TechnologyIQ

I love the idea of a customizable wildlife camera in my back yard. I regularly get raccoons, opossum, squirrels, hawks and more in my garden. — Douglas     My yard is under attack. That’s why I used a Raspberry Pi, a Pi camera, and some machine learning to catch my yard’s attackers in action. Read What’s Destroying My Yard? Pest Detection With Raspberry Pi @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi via Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! An interesting link found among my daily reading

Like many pieces of technology, drones can offer up a host of benefits and I always look forward to innovations in the field. I am greatly looking forward to the drone “killer app” that brings a major benefit to society. There has been so much development in the niche that I want to see applied to the world. — Douglas    If you’re ever lost in the woods (or on the lam), watch out for high-speed quadcopters following you through the trees. The drones can now fly through complex and unknown environments at up to 40kmph, thanks to a new AI approach developed at the University of Zurich. Read Drones can now fly through forests at 40kmph — run and hide, humans via The Next Web An interesting link found among my daily reading

  The Arduino community has developed a broad range of modules and shields to improve your DIY projects. However, if you're a beginner to Arduino and electronics in general, choosing which one to use and experiment with might be a little intimidating. Lucky for you, we've got your back. In this post, we have compiled a list of the most popular and easy-to-use sensors to help you get started in your Arduino journey. Read 9 Easy-to-Use Arduino Modules for Beginners via MUO An interesting link found among my daily reading

@atari800 #retrocomputer #floppydisk #datarecovery #atari800 ♬ original sound - Kay Savetz Watch Recovering Data from Retro Floppy Disks via TikTok An interesting link found among my daily reading

Attention, internet: The new update to Google Chrome is out. Chrome 96 (full name 96.0.4664.45—catchy) is rolling out to all of our Google browsers this week. With it, we get some cool new features and, more importantly, essential security patches. That means if you don’t update, you could be putting your digital security at risk. Critical security patches The only reason you need to update to Chrome 96 is this one: the new version includes patches for 25 identified security vulnerabilities. While the risk profile of most of them tops out at “low” or “medium,” Google has highlighted seven as “high” risk, including: Read You Need to Make Sure You're Running Chrome 96 via Lifehacker An interesting link found among my daily reading

  Although the market for hand-drawn portraits largely collapsed following the invention of photography, there’s something magical about watching an artist create a lifelike image using nothing but a pencil, some paper, and their fine motor skills. Watching a machine do the same is a similarly captivating experience, though often the end result is not so great. Trying to fix this deficiency, [Joris Wegner] and [Felix Fisgus] created the Pankraz Piktograph which seems to do a pretty good job at capturing faces. They were inspired by classic picture-drawing automatons, and made a 21st-century version to be used in museums or at events like trade shows. Read Drawing Robot Creates Portraits Using Pen, Paper and Algorithms via hack a day An interesting link found among my daily reading

Read convert web pages to Kindle (mobi), ePub, and PDF files. via TxtPaper An interesting link found among my daily reading

  Jacquard looms revolutionized the weaving process by independently controlling each heddle’s position. That made it possible to weave complex patterns. But modern Jacquard looms are very expensive, because they require a solenoid or other means of actuation for each and every heddle. Lea Albaugh and her team at Carnegie Mellon University found an affordable way to build a Jacquard loom from 3D printer parts — including an Arduino-based controller. The key development for this Jacquard loom was a special bistable switch for each heddle. Those switches keep their heddles in the position in which they were last set. That makes it possible to set the heddle positions sequentially, instead of simultaneously with a multitude of solenoids. All of the heddle positions can be set by a single solenoid, which slides back and forth across the loom. This keeps costs down and makes it possible to build a Jacquard loom for about $200 using common 3D printer components. Read Weaving just got a

I learned a thing long time ago, and it was: Once you print something, you can’t get it back. On the surface, this statement doesn’t make any sense. Scanners are cheap, and in 2021 some digital cameras are as good as scanners, too. Optical character recognition is so fast that it can happen in real time, leaving enough processor power for simultaneous translation to a different language. And I myself bragged about scanning almost 400 printed items and putting them up on the Internet Archive the other day.

Raspberry Pi has announced a new collaboration with Lego, which will enable users to integrate a whole new range of sensors, motors and other special pieces into their creations.  The project has been two years in the making, according to Raspberry Pi's program manager Richard Hayler, and takes the form of a $25 add-on board called the Build HAT (an acronym for "Hardware Attached on Top") that can connect to the computer on one end while attaching to Lego components on the other.    Read Now you can plug Lego into your Raspberry Pi via ZDNet An interesting link found among my daily reading