TechnologyIQ

Rocketry is tricky stuff, but as long as you’re not trying to get into space, the whole idea can basically be boiled down into a simple concept: if you put enough thrust behind it, anything can fly. At least, for awhile. It’s this basic premise that allows what hobbyists sometimes refer to as “Odd-Rocs” fly; these unusual objects might not be ideal rockets, but put a big enough motor in there, and it’ll get off the pad. Recently, [concretedog] thought he’d try putting together his own oddball rocket, and set out to modify a Doritos STAX tube for powered flight. There’s plenty of precedent for turning Pringles tubes into rockets, but of course, that’s hardly surprising. After all, what’s a rocket if not a strong and lightweight cylinder? But the rounded triangular shape of the STAX tube promised to be an interesting change of pace. Plus it looked cool, so there’s that. Read A Promising Start for the Doritos Space Program via hack a day An interesting link found among my daily rea...

An extremely unique clock taking design cues from a rubik’s cube (maybe?). From Hans on Prusa Printers: Time Twister is a fully 3d printed mechanical digital clock. The digits are produced by twisting the layers to front one of three faces. Each layer is powered by a micro servo motor. The servo motors are controlled by an Arduino MEGA. A DS3231 Real Time Clock makes sure that the time is right. Read Time Twister #3DThursday #3DPrinting via Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! An interesting link found among my daily reading

Computer Engineering for Babies is a simple board book designed to keep your baby engaged while they learn about the stuff that computers are made from. If you skipped CE150, or just happened to miss the first couple of days, then this book ought to catch you up. Read Computer Engineering for Babies Book via Kickstarter An interesting link found among my daily reading

          View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by pyka (@wearepyka) The Sky Vane’s creators produced a carefully written soundtrack for the experience. Raspberry Pi triggers changes to the number of musical layers, sequences, audio effects processing, and so on, based on the information the sensors read. That’s the “dynamic” bit. A huge gust of wind, for example, leads to a different musical change than the setting sun. Read Listen to the weather change with The Sky Vane - Raspberry Pi via Raspberry Pi An interesting link found among my daily reading

  Every night before I sleep, I set my phone to Do Not Disturb, one of the many steps I have to take to not stare at my phone late into the evening. It makes it so that I can still receive text messages and calls, but I'm not notified. My phone doesn't ring, or vibrate, or even light up. It's genuinely blissful to not have any notifications for a few hours each day, even if they are the hours before I go to bed and after I wake up. But some important calls still need to come through, like when my roommate is out on a first date, or when a family member is in labor. Read How to let someone bypass your iPhone Do Not Disturb settings via Mashable! An interesting link found among my daily reading

  First of all we need to know what is meant by ultrasonic sensor ? Ultrasonic sensor measures the distance of a target object by emitting ultrasonic sound waves, and converts the reflected sound into an electrical signal. Ultrasonic wave is defined as “inaudible sound with high frequency for human”. Ultrasonic sensors have two main components: the transmitter ( Trigger pin ) and receiver ( Echo pin ). Transmitters convert electrical signals into ultrasound, receivers convert ultrasound into electrical signals, and transceivers can both transmit and receive ultrasound. Ultrasonic sensor has four pins namely Gnd, Vcc, Trigger and Echo. Gnd is considered as the negative pin and is connected to the ground of the system. Vcc basically powers up the sensors typically 3.3 V. Trigger works as the transmitter and echo works as the receiver. Read Interfacing ultrasonic sensor with Arduino uno via Explore all projects An interesting link found among my daily reading

While the concept might seem quaint to us today, microfiche was once a very compelling way to store and distribute documents. By optically shrinking them down to just a few percent of their original size, hundreds of pages could be stored on a piece of high-resolution film. A box of said films could store the equivalent of several gigabytes of text and images, and reading them back only required a relatively simple projection machine. As [Joerg Hoppe] explains in the write-up for his automatic microfiche scanner, companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) made extensive use of this technology to distribute manuals, schematics, and even source code to their service departments in the 70s and 80s. Luckily, that means hard copies of all this valuable information still exist in excellent condition decades after DEC published it. The downside, of course, is that microfiche viewers aren’t exactly something you can pick up at the local Big Box electronics store these days. To ma...

  Tephritid fruit flies can be a huge pest when it comes to agriculture, destroying various crops wherever they go. To try and stay ahead of any swarms, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) is using Raspberry Pi-powered monitoring stations. Read Remote agricultural monitoring via The MagPi An interesting link found among my daily reading