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Thanks to Black and Decker for sending in this 20V Lithium Drill for review. This drill would be perfect for the average DIYer who is tinkering with projects in the basement on the weekends and evenings. It is nice and light so you won’t need to work out at the gym before a session of drilling. That being said, if you are planning on building a deck or putting in a new fence this is not the drill for that. The most exciting claim is that it will hold a charge for up to 18 months. Of course there was no way I could test this claim in the 2 weeks that I have been playing with the drill. The LED light is nice if you are using it in a dark corner, it automatically turns on whenever the drill is being used. A few days ago I assembled a new corner desk for my daughter, this thing was a beast of a desk with poor instructions which meant that 5 or 6 of the pieces needed to be unscrewed and rearranged to work properly. I would have thrown in the towel if I was putting it together by hand. The clutch worked well for this job, I just set it at 3 and drove the screws in until the clutch kicked in.
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Remember the first Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction? John Austin is back at it with a new version of the book called Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction 2 – Build a Secret Agent Arsenal. This book boasts over 250 pages of fun builds. The projects are well laid out as usual, there are lots of great step by step projects with nice black and white pictures. The pictures remind me of the ones that accompany assembly required furniture. You should be able to follow the pictures to build the creations and refer to the documentation if you need clarification. Chapter 1 is my favorite, it has 8 Agent Sidearm projects. The PPK Tic Tac and the Binder Beretta 92 look great, best of all you probably have everything you need to build these around the house already. The main parts of these two weapons is a box of Tic Tac breath mints, binder clips, paper clips, party balloons, markers and tape. You better keep a close eye on your office mates book shelf, if you see a copy of this book you better watch your back since you can be sure a sneak attack is eminent. Better yet get your own copy and plan a counter attack. |
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Our friend Csaba did a great Review of the SIGLENT SDS1102CM Oscilloscope. “SIGLENT SDS1102CM Based on the CSV file: Model Number: SDS1102CM Serial Number: SDS00002111512 Software Version: 3.01.01.22 Based on the turn on screen: Software Version: 3.01.01.223 Approx. 450USD on ebay.com” |
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I have been putting this SilverCloud Real-Time GPS Tracking System by Land Air Sea through some testing over the past few months. Don’t let the tiny package fool you, this small box allows you to track anything in real time. You can do tracking on a computer, smart phone or playback the history logs anytime. The main purpose of the SilverCloud system is for vehicle tracking but you could stick this in on your next near space launch and find your capsule with ease. You just need to make sure the area you want to use the unit has cellular coverage and can receive a GPS signal, that is because the device is essentially a GPS receiver which sends the current location to Land Air Sea every 3 seconds using the cellular network. Thanks to Land Air Sea for sending in the review unit. |
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Next time you are working on a laser project that needs a small DC motor or a robot arm that is in need of a few gears make sure you have a copy of Unscrewed by Ed Sobey handy. Most of us makers and hackers have a large pile of used parts (some call them junk boxes), they come in all shapes and forms, old VCRs that got retired, the paper shredder that stopped working properly, your old inkjet printer that has a bunch of clogged nozzles. Lots of people see this stuff as garbage and toss it in the trash, we see it as gold waiting to come alive in a future project. Unscrewed lets us have a look inside these everyday items before we even get out a screwdriver, there is a list of typical items that will be found and how it was taken apart. Now this isn’t a service manual so it won’t help you repair anything, and keep in mind that the bit you might want might be the reason the unit was retired but even with one blown part there will still be a hundred other functional parts ready for the taking! Watch the video below for a look inside the book. 
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John Boxall of Tronixstuff is known for his electronic kit reviews, he recently did a hands on build review of our IR Jammer Kit. You have to love his Fluke meter, if you haven’t seen one of these before you might think it’s a meter the size of a display but it’s actually a normal sized meter with a removable display. This would allow the display be placed in a convenient location to view it while the meter and probes are deep inside the system being inspected. The picture below is a shot of the IR LEDs all on, I think this was probably hard to capture since they are flashing very quickly. Of course the infrared LEDs are invisible to our naked eye but this shows a trick to see them which is to view them through a camera. As John mentions the IR Jammer (infrared jammer) would make a great companion to the TV-B-Gone, his evil plan is to turn off a TV, then jam the TV so that it can’t be turned on. I am thinking that would make for a nice cruel joke.
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For all you budding entrepreneurs who have a great business idea in your head but think that taking the first step is quite daunting needs to give Entrepreneur Journeys Volume 4 a look. Sramana Mitra who writes for Forbes and is a serial entrepreneur herself shares her knowledge with us to help our business ideas along their way. In the book she interviews many high profile successful executives such as Eric Benhamou and Judy Estrin to extract their business wisdom. She has developed sections of the book to be very pertinent to the current economy. For example there is a section on Shoestring Innovators since attaining a large sum of investment money might not be the easiest thing to come by right now. In this section she talks with Brian Behlendorf of CollabNet, Rod Johnson of Spring Source and John Roberts of SugarCRM. |
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