There is some great innovation coming out of the Elevator Space Race. The University of Saskatchewan’s Space Design Team has been in it from the start and has some promising technology. The video describes the monumental task quite well. It goes to show that with some prize money on the line a task as challenging as the space elevator is something that many will choose to pursue.

Via: Space Elevator Games

"The University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team (USST) is a team of highly motivated physics and engineering students and professionals. Building on a tradition of success, we aim to go higher and faster! The engineering challenges are great, requiring the skills of a variety of disciplines. Our success to date has relied on a multi-disciplinary approach, and expanding that approach can only make us better. Our climber makes use of solar cells to receive beamed power, and has an incredibly light superstructure. Although light, the compact design allowed us to handle wind quite well. The robot’s brain (the logic needed to follow the rules) is a microcontroller, programmed by U of S students. As the competition becomes more intense, the limitations of individual spotlights are becoming apparent."

The R1 Radio reminds me of a roller ball mouse without the roller ball. When you move it up and down you control the volume, right and left adjusts the tuning. We have seen some other fun music players that use physical movement to interact with them, I think there is a use for this technology other than just the cool novelty factor.

Via: OhGizmo and Dvice

"By using a wheel structure user can control the radio by physical movement. The ‘R1’ allowed users to turn gadget on or off and to control volume and tuning simply by physically rolling the radio forward, backward and sideways. Functionally, by using bevel gear system, I could increase a tuning range more than four times wider than before. There were too many channels in a narrow display before."

The sponsor this week is Dino Direct, they have a ton of cool stuff and best of all shipping is free so the price you see is what you pay!  They will be providing a $20 gift certificate to the winner of the contest. If you couldn’t guess my favorite category is the Tool category.

No emails this time, we are going to do another Guess what this isn’t contest since we had lots of fun with the last one! Simply reply in the comments with your guess at what this device isn’t AND let us know what you would get from Dino Direct with a $20 gift certificate, please include item links so we can see what you found. Make your entry funny, crazy, weird… Just use your imagination. You can enter more than once if you come up with more than one thought. With a short vote the best comment will win the prize.

This contest will run from November 7 - November 13, 2009 . Ending time is based on central standard time.

Have a look at my first comment for an example entry.

Below is the items I would get if I had $20 to spend at Dino Direct.

Vacuum Pick and Place Pen.

ESD Tweezers, made in Switzerland.

ESD Brush.

Solder Wick.

High Temperature Tape.

Adapter card that converts the mini SD cards into a standard SD size.

Pen holder with time and temperature.

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Added December 1, 2009

Here is the winning comment (46):
When Youri Gagarine came back from his pioneering space trip it became apparent that mutant strains of armpit microbes created by cosmic rays would quickly become a problem. They had to keep him in quarantine for 40 days before his body odor came back to normal levels. Likewise, when the US astronauts came back from lunar missions their combined stench was so unbearable that they had to be kept in an airtight container. Look at this document illustrating the situation : http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/aircraft-pictures/assets_c/2009/07/ap11-S69-40147-42100.html . That’s why when the USSR built the Mir space station they equipped it with a state of the art washing machine, pictured above. As you can see it is built in the purest soviet style. Is a front-loading type machine, you can see the window of the equipment on the left, dials indicating contamination levels on the right. Above the window are 2 timers for the wash and dry cycles. Like many space technologies this is now in wide use in our own earthly washing machines.

Unfortunately the soviet engineers made the machine too small to wash more than one underwear at once. As a result the astronauts spent most of their time washing their clothes, doing little scientific work. The vibrations of the spin cycle led to various dysfunctions in the whole station. In 1997 Vladimir Oulianov having not washed for 10 days, was forced by his comrades to wash all his clothes at once. This overload created a break in the station’s hull, resulting in the depressurization of the cabin. Fortunately, nobody died and the astronauts enjoyed a short respite inside their space suits. Ultimately, the constant vibration caused all of the bolts of the station to unscrew, leading to the demise and crash of the station in the pacific ocean.

If I win here’s what I’d buy with the $20 -oh I see what you did there. Good job.- :
http://www.dinodirect.com/Green-Laser-Kaleidoscope-Pointer-30mW.html
http://www.dinodirect.com/Pick-and-Place-Vacuum-Pen-IC-Hand-Tool-Silver.html
http://www.dinodirect.com/3-LED-Keychain-Flashlight-Solar-Power-Rechargeable.html

The winner is Vic

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This 5kV Induction Gun can shoot aluminum rings with some intense force. I have seen flying ring toys before which fly nice and straight. I wonder if the ring design is better than the typical bullet shaped projectiles we see on most of these guns.

"First portable induction accelerator in Russia. Capacitor energy 500j 5kV voltage, ring speed about 200m/s "

One way to learn lots about a protocol is by implementing a bit banged version. Openschemes shares with us his experimentation with the Arduino and the FT232 chip.

"We’ve been considering the synchronous bit bang mode of the FT232R for an upcoming project. The first steps towards something like this are always to build up a little debug board or test bench that can be used for debug and tweaking while the real boards are in fab. Luckily for us, the Arduino board contains an FT232R ripe for the hacking. For most users, all their dreams are fufilled by avrdude-jtag, which will allow them to reprogram the bootloader on the Arduino Atmega. As you may know, four of the FT232R’s GPIO pins are brought out to an unpopulated header on the Arduino board. The first (and easiest) job is to solder in a set of header pins for future connections."

Limitless Boredom has designed his own version of the Keepon Robot. There have been other Keepon clones out there but I must say that this one made with helicopter RC parts works quite good.

Thanks Ruyck.

PJMonty from SoCalHalloween sure knows how to rig up some great animatronics! The bird and talking skull are funny and spooky at the same time! This project was entered in the Halloween Project Contest, which by the way there is still time to enter.

Via: HG Forum

"The electronics consist of two custom circuit boards I designed. The bottom one (most of which is obscured) contains the micro-controller and memory. It talks to the host PC via a serial port and has animation moves streamed to it on the fly. The top board has another micro-controller and is responsible for handling the time critical work of controlling the actual RC servos. It also has some interface circuitry on it for things like the LCD. Partially visible on the right is the power supply which powers both the circuitry and the servos."

SoCalHalloween - "Small Candy" from SoCalHalloween on Vimeo.