikely to wake, or if she’s on the verge of a deep sleep and that if he waits two minutes, she should be.  Handy.  In a separate article, he postulates an alarm clock with similar brain wave monitoring that will “keep track of your sleep cycle, gently bringing up the room lights at precisely the right time so that you’ll feel rested, not cardiac arrested, as you awake.”  That sounds great. I want it now.  So what if I don’t get up before noon.

I won’t get into the other implications of reading people’s brainwaves from across the room, but it’s obviously fertile ground for speculation and probably research.  Secret research.  Secret I-could-tell-you-but-then-I’d-have-to-kill-you kind of research.

I’ve been digging through his books to find it, but I can’t remember which one it’s in.  If I find it, I’ll update the post.

Just when you thought your boss couldn’t get any more annoying.  Enter the micro-manager’s dream come true.  Not to be tied down by simply spying on you from strategically hidden camera and microphones, key loggers, and straight up reading your emails, they now have the ability to roam the halls of your office searching for ways to justify their paychecks, at least to themselves. (continue reading…)

Remind me to start carrying a shotgun in my car.  Or maybe an umbrella. Get it? Umbrella?… nevermind.

Two electronic road signs near the University of Texas were hacked to read Caution, Zombies Ahead.  The authorities were not amused.  Also, they weren’t killed by zombies, so bright side, yeah?  Apparently, they consider it a crime to tamper with safety warning signs.  They don’t actually care that no one reads them, or follows their advice, just so long as their message isn’t perverted in any way.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/949/949442p1.html

Well, the JB Weld epoxy held for a month, and then gave up. I was really disappointed. I mean, it really did the trick…until it didn’t. The inside of my shower and car should be covered with the same substance as Amazon has coating the access cover of the Kindle. They might be a lot easier to keep clean then, as nothing much seems to stick to the stuff. What’s even more vexing is that the epoxy directly in contact with the cover material didn’t fully set. I saw the reverse situation in another project where silicone sealant covering an epoxy repair never fully cured. Curious.

Anyway, I was back to square one. I really, really  liked the Velcro straps for the Kindle, and I’m not one to just give up.
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As I was shoveling the snow from my driveway one day, I had an inspiration, a vision of a life free from shoveling and snow blowing.  A wealthy acquaintance of mine has a radiant heat system embedded in his driveway for snow removal, and while it is an excellent system, it is rather expensive.  I fashioned, in my mind, a portable low-cost version of the same.

Of course, it already exists, more or less, and so I don’t know if that makes me smart to have independently thought of such a useful contraption, or stupid for not having thought of it first. (continue reading…)

Lucky, the German Shepherd, is truly lucky. He’s going to get a nice, warm place to sleep…outside, where he belongs. When he gets tired of watching the buffalo roam (Seriously, there’s a herd of buffalo nearby), and chasing rabbits he’ll have a warm retreat from the snow, ice, freezing rain, not-so-freezing rain, fog, drizzle, snizzle, and 40 other kinds of precipitation that only maybe the Inuit have proper words for, and which try our souls practically every day. Right now, there’s like 3 feet of global warming in the yard, and another foot or so due in the next 36 hours.

The intent is to build Lucky a doghouse controller with a Bluetooth connection. The controller will regulate a heating pad, sense Lucky’s presence in the doghouse, measure temperatures inside and outside the doghouse, automatically dispense food, and maybe control some lights or a fan (we have occasional summer weather). We’ll have the capacity to add other features. The Bluetooth connection gives us the ability to monitor Lucky’s use of his house and remotely change operational parameters. Eventually, we’ll take Lucky’s house off the grid, and convert the power source to wind and/or solar.

Stay tuned for further developments. We’re going to do this in installments, mostly from things we have lying around.

I love to play the guitar.  I’m good enough that I can find the chords or tab of most songs that I like to listen to, sit down and play it.  Well enough so that it’s enjoyable to me.   And really, that’s all I want.  I can’t, however, translate my love of songs and my, I think, astute appreciation of good music (would I like any other kind) into any kind of a music writing ability, lyrical or otherwise.  My chord progressions are uninspired, dull affairs, and my lyrics, maudlin effusions of love and death with the occasional scatological reference. In a word, bad. (continue reading…)

I have, from time to time, ideas about inventions that need to be invented. As I have little to no technical ability, I don’t invent them and the world is a sadder, darker place for it.

This one came to me in the car the other day.  I was thinking about headphones.  The great advantage of headphones is of course, their ability to provide a solitary listening experience.  You can hear whatever it is without the distracting noises, and conversely others aren’t bothered by the crap you listen to. (continue reading…)

This concept is by the same guy who did the focus plus context screen. It uses a semi-transparent lcd screen to detect the user’s fingertips as an input device.  When holding the device you can manipulate the screen without getting your big hands in the way.   Just when those industrial designers thought the devices were getting too small to crap all the crap inside of them, this guy goes and takes away the area behind the screen.  Actually they don’t, while the narrator in the video says semi-transparent, careful reading of the predecessor’s page, reveals it is psuedo-transparent, not semi, creating a technology similar to active camoflauge.  Another added benfit of this type of interface is it hugely reduces the wear and tear on the actual screen.

Video After the Jump (continue reading…)

The human eyeball is wired backwards.  I just thought I’d throw that out there.  I would say the eye is evidence of design by committee, rather than a single creator.  There’s light and neurons, and blindspots, but my point is, evolution doesn’t have a goal in mind. It uses what works in the moment. It’s not thinking about a million years down the line.  It’s not thinking at all.  Which brings me to robots. Of course.

Robots are designed.  And as such numerous methods of locomotion have been devised for them.  Some are mimicry of animal movement, others are completely original, others still, are wheels.

After the jump, I have collected a group of my favorite robots/mechanisms and their wacky movement.

UPDATE: I’ve added an extra robot plow near the end.

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I found this a few years ago and I bookmarked it thinking this would be something I’d like to make. Well, I still haven’t gotten around to make the thing, but for some reason it always survives my bookmark purges.  The fear is you have a system crash and your cat starves to death, or at very least eats the other cat.

http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/DIYCatFeederAndWaterDispenser.aspx to see more details about the feeder.

We do a lot of hand assembly for prototyping (playing), and some small-volume production. With sufficient magnification, good light, a decent soldering iron, a steady hand, and practice, it’s really not that hard. The key is having the right tools. Good desoldering braid is essential.  For me, only Soder-Wick will do. Others just don’t seem to work as well.

I’ll get to other tools later. What I spent a long time working out was finding a good surface for assembly of PCBs (printed circuit boards) with lots of surface mount components. I wanted something that had some “grip” to it, something that would keep those tiny parts and the PCB from sliding around too much. Often you have to orient or flip a resistor or other component. This usually has to be done one-handed with tweezers.  The surface I was looking for would help with that. The surface could not be too “bouncy”, though. It needed to be resistant to a soldering iron. The surface should not accumulate a static charge. It’s also a boon to be able to easily change the angle of the board you’re working on without picking it up.

It was easy to fulfill that last requirement with a lazy susan turntable. Rubbermaid makes an inexpensive one. The one shown is sold at ACE Hardware for less than $5.00. The surface melts and chars un contact with a hot soldering iron. That’s not desirable. I had some two-part urethane potting compound from Loctite. The turntable has a lip. I was able to pour a new, flat urethane surface on the turntable. Not bad. The urethane was resistant to hot soldering iron and had most of the other characteristics I was looking for. The problem was that I had to buy the urethane by the quart, and it was not cheap. I had purchased the urethane for another project, and the leftovers just came in handy.

I was still in search of a more practical solution. And then I stumbled across this at (of all places) Joann Fabrics. It’s one of the few times I was glad to have been dragged along on one of my wife’s hunting expeditions.

The glue gun pad is inexpensive (around $6; www.joann.com/joann/catalog.jsp?CATID=cat2902&start=17). It does not melt in contact with the hot soldering iron and the surface has almost the ideal “grip”.  The surface washes easily, and resists most solvents and adhesives. Put one on top of the lazy susan, and it makes assembling PCBs with lots of surface mount components much easier. I prefer the clear variety. A similar, gray-colored pad is available at hotstik.com/store/pc/Non-Stick-Glue-Pad-11p59.htm for $4.75.  Both pads are 8″ x 8″ and fit well on the turntable. Cut the corners on the pad to inscribe the mat inside the circle of the turntable (optional). The only thing missing now is some sort of foot operated brake system for the turntable so that it will only rotate when I want it to. Mount through-hole components last so that the board sits flat on the mat while you’re soldering on the surface mount components.

Other good things to have for surface mount assembly:

Magnification aids (all rather inexpensive):

www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=98722 and www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=47995.

www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=96358

www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=95043

www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=95890

Anti-static, really fine tweezers like these (from Digi-Key) are really good to have. In fact, you probably can’t have too many of tweezers of various sizes and shapes. Another tool of choice are ratcheting forceps (hemostats) with very small jaws. Vacuum pickup pens can be useful mainly for ICs.