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Bre Pettis of Makerbot Industries is making the interview rounds. The Cupcake CNC will soon be able to print objects in clear plastics. Currently you are limited to black or white. Congrats on the success Bre! “Their company, MakerBot Industries, has shipped 350 of the $750 kits so far. They hired two employees, started paying themselves, and are building another 150 kits for their next shipment.” |
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I have always been interested in how things work. You might remember when we cracked opened up a power regulator, unfortunately my camera didn’t have a good macro feature back then so the very fine wires that connect the silicone to the external posts can’t be seen very well. It’s amazing how small the internal wires are! This time we will crack open a RGB LED. In the video above it shows a close up image of a Flashing RGB LED. Well, since the LED is clear there is really no opening the device but what makes it hard to see what is going on inside is the LED lens that directs the LED light beams out the front. A removal of the lens plastic solves that issue. The first half of the above video shows the LEDs operating at a voltage that is just high enough to light them. The second half of the video is at a normal operating voltage which makes it hard to see what is going on inside the component. To get a close look at the inside I ground the top of the plastic with a few grits of sand paper. The first was 120 followed by 240 and finally 400. At that point it was down to the level that I wanted however it was still very hazy. To get the final clear polish I used some toothpaste, that’s the blue stuff in the picture. You can see that there is a very large controller that has power input going to it and power going out to the 3 separate LEDs. |
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There are lots of cool Wiimote Hacks that have been done and here is another one that shows us some great progress in interfacing the popular Wiimote to an iPhone to allow it to control some game play. Via: Apple Phone Hacks “The author of BTstack and I spoke and I ran out to buy a WiiMote today. Moments later I had success! I was playing mame4iphone on my iPhone 3gs with a WiiMote. No wires!” |
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Thanks to Gadget Gangster for alerting us to a Parallax Webinar that will allow you to Learn Propeller Assembly Language Programming. “Have you been programming the Propeller in the Spin language exclusively? Now is your chance to explore a new set of possibilities that the Propeller Assembly Language delivers. Expert Propeller developers often use a combination of Assembly and Spin to create very powerful objects. Now you can too! Some of the topics we’ll cover include:
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Cool Contest Prizes
———————————–———- Added Feb 6, 2009 Thanks to everyone for participating! The winners are: 1 Year of Make Magazine (online digital version) Caleb (comment 33) 1 Year of Nuts and Volts Tom Fisk (comment 1) 1 Year of Nuts and Volts David Storch (comment 4) David could not be reached so we drew another winner Berni (comment 1) ————————————–———- 
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If you are on the road or at the office and just remembered that you forgot to feed the cats what do you do? Drive home and feed them right? Well if you are Mathew Newton you can use your phone or your work computer to feed the animals. This Internet Enabled Cat Feeder project would have been a good addition to the contest that Cisco was running a while back! Via: TechEBlog "In order to facilitate remote control of the dispenser (i.e. to allow user-driven operation rather than leaving it to a timer and the associated drawbacks this could create) I had to somehow connect the motor directly to the network, or a locally-sited PC. I dropped the latter idea because I didn’t really want a dedicated PC sat alongside it… particularly in the kitchen. (Okay, I admit, I would’ve been quite happy but my girlfriend on the other hand…!) Besides which, before this cat feeder project came charging in I was (and indeed still am because of this!) in the final stages of studying for the Cisco CCNA qualification and whilst sat there wondering why mutli-channel Ethernet relays cost so much (e.g. this one for £249) it dawned on me that if I could tap in to the port status LEDs on an old Cisco switch then I’d have a multi-port network-enabled relay interface for next to nothing! " |
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Lenovo wanted to prove that their Laptops are very tough. The laptops feature full metal frame, shockproof hard drive protection and a spillproof keyboard. What better way of proving how durable they are then to install them on busses that are on their way to a Lenovo event. These seats are actually functional however they are obviously not just normal laptops bolted to the wall. The keyboard is the same keyboard from the laptop allowing you to have a seat or surf the web! Via: Gizmodo "On the occasion of ‘Lenovo Live 2008′ they turned existing folding seats in those busses and trams into notebooks with a real key- and touchpad. Thus the product promise could be experienced with all senses before arriving at the event." |
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