TechnologyIQ

A new flexible Arduino development board has been unveiled this month which has been developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, to provide a lightweight low-cost and flexible electronic system for next-generation smart technologies that can be included into military, commercial and consumer applications. The Air Force Research LaboratoryResponsible for the flexible Arduino board has been led in conjunction with NextFlex, America’s Flexible Hybrid Electronics Institute. The team has now unveiled the first functional samples of the flexible Arduino circuit board which has been constructed using a “flexible hybrid electronics manufacturing process”. The Development team has been able to reduce the number of manufacturing processes by more than 60 percent resulting in a reduction in the weight of the Arduino board by a massive 98 percent.. Read Flexible Arduino Development Board Created By Air Force Research Lab via Geeky Gadgets * A portion of each sale from Amazon.com dire...

There are a lot of apps on both store Apple and Android for controlling Arduino Yun, but none of them will give you all what you need. So we decided to build a mobile application from scratch alongside with Arduino code that can give the following: Read & write digital pins. Read & write PWM pins. Read analog pins. Remember last status of the pins. Change the mode of the pin (Output, PWM, SERVO or Input). Automatic connect to Arduino. Rename the label of each pin. Terminal to send any data to Arduino. LCD to receive any data from Arduino. Assign actions when receiving data from Inputs, LCD and Analogs. Read IOS to Arduino Yun Controller via Hackster.io Arduino Books, Boards and Components Arduino Boards and Components via Amazon Arduino Boards and Components via eBay * 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! † Available from the LA Public Library An ...

In my humble opinion—as I’ve mentioned elsewhere—ePaper is really an amazing display technology that has never really burst onto the mainstream. ePaper is incredibly energy efficient, requiring power only to change the display, the refresh rate is atrocious compared to television or smartphones, but seems to have been relegated to dedicated e-readers and the odd smartwatch. The natural outlet then would be makers and hobbyists, but options are less numerous than most other display methods. The other market I could see for this type of device is as a static display, such as in office meeting rooms, or for weather and other stats which needs to only be updated intermittently. You can try to hack something together yourself, but the 2.9″ ESPaper Plus Kit has everything you need to get started with your semi-static display, including an ESP8266 WiFi module. Read Tindie Blog | ESP8266 ePaper WiFi Display Kit Runs for Months on a Charge via Tindie Blog Get ESP8266 Boards and More * A ...

I have often thought about a 3-D printer, but I am thinking a small laser cutter and etcher like this might be more useful for me. — Douglas This weekend at Maker Faire New York, we were excited to see a brand new tool sitting on Dremel‘s tables. This is the Dremel Digilab Laser Cutter. We don’t have all the details yet, such as the price, but we do know a few things. Here are the specs according to Dremel. 40 Watt Laser 12″x20″ Bed Size Integrated heat exchanger called the “Hex Box” Full suite of safety sensors Of note are those safety sensors. Most lasers right now have simple lid detection, but Dremel has added all kinds of safety checks to maker sure things like the high voltage power supply or cooling system failures won’t injure you or cause more damage. This is a good step in my opinion and I’m curious to see what all they have implemented. Read Dremel Announces 40 Watt Laser Cutter via Make An interesting link found among my daily reading

Weather stations are always a good starting point for learning about Raspberry Pi and Arduino systems. — Douglas Raspberry Pi is a perfect tool to get Internet of Things (IoT) up and running - a Linux computer with access to I2C. Read Raspberry Pi Weather Station via Hackster.io Get Raspberry Pi Boards and Components from Amazon Get Raspberry Pi Boards and Components from eBay An interesting link found among my daily reading

This is so geeky as to almost defy description, but as someone who uses audio cues a lot (perhaps it was all those years listening to modem tones to diagnose problems) I love the ideas of being able to hear your computer working — at least for a little while. — Douglas Modern digital computers have complex instruction sets that runs on state-of-the-art ALUs which in turn are a consequence of miniaturized logic gates that are built with tiny transistors. These tiny transistors are essentially switches. You could imagine replacing with electromagnetic relays, and get what is called a relay computer. If you can imagine it, someone’s done it. In this case, [jhallenworld]. The Z3 was the first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer designed by Konrad Zuse. The board employs modern semiconductor devices such as memory and microcontrollers, however, the CPU is all relays. A hexadecimal keyboard allows for program entry and a segment display allows tracking the address and...

Wildlife photography is a tricky field, as it requires both finding animals and not scaring them away. When filming a documentary like Planet Earth, photographers and videographers don’t just walk into the field a snap a picture; they spend days, or even weeks, sitting as still as possible to get that perfect shot. Luckily, there is another choice: the wildlife camera. Wildlife cameras are designed to be placed inconspicuously, and to wait patiently until movement is detected, at which time they snap a photo or record a video. While prices for commercial wildlife cameras have certainly dropped, they can still be pricey. So, if you want to get some great wildlife snaps, you might want to follow PiBat’s lead and build one yourself. Read A Raspberry Pi Is a Great Platform for Building an Inexpensive, Yet High-Quality, Wildlife Camera via Hackster’s Blog - Medium More Raspberry Pi Products, Components and Books Get Raspberry Pi Boards and Components from Amazon Get Raspberry Pi Bo...