TechnologyIQ

Imagine being able to draw out circuits, sew them into clothing, apply to the exterior of common items in your home. Very cool technology and both methods and applications are growing quickly. — Douglas Conductive paint, ink and thread can be drawn, woven or even tattooed into objects like denim jackets, carpeting and leather iPad cases to make them into electrical circuits, adding a new layer of functionality as well as cool-looking graphic patterns. Draw circuits in any shape, create smart objects that interact with apps, and answer your phone while biking by swiping your finger across your sleeve. These 10 projects – some of which are available commercially – show how far conductive designs have come in less than four years. Read Conductive Design: 10 Objects Transformed Into Touch Pads & Circuits via WebUrbanist * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! An inter...

Quite an amazing idea. This article details using a series of common sensors, like microphones, accelerometers, light sensors and more, combine their data streams and sense a wide variety of home activities instead of building sensors into each, individual device. —Douglas To fulfill the real promise of the Internet of Things there needs to be computing and sensing in each and every object in your home. In your office. In your neighborhood. But not only would that be impractical, and expensive, it would be intrusive, and awkward. So what if, instead of deploying thousands of sensors in a room, you could deploy just a single sensor that could indirectly monitor the whole room? Read How to Make Your Sensors Smarter via Hackster’s Blog - Medium An interesting link found among my daily reading

I have a number of paper projects floating around in my head, but they always seemed a bit too difficult to put together. This post and video help clarify the issues in a number of ways. — Douglas E-Paper, E Ink, or one of the several other ways to compose/capitalize this class of device is likely best-known in Amazon’s Kindle and other eBook readers. And why not? This technology is easy on the eyes, and only uses power when it changes what is displayed.   It’s such a neat concept that one would think it would be used in more projects. It does, however, have a few drawbacks like the fact that it generally doesn’t come in color, and doesn’t refresh fast enough for any sort of acceptable animation. The other important drawback from a DIY perspective is that they are relatively difficult to control. As seen in this Hackaday.io writeup, you can’t simply tell one pixel to be a certain shade of gray and expect it to work without some serious fiddling. Read Tindie Blog | E-Pa...

A complicated, but extremely powerful, project that allows you to control almost anything, almost anywhere without using Bluetooth or Wifi. -- Douglas Build this powerful RF Feather-based controller to wirelessly trigger props, lights, effects, and more! Using 900Mhz (or 425Mhz) RF for long-range,  encrypted communications between the transmitter and the receivers, this general purpose controller will make your wireless triggering wishes come true! Plus, you get to use a rotary encoder knob to scroll menu sets, and punch in your commands on the lighted 4x4 Trellis keypad. Build your own from the Learning Guide tutorial here Read John Park’s Remote Effects Trigger Box @adafruit @johnedgarpark #adafruit via YouTube An interesting link found among my daily reading