Literary gold mine for CNC millers From 1976 to 1983, Popular Science magazine, along with the American Plywood Association, ran an annual plywood panel project design contest for its readership. Often the winning projects were items of furniture, but that was not a requirement. A potter’s kick wheel and a folding plywood boat are notable exceptions. The rules were simple: Apart from common fasteners, the entire project had to be constructed from one or more panels of plywood, cut to make most efficient use of the material.
Strings as Structural Elements? Engineers Devise Mathematics for New Age Structures March 27, 2006 -- Scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have devised two mathematical tools considered to be a major contribution to the optimal design of a new generation of deformable bridges, buildings, shape-controllable airplane wings, radio antennas, and other alternatives to current structural technologies. Two reports will be published in the International Journal of Solids and Structures, with the first appearing in the April issue. The deformable characteristic is made possible with strong, ultra-light truss-like arrangements of rods suspended by strings or wires. The resulting structure incorporates tensegrity, a combination of “tension” and “integrity.” “Although tensegrity structures are not yet part of mainstream design engineering, we think their amazing properties explain why you find this arrangement in spider webs, the protein cytoskeleton of cells, and many other biological structures,” said Robert E.
Novena Novena is a 1.2GHz, Freescale quad-core ARM architecture computer closely coupled with a Xilinx FPGA. It’s designed for users who care about Free Software and open source, and/or want to modify and extend their hardware: all the documentation for the PCBs is open and free to download, the entire OS is buildable from source, and it comes with a variety of features that facilitate rapid prototyping. Novena Configurations Novena was originally offered with four variations (Just the Board, Desktop, Laptop, and Heirloom Laptop).
diy neon sign Make your own indoor neon light sign, without needing to master the art of blowing neon glass tubes! And no, I'm not talking about taping glowsticks on a wall... ビール (biiru) means beer in Japanese Akten - Simple Harmonic Motion Simple Harmonic Motion is an ongoing research and series of projects investigating complexity from simplicity; exploring the nature of complex patterns created from the interaction of simple multilayered rhythms. It is inspired by observations of natural physical and mathematical phenomena; as well as works by the likes of Norman Mclaren, John Whitney, Steve Reich, John Cage, Gyorgi Ligeti, Edgar Varèse, Brian Eno. Behind the different incarnations, at the heart of the project lies the concept of creating complexity from simplicity.
Bumpy Bumpy is a small homemade mp3 player, with features similar to an iPod shuffle. The entire design is open-source, from the firmware to the circuit board to the 3D-printed case. Bumpy plays .mp3 files off of a micro-SD card. You can load files onto the card then plug it into Bumpy, or plug Bumpy into your computer: it will show up like a flash drive (though it's a bit slower). The UI is simple and minimalistic. Touch Screen coffee table DIY with 32" TV and low cost CCD sensor I have already talked about the great hardware specifications of the Teensy board. But combined with the Arduino software environment, the Teensy also offers some great possibilities. But first let's install the plug-in Now you should see a category "Teensy" when you choose your board. And if you select it, you have access to several other options like the "USB Serial Type" to instantly transform your board into a USB keyboard or mouse (some possibilities can be found on Arduino Leonardo).
ESP8266 Successor – ESP32 released with CAN support ​o, the interesting little ESP8266 WiFi SoC finally has a younger brother which appears to be even more capable. Among other interesting updates, the 32 bit Dual Core microcontroller still supports WiFi, but also Bluetooth Low Energy, a DAC, many more ADCs, GPIO pins, etc. etc. Lots of good details here: The ESP32 is now avaialble to buy directly as a chip, or on small development boards. Unfortunately however, everywhere is currently sold out, so it will be a while before I get one. The feature which particularly piqued my interest, however was the mention of CAN 2.0 support.
Openframeworks Openframeworks is a c++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation. The library is designed to work as a general purpose glue, and wraps together several commonly used libraries under a tidy interface: openGL for graphics, rtAudio for audio input and output, freeType for fonts,freeImage for image input and output, quicktime for video playing and sequence grabbing. The code is written to be both cross platform (PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone) and cross compiler. The API is designed to be minimal and easy to grasp. There are very few classes, and inside of those classes, there are very few functions.
Playing Chess on a Beautiful, Magnetized Globe “I think I can do it better.” Having this thought is a moment that every maker knows and loves. It is exactly what came to mind when Ben Meyers saw a picture of a spherical chess set online. MEMS mike draws almost no power 25 May 2017 Acoustic sensor developer Vesper has launched the VM1010, said to be the first MEMS microphone to enable voice activation while drawing almost no power. The first member of Vesper’s ZeroPower Listening MEMS microphone product line, the VM1010 is said to allow product designers to offer touchless user interfaces without power consumption penalties. openelectronicslab/OpenHardwareExG @ GitHub The OpenHardwareExG is a platform for ECG, EEG, EMG, ENG, EOG, and evoked potential applications. The OpenHardwareExG platform was originally developed as part of the eeg-mouse project. About the OpenHardwareExG project Project goals The main goal of the project is to build a device that allows the creation of electrophysiologic signal processing applications.