Editorial

Esta é a Newsletter Nº 110 que se apresenta com o mesmo formato que as anteriores. Se gostar da Newsletter partilhe-a!

Todas as Newsletters encontram-se indexadas no link.

Esta Newsletter tem os seguintes tópicos:

• Novidades da Semana
• Ciência e Tecnologia
• Modelos 3D
• Documentação
• Projetos Maker

Faz hoje anos que nascia em 1955 Tim Berners-Lee. Este engenheiro inglês é conhecido por ser o inventor da World Wide Web. Em 1989 ele fez uma proposta para um sistema de gestão de informações e implementou a primeira comunicação bem-sucedida entre um cliente e servidor HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) via Internet em meados de Novembro do mesmo ano. É graças a ele que hoje podemos criar e consultar informação de forma ubíqua e aberta na Internet. Faz hoje também anos que nascia em 1936 Kenneth G. Wilson. Este físico teórico norte-americano fico conhecido como um pioneiro na utilização de computadores para estudar física de partículas. Fez trabalhos sobre transições de fase - iluminando a essência subtil de fenómenos como o derretimento do gelo e o magnetismo emergente. Faz também anos que nascia Bernd T. Matthias. Este alemão naturalizado norte-americano tem os créditos das descobertas de centenas de elementos e ligas com propriedades super-condutoras. Faz igualmente anos que nascia em 1916 Francis Crick. Este biólogo molecular, biofísico e neuro-cientista britânico, é conhecido por ser um co-descobridor da estrutura da molécula de DNA em 1953 com James Watson e Rosalind Franklin. Nascido em 1832 Essex na Inglaterra, Charles Tilston Bright foi o engenheiro electrotécnico britânico que supervisionou a colocação do primeiro cabo telegráfico transatlântico em 1858. Por fim, faz também hoje anos que nascia Giovanni Domenico Cassini. Este italiano naturalizado francês era um matemático, astrónomo, astrólogo e engenheiro. Cassini é conhecido pelo seu trabalho nos campos de astronomia e engenharia. Cassini descobriu quatro satélites do planeta Saturno e observou a divisão dos anéis de Saturno; A Divisão Cassini foi nomeada após ele. Giovanni Domenico Cassini também foi o primeiro de sua família a começar a trabalhar no projeto de criação de um mapa topográfico da França.

Esta semana a Microsoft lançou um conjunto de ferramentas de código aberto para acelerar o "Deep Learning". O Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit 2.0 é um conjunto de ferramentas com centenas de novas funcionalidades para acelarar o processo de "Deep Learning" e para garantir a integração perfeita em todo o ecossistema de AI. É noticia também esta semana a descoberta de um planeta que é mais quente que a maior parte das estrelas. O planeta de nome KELT-9b, está a ser vaporizado pela própria estrela. Tem uma temperatura estimada de mais de 7.800 graus Fahrenheit (4.600 Kelvin). A IBM em conjunto com a Samsung e com a GLOBALFOUNDRIES criaram um transístor para a tecnologia de 5nm. Os detalhes do processo serão apresentados na conferência "2017 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits" em Kyoto, Japão. E por fim é apresentado um estudo para explicar o "Wow!" - sinal vindo do espaço em 1977. Uma equipa de investigadores do Center of Planetary Science (CPS) finalmente resolveu o mistério do "Wow!" Sinal de 1977. Era uma cometa, segundo eles, um que era desconhecido no momento da descoberta do sinal. O investigador principal, Antonio Paris, descreve sua teoria e como a equipa provou isso num artigo publicado no Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences.

Na Newsletter desta semana apresentamos diversos projetos de maker assim como um modelo 3D que poderá ser útil. São apresentados dois livros, o primeiro sobre desenho e implementação de Anykernel e de Kernels Rump e o segundo sobre TCP/IP.

João Alves ([email protected])

O conteúdo da Newsletter encontra-se sob a licença Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Microsoft releases open-source toolkit to accelerate deep learning

"A toolkit used across Microsoft to achieve breakthroughs in artificial intelligence is generally available to the public via an open-source license, a team of researchers and software engineers announced today. “The 2.0 version of the toolkit is now in full release,” said Chris Basoglu, a partner engineering manager at Microsoft. He has played a key role in developing Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (previously known as CNTK). The full release of Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit 2.0 for use in production-grade and enterprise-grade deep learning workloads includes hundreds of new features incorporated since the beta to streamline the process of deep learning and to ensure the toolkit’s seamless integration throughout the wider AI ecosystem. New with the full release today is support for Keras, a user-friendly open-source neural network library that is popular with developers working on deep learning applications. Code written for Keras, explained Basoglu, can now take advantage of the performance and speed available from the Cognitive Toolkit without requiring any code change. Toolkit support for Keras is currently in public preview." [...]

Astronomers Find Planet Hotter Than Most Stars

"A newly discovered Jupiter-like world is so hot, it's being vaporized by its own star. With a dayside temperature of more than 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit (4,600 Kelvin), KELT-9b is a planet that is hotter than most stars. But its blue A-type star, called KELT-9, is even hotter -- in fact, it is probably unraveling the planet through evaporation. "This is the hottest gas giant planet that has ever been discovered," said Scott Gaudi, astronomy professor at The Ohio State University in Columbus, who led a study on the topic. He worked on this study while on sabbatical at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. The unusual planet is described in the journal Nature and at a presentation at the American Astronomical Society summer meeting this week in Austin, Texas. KELT-9b is 2.8 times more massive than Jupiter, but only half as dense. Scientists would expect the planet to have a smaller radius, but the extreme radiation from its host star has caused the planet's atmosphere to puff up like a balloon. Because the planet is tidally locked to its star -- as the moon is to Earth -- one side of the planet is always facing toward the star, and one side is in perpetual darkness. Molecules such as water, carbon dioxide and methane can't form on the dayside because it is bombarded by too much ultraviolet radiation. The properties of the nightside are still mysterious -- molecules may be able to form there, but probably only temporarily." [...]

IBM Research Alliance Builds New Transistor for 5nm Technology

"IBM, its Research Alliance partners GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung, and equipment suppliers have developed an industry-first process to build silicon nanosheet transistors that will enable 5 nanometer (nm) chips. The details of the process will be presented at the 2017 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits conference in Kyoto, Japan. In less than two years since developing a 7nm test node chip with 20 billion transistors, scientists have paved the way for 30 billion switches on a fingernail-sized chip. The resulting increase in performance will help accelerate cognitive computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other data-intensive applications delivered in the cloud. The power savings could also mean that the batteries in smartphones and other mobile products could last two to three times longer than today’s devices, before needing to be charged. Scientists working as part of the IBM-led Research Alliance at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering’s NanoTech Complex in Albany, NY achieved the breakthrough by using stacks of silicon nanosheets as the device structure of the transistor, instead of the standard FinFET architecture, which is the blueprint for the semiconductor industry up through 7nm node technology." [...]

Wow! mystery signal from space finally explained

"A team of researchers with the Center of Planetary Science (CPS) has finally solved the mystery of the "Wow!" signal from 1977. It was a comet, they report, one that that was unknown at the time of the signal discovery. Lead researcher Antonio Paris describes their theory and how the team proved it in a paper published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. Back in August of 1977, a team of astronomers studying radio transmissions from an observatory at Ohio State called the "Big Ear" recorded an unusual 72-second signal—it was so strong that team member Jerry Ehman scrawled "Wow!" next to the readout. Since that time, numerous scientists have searched for an explanation of the signal, but until now, no one could offer a valid argument. Possible sources such as asteroids, exo-planets, stars and even signals from Earth have all been ruled out. Some outside the science community even suggested that it was proof of aliens. It was noted that the frequency was transmitted at 1,420 MHz, though, which happens to be the same frequency as hydrogen. The explanation started to come into focus last year when a team at the CPS suggested that the signal might have come from a hydrogen cloud accompanying a comet—additionally, the movement of the comet would explain why the signal was not seen again. The team noted that two comets had been in the same part of the sky that the Big Ear was monitoring on the fateful day. Those comets, P/2008 Y2(Gibbs) and 266/P Christensen had not yet been discovered. The team then got a chance to test their idea as the two comets appeared once again in the night sky from November 2016 through February of 2017." [...]

Robot Design for Dummies

"A new interactive design tool developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute enables both novices and experts to build customized legged or wheeled robots using 3D-printed components and off-the-shelf actuators. Using a familiar drag-and-drop interface, individuals can choose from a library of components and place them into the design. The tool suggests components that compatible with each other, offers potential placements of actuators and can automatically generate structural components to connect those actuators. Once the design is complete, the tool provides a physical simulation environment to test the robot before fabricating it, enabling users to iteratively adjust the design to achieve a desired look or motion." [...]

Random numbers: Hard times ahead for hackers

"Whenever we need to communicate in secret, a cryptographic key is needed. For this key to work, it must consist of numbers chosen at random without any structure - just the opposite of using the birthdate of our favourite pet. But, for a human, it is extremely difficult to choose without creating any bias, even by hitting the keyboard chaotically. To solve this problem, researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have developed a new random numbers generator based on the principles of quantum physics. This physical theory, full of phenomena that run counter to our common sense, shows that certain physical events occur perfectly at random, making them impossible to predict. Unlike previous methods, the new system allows the user to verify the reliability of the random numbers it generates in real time. This work, to appear in the scientific journal Physical Review Applied, will greatly complicate the tasks of hackers who can no longer exploit bias resulting from human fallibility or possible imperfections in existing devices. To generate a good cryptographic key, one must alternate randomly between 0's and 1's, the values of the so-called bits which form the basic unit of information in digital devices like computers. However, when we humans try to generate a sequence of numbers which we believe to be random, it always ends up being partly predictable, as revealed by behavioural studies and statistics. In addition, apart from having a poor grasp on randomness, the human brain is also much slower than machines, which can output millions of numbers per second. This gives hackers an opportunity to crack passwords, which the user thought to be safe." [...]

Experts Predict When Artificial Intelligence Will Exceed Human Performance

"Artificial intelligence is changing the world and doing it at breakneck speed. The promise is that intelligent machines will be able to do every task better and more cheaply than humans. Rightly or wrongly, one industry after another is falling under its spell, even though few have benefited significantly so far. And that raises an interesting question: when will artificial intelligence exceed human performance? More specifically, when will a machine do your job better than you? Today, we have an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Katja Grace at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and a few pals. To find out, these guys asked the experts. They surveyed the world’s leading researchers in artificial intelligence by asking them when they think intelligent machines will better humans in a wide range of tasks. And many of the answers are something of a surprise." [...]

Bacteria may supercharge the future of wastewater treatment

"Wastewater treatment plants have a PR problem: People don’t like to think about what happens to the waste they flush down their toilets. But for many engineers and microbiologists, these plants are a hotbed of scientific advances, prompting their trade organization to propose a name change to “water resource recovery facility.” That’s because wastewater from our sinks, toilets, showers and washing machines can be turned into valuable products with the help of scientists and unique bacteria — some of which were discovered only by chance as recently as the 1990s. These latecomers to the research scene, called anammox bacteria, are the subject of a new study led by Daniel Noguera and Katherine McMahon, professors of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Results of their research were published today (May 31, 2017) in the journal Nature Communications." [...]

LIGO detects merging black holes for third time

"The collision of a pair of colossal, stellar-mass black holes has made itself heard, nearly 3 billion light years away, through a cosmic microphone on Earth. On Jan. 4, the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) picked up a barely perceptible signal that scientists quickly determined to be a gravitational wave — a ripple of energy passing through the curvature of spacetime. The event, published today in Physical Review Letters, marks the third direct detection of a gravitational wave. Catalogued as GW170104, the signal, when translated into the audio band, resembles an upward-sweeping chirp, characteristic of a “binary coalescence,” or a merging of two massive astrophysical objects in the distant universe. The team has concluded that the gravitational wave was produced by the collision of two heavy, stellar–mass black holes, one estimated to be about 31 times, and the other 19 times, as massive as the sun. The signal captured by LIGO lasts less than two-tenths of a second, and in that fraction of a moment, scientists calculate that the black holes whirled around each other about six times before merging into one giant, 49-solar-mass black hole. This cosmic collision gave off an enormous amount of energy in the form of gravitational waves, equivalent to two times the mass of the sun. The merger took place about 3 billion light years from Earth, measuring about twice as far as the black hole collision that produced GW150914, LIGO’s first-ever gravitational wave detection." [...]

Making prosthetic limbs feel more natural

"A new surgical technique devised by MIT researchers could allow prosthetic limbs to feel much more like natural limbs. Through coordination of the patient’s prosthetic limb, existing nerves, and muscle grafts, amputees would be able to sense where their limbs are in space and to feel how much force is being applied to them. This type of system could help to reduce the rejection rate of prosthetic limbs, which is around 20 percent." [...]

Rice U. scientists slash computations for 'deep learning'

"Rice University computer scientists have adapted a widely used technique for rapid data lookup to slash the amount of computation — and thus energy and time — required for deep learning, a computationally intense form of machine learning. “This applies to any deep-learning architecture, and the technique scales sublinearly, which means that the larger the deep neural network to which this is applied, the more the savings in computations there will be,” said lead researcher Anshumali Shrivastava, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice. The research will be presented in August at the KDD 2017 conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It addresses one of the biggest issues facing tech giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft as they race to build, train and deploy massive deep-learning networks for a growing body of products as diverse as self-driving cars, language translators and intelligent replies to emails. Shrivastava and Rice graduate student Ryan Spring have shown that techniques from “hashing,” a tried-and-true data-indexing method, can be adapted to dramatically reduce the computational overhead for deep learning. Hashing involves the use of smart hash functions that convert data into manageable small numbers called hashes. The hashes are stored in tables that work much like the index in a printed book." [...]

Microsoft, Purdue collaborate to advance quantum computing

"That's the forecast of Michael Manfra, Purdue University's Bill and Dee O'Brien Chair Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Professor of Materials Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, on a new long-term enhanced collaboration between Purdue and Microsoft Corp. to build a robust and scalable quantum computer by producing what scientists call a "topological qubit." Purdue President Mitch Daniels noted that Purdue was home to the first computer science department in the United States, and says this partnership and Manfra's work places the university at the forefront of quantum computing. "Someday quantum computing will move from the laboratory to actual daily use, and when it does, it will signal another explosion of computing power like that brought about by the silicon chip," Daniels says. "It’s thrilling to imagine Purdue at the center of this next leap forward.” In the computers that we currently use every day, information is encoded in an either/or binary system of bits, what are commonly thought of as 1s and 0s. These computers are based on silicon transistors, which, like a light switch, can only be in either an on or off position. With quantum computers, information is encoded in qubits, which are quantum units of information. With a qubit, however, this physical state isn't just 0 or 1, but can also be a linear combination of 0 and 1. Because of a strange phenomenon of quantum mechanics called "superposition," a qubit can be in both states at the same time. This characteristic is essential to quantum computation’s potential power, allowing for solutions to problems that are intractable using classical architectures." [...]

Giving robots a sense of touch

"Eight years ago, Ted Adelson’s research group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) unveiled a new sensor technology, called GelSight, that uses physical contact with an object to provide a remarkably detailed 3-D map of its surface. Now, by mounting GelSight sensors on the grippers of robotic arms, two MIT teams have given robots greater sensitivity and dexterity. The researchers presented their work in two papers at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation last week. In one paper, Adelson’s group uses the data from the GelSight sensor to enable a robot to judge the hardness of surfaces it touches — a crucial ability if household robots are to handle everyday objects. In the other, Russ Tedrake’s Robot Locomotion Group at CSAIL uses GelSight sensors to enable a robot to manipulate smaller objects than was previously possible. The GelSight sensor is, in some ways, a low-tech solution to a difficult problem. It consists of a block of transparent rubber — the “gel” of its name — one face of which is coated with metallic paint. When the paint-coated face is pressed against an object, it conforms to the object’s shape. The metallic paint makes the object’s surface reflective, so its geometry becomes much easier for computer vision algorithms to infer. Mounted on the sensor opposite the paint-coated face of the rubber block are three colored lights and a single camera." [...]

New ways of representing information could transform digital technology

"Many people who use computers and other digital devices are aware that all the words and images displayed on their monitors boil down to a sequence of ones and zeros. But few likely appreciate what is behind those ones and zeros: microscopic arrays of “magnetic moments” (imagine tiny bar magnets with positive and negative poles). When aligned in parallel in ferromagnetic materials such as iron, these moments create patterns and streams of magnetic bits—the ones and zeros that are the lifeblood of all things digital. These magnetic bits are stable against perturbations, such as from heat, by a form of strength in numbers: any moment that inadvertently has its orientation reversed is flipped back by the magnetic interaction with the rest of the aligned moments in the bit. For decades, engineers have been able to increase computing capabilities by shrinking these magnetic domains using advances in manufacturing and novel techniques for reading and writing the data. In recent years, however, it has become clear that this approach cannot go on indefinitely. As it turns out, moments start to wobble out of alignment when the size of the bit gets too small and the interaction energy keeping them aligned is exceeded by the surrounding thermal energy making the all-important digital bits unstable and unreliable for storage or logic. For a number of high-performance electronic devices, that thermodynamic requirement for magnetic bit size—called the superparamagnetic limit—is about to be reached, meaning that eking out more memory in the same amount of space will no longer be possible. DARPA’s Topological Excitations in Electronics program, announced today, aims to investigate new ways to arrange these moments in novel geometries that are much more stable than the conventional parallel arrangement. If successful, these new configurations could enable bits of data to be made radically smaller than possible today, potentially yielding a 100-fold increase in the amount of storage achievable on a chip. It could also enable designs for completely new computer logic concepts and even for topologically protected “quantum” bits—the basis for long-sought quantum computers." [...]

Engineer Unveils New Spin on Future of Transistors with Novel Design

"A researcher with the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at UT Dallas has designed a novel computing system made solely from carbon that might one day replace the silicon transistors that power today’s electronic devices. “The concept brings together an assortment of existing nanoscale technologies and combines them in a new way,” said Dr. Joseph S. Friedman, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UT Dallas who conducted much of the research while he was a doctoral student at Northwestern University. The resulting all-carbon spin logic proposal, published by lead author Friedman and several collaborators in the June 5 edition of the online journal Nature Communications, is a computing system that Friedman believes could be made smaller than silicon transistors, with increased performance. Today’s electronic devices are powered by transistors, which are tiny silicon structures that rely on negatively charged electrons moving through the silicon, forming an electric current. Transistors behave like switches, turning current on and off. In addition to carrying a charge, electrons have another property called spin, which relates to their magnetic properties. In recent years, engineers have been investigating ways to exploit the spin characteristics of electrons to create a new class of transistors and devices called “spintronics.”" [...]

Oscillation instead of free fall – Science paper for Rudolf Mößbauer Tenure Track Professor Michael Knap

"In the quantum world, our intuition for moving objects is strongly challenged and may sometimes even completely fail. An international team of physicists of the Universities of Innsbruck, Paris-Sud and Harvard as well as the Technical University of Munich (TUM), among them Rudolf Mößbauer Tenure Trak Professor Michael Knap, has found a quantum particle which shows an intriguing oscillatory back-and-forth motion in a one-dimensional atomic gas instead of moving uniformly. A ripe apple falling from a tree has inspired Sir Isaac Newton to formulate a theory that describes the motion of objects subject to a force. Newton’s equations of motion tell us that a moving body keeps on moving on a straight line unless any disturbing force may change its path. The impact of Newton’s laws is ubiquitous in our everyday experience, ranging from a skydiver falling in the earth's gravitational field, over the inertia one feels in an accelerating airplane, to the earth orbiting around the sun. In the quantum world, however, our intuition for the motion of objects is strongly challenged and may sometimes even completely fail. In the current issue of "Science" an international team of physicists from Innsbruck, Munich, Paris and Cambridge (USA) describes a quantum particle that shows a completely unexpected behavior. In a quantum gas the particle does not move like the famous falling apple, but it oscillates. At the heart of this surprising behavior is what physicists call ‘quantum interference’, the fact that quantum mechanics allows particles to behave like waves, which can add up or cancel each other" [...]

Tech researchers team up for advanced materials

"Ask Georgia Tech researchers working with advanced materials for examples, and they give a pop culture reference. Two of them even cite the same reference. “It’s like The Terminator, liquid metal that then becomes a solid,” says Alberto Fernandez-Nieves, associate professor in the School of Physics. “Think of The Terminator,” says another School of Physics associate professor, Jennifer Curtis. Pop culture so effectively appropriates next-level science research, that it comes as no surprise that these scientists first thought of Oscar-winning director James Cameron’s shapeshifting “mimetic polyalloy” assassin from the future in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. “Or that animated movie, Big Hero 6,” Curtis adds, referring to a 2014 Disney film about nanobots combining to form bigger objects. “We would love to find an original way to create small shapes. And then make them intelligent enough to properly reconfigure in some other way.” Georgia Tech scientists aim to make those science-fiction scenarios real through collaborative, interdisciplinary research at the Center for the Science and Technology of Advanced Materials and Interfaces (STAMI)." [...]

Surprising Stripes in a "Bad Metal" Offer Clues to High-Temperature Superconductivity

"Scientists measure subtle electronic fluctuations that could help pinpoint the mechanism behind high-temperature superconductors. High-temperature superconductivity offers perfect conveyance of electricity, but it does so at the price of extreme cold and an ever-elusive mechanism. If understood, scientists might push superconductivity into warmer temperatures and radically enhance power grids, consumer electronics, and more—but the puzzle has persisted for more than 30 years. Now, scientists have broken new ground by approaching from a counter-intuitive angle: probing so-called “bad metals” that conduct electricity poorly. The researchers found that “stripes” of electronic charge, which may play a key role in superconductivity, persist across surprisingly high temperatures, shape conductivity, and have direction-dependent properties. The results, which examined the model system of custom-grown nickel-oxide materials, were published online April 28 in the journal Physical Review Letters." [...]

'Scrambled light' wavemeter breakthrough

"A breakthrough innovation in the measurement of lasers can measure changes one millionth of the size of an atom and could revolutionise their use in quantum technologies and healthcare thanks to new, lower-cost technology. A team from the University of St Andrews and UK company M Squared Lasers has used the principle of random scattering of light to create a new class of laser wavemeter that breaks through a glass ceiling in the way wavelength is measured. Wavemeters are used in many areas of science to identify the wavelength (i.e. colour) of light. All atoms and molecules absorb light at very precise wavelengths, therefore the ability to identify and manipulate them at high resolution is important in diverse fields ranging from the identification of biological and chemical samples to the cooling of individual atoms to temperatures colder than the depths of outer space. Waves, whether they are water waves or light waves, interact via interference: sometimes two waves reach a peak at the same time and place and the result is a higher wave, but it is also possible that a peak of one wave meets the trough of another, resulting in a smaller wave. The combination of these effects produces an interference pattern. Conventional wavemeters analyse changes in the interference pattern produced by delicate assemblies of high-precision optical components. The cheapest instruments cost hundreds or thousands of pounds, and most in everyday research use cost tens of thousands. In contrast, the team realised a robust and low-cost device which surpasses the resolution of all commercially available wavemeters. They did this by shining laser light inside a 5cm diameter sphere which had been painted white, and recording images of the light which escapes through a small hole. The pattern formed by the light is incredibly sensitive to the wavelength of the laser. Dr Graham Bruce from the School of Physical and Astronomy explains: “If you take a laser pointer, and shine it through Sellotape or on a rough surface like a painted wall, on closer inspection of the illuminated surface you’ll see that the spot itself looks grainy or speckled, with bright and dark patches. This so-called ‘speckle pattern’ is a result of interference between the various parts of the beam which are reflected differently by the rough surface." [...]

NEC and Tokyo Institute of Technology use AI to dramatically increase image clarity under severe conditions

"NEC Corporation and Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) today announced their joint development of a multi-modal image fusion technology that dramatically improves the clarity of images by using artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically combine visible images taken by standard cameras with non-visible images taken by specialized devices, such as thermal or terahertz cameras. In recent years, technological advancements and cost reductions for specialized devices that photograph non-visible images, such as thermal cameras, which capture heat, and X-ray cameras, have enabled them to be used for an expanding range of purposes, including nighttime monitoring under severe weather conditions, such as dense fog (*). However, these cameras tend to provide images of poor resolution and quality in comparison to images taken of visible subjects. Conventionally, in order to analyze non-visible and visible images of the same subject, images had to be viewed and compared separately, or they had to be manually combined by a trained expert. Moreover, the detection of abnormalities or hazards contained in non-visible images could be easily overlooked when combining the images. This new technology uses AI to achieve greater image visibility by automatically selecting highly visible parts from multiple images and combining them, while enhancing the smallest characteristics contained in non-visible images. Specifically, AI carries out detailed examination of each image in order to assess the degree of visibility of each part, then automatically extracts the best areas from each image, taking environmental characteristics into consideration, such as brightness, the direction of light and obstacles." [...]

Beyond Scaling: An Electronics Resurgence Initiative

"The Department of Defense’s proposed FY 2018 budget includes a $75 million allocation for DARPA in support of a new, public-private “electronics resurgence” initiative. The initiative seeks to undergird a new era of electronics in which advances in performance will be catalyzed not just by continued component miniaturization but also by radically new microsystem materials, designs, and architectures. The new funds will supplement the Agency’s FY 2018 R&D portfolio in electronics, photonics, and related systems to create a coordinated effort valued at more than $200 million, to be further supplemented by significant commercial sector investments. The new initiative comes at a time when the microsystems technology community is facing an array of long-anticipated obstacles to its relentless and storied decades-long march of progress. The microelectronics revolution—which began after World War II with the invention of the transistor and led to today’s chips bearing billions of these now astoundingly minuscule digital switches—has arrived at an inflection point, beyond which innovators will no longer be able to rely solely on the benefits of cramming more and more electronic devices into smaller and smaller spaces." [...]

Electric avenue: New approach could transform semiconductor tech

"Recent research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln may help future engineers of digital components get two (or more) for the space of one. A team of physicists has demonstrated a reversible method for altering the electronic properties of a nanoscopic material, pointing the way toward merging several hallmark functions of modern electronics into a single component. The approach might ultimately allow a 2-D material to shift from digital processing to power conversion to light-triggered applications. That versatility, in turn, could give engineers additional options for scaling down electronics by squeezing more functionality into one device. Xia Hong and her colleagues started with an atomically thin slice of molybdenum disulfide, or MoS2, a chemical compound whose semiconducting properties resemble those of industry favorite silicon. They then overlaid the MoS2 with a polymer featuring ferroelectricity – the ability to reverse the alignment of its separated positive and negative charges, or polarization, by applying an electric field to it. The researchers discovered that they could radically reconfigure the electronic behavior of the MoS2 by selectively applying voltage across the polymer to dictate the direction of its polarization. When Hong’s team aligned the polymer’s positive or negative charges either toward or away from the layer of MoS2, the latter’s electric current flowed freely in both directions and corresponded to the amount of voltage applied. In that state, the MoS2 played the role of transistor, a signature component of digital processing that releases and suppresses electric current to speak the binary language of 1s and 0s. But when the team polarized the polymer in a different way – creating two domains of vertically oriented but oppositely aligned polarizations – the underlying MoS2 adopted a new identity. Rather than acting as a transistor, the MoS2 became a diode, allowing current to flow in one direction but resisting its movement in the other when subjected to different polarities but the same amount of voltage. Among their many purposes, diodes convert the two-way flow of alternating current – used in powering homes and other structures – into the one-way transmission of direct current that powers virtually any technology containing a battery. They also reside at the heart of many light-powered and light-producing devices, from solar cells to LED displays. The MoS2 maintained its transistor and diode states even when the voltage was removed, Hong said. That quality, combined with the technique’s low voltage requirements and nanoscopic scale, led her to describe it as “very promising” for low-power technological applications. The mechanical properties of the atom-thin superconductor and ferroelectric polymer, she said, could prove especially suited to the sort of flexible electronics found in wearable technology." [...]

New ultrathin material for splitting water could make hydrogen production cheaper

"UNSW chemists have invented a new, cheap catalyst for splitting water with an electrical current to efficiently produce clean hydrogen fuel. The technology is based on the creation of ultrathin slices of porous metal-organic complex materials coated onto a foam electrode, which the researchers have unexpectedly shown is highly conductive of electricity and active for splitting water. “Splitting water usually requires two different catalysts, but our catalyst can drive both of the reactions required to separate water into its two constituents, oxygen and hydrogen,” says study leader Associate Professor Chuan Zhao. “Our fabrication method is simple and universal, so we can adapt it to produce ultrathin nanosheet arrays of a variety of these materials, called metal-organic frameworks. “Compared to other water-splitting electro-catalysts reported to date, our catalyst is also among the most efficient,” he says. The research by Zhao, Dr Sheng Chen and Dr Jingjing Duan is published in the journal Nature Communications." [...]

New Diode Features Optically Controlled Capacitance

"A team of researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology has developed a new capacitor with a metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) diode structure that is tunable by illumination. The capacitor, which features embedded metal nanoparticles, is similar to a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) diode, except that the capacitance of the new device depends on illumination and exhibits a strong frequency dispersion, allowing for a high degree of tunability. This new capacitor has the potential to enhance wireless capability for information processing, sensing and telecommunications. The researchers report their findings this week in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing. “We have developed a capacitor with the unique ability to tune the capacitance by large amounts using light. Such changes are not possible in any other device,” said Gadi Eisenstein, professor and director of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and a co-author of the paper. “The observed photo sensitivity of this MIS diode structure expands its potential in optoelectronic circuits that can be used as a light-sensitive variable capacitor in remote sensing circuits.” MIM diodes are common elements in electronic devices, especially those utilizing radio frequency circuits. They comprise thin-film metal plate electrodes that are separated by an insulator. Like the MIM structure, the researchers’ new MIS capacitor is bias independent, meaning the constant capacitance is independent of its supply voltage. Bias-independent capacitors are important for high linearity, and therefore straightforward predictability, of circuit performance. “We have demonstrated that our MIS structure is superior to a standard MIM diode,” said Vissarion (Beso) Mikhelashvili, senior research fellow at the Israel Institute of Technology and also a co-author of the paper. “On one hand, it has all the features of an MIM device, but the voltage independent capacitance is tunable by light, which means that the tuning functionality can be incorporated in photonic circuits.” “The illumination causes a twofold effect,” Eisenstein said. “First, the excitation of trap states enhances the internal polarization. Second, it increases the minority carrier density (due to photo generation) and reduces the depletion region width. This change modifies the capacitance.” The researchers created three MIS structures, fabricated on a bulk silicon substrate, based on a multilayer dielectric stack, which consisted of a thin thermal silicon dioxide film and a hafnium oxide layer. The two layers were separated by strontium fluoride (SrF2) sublayers in which ferrum (Fe, iron) or cobalt (Co) nanoparticles were embedded. " [...]

Seeing The Invisible With A Graphene-CMOS Integrated Device

"Silicon based CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide semiconductors) technology has truly shaped our world. It enables most of the electronics that we rely on today including computers, smartphones and digital cameras. However, to continue the path of progress in the electronics industry new technology must be developed and a key feature of this is the ability to integrate CMOS with other semiconductors. Now, Graphene Flagship researchers from ICFO (The Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona) have shown that it is possible to integrate graphene into a CMOS integrated circuit. In their paper published in the journal Nature Photonics they combine this graphene-CMOS device with quantum dots to create an array of photodetectors, producing a high resolution image sensor. When used as a digital camera this device is able to sense UV, visible and infrared light at the same time. This is just one example of how this device might be used, others include in microelectronics, sensor arrays and low-power photonics. “The development of this monolithic CMOS-based image sensor represents a milestone for low-cost, high-resolution broadband and hyperspectral imaging systems” ICREA Professor at ICFO, Frank Koppens, highlights. He assures that “in general, graphene-CMOS technology will enable a vast amount of applications, that range from safety, security, low cost pocket and smartphone cameras, fire control systems, passive night vision and night surveillance cameras, automotive sensor systems, medical imaging applications, food and pharmaceutical inspection to environmental monitoring, to name a few”. These results were enabled by the collaboration between Graphene Flagship Partner Graphenea (a Spanish graphene supplier) and ICFO, within the optoelectronics workpackage of the Graphene Flagship." [...]

Drawers for small components

"I needed some drawers for organizing resistors, capacitors and other small components. I wanted the resistor compartments to have cut-outs on the dividers to make it easier to get the resistors out with fat fingers, and I wanted a lot of customizability in the drawer divider organization. You can also customize the dimensions heavily. The design is optimized for minimal plastic usage, hence the grid walls for the main chest and the thin dividers in the drawers. All print with no support at 0.3mm layers. Since all the walls by default are thin, infill percentage makes little difference. I printed in PLA. The design uses (and bundles) my Bezier library, which is particularly convenient for designing symmetric things (in this case, the cut-outs on long walls)." [...]

The Design and Implementation of the Anykernel and Rump Kernels, 2nd Edition

"This document is intended as an up-to-date description on the fundamental concepts related to the anykernel and rump kernels. It is based on the dissertation written in 2011 and early 2012: Flexible Operating System Internals: The Design and Implementation of the Anykernel and Rump Kernels. The major change with rump kernels since the first edition is a shift in focus and motivation. In work leading up to the first edition, rump kernels were about running kernel components in userspace. That work defined the core architecture, and that definition is still valid and accurate. Since then, work has focused on harnessing the potential of rump kernels for building entirely new computation stacks. Since this edition of the book is no longer an academic document, we do not support every statement we make with a citation or experiment. In fact, we also take the liberty to present opinions which are open for debate." [...]

TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview, 8th Edition

"The TCP/IP protocol suite has become a staple of today's international society and global economy. Continually evolving standards provide a wide and flexible foundation on which an entire infrastructure of applications are built. Through these we can seek entertainment, conduct business, make financial transactions, deliver services, and much, much more. However, because TCP/IP continues to develop and grow in order to meet the changing needs of our communities, it might sometimes be hard to keep track of new functionality or identify new possibilities. For this reason, the TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview provides not only an introduction to the TCP/IP protocol suite, but also serves as a reference for advanced users seeking to keep their TCP/IP skills aligned with current standards. It is our hope that both the novice and the expert will find useful information in this publication." [...]

Arduino Traffic Light

"I have used the drawing from this instructable, to create a separate traffic light. I made the following changes: Holes for LEDs are smaller, for 5mm LEDs (instead of 10mm LEDs); Added tiny platform, so the traffic light can stand on its own; Changed the shape, so that it can be used for material with thickness of 4mm (instead of 3mm). Note on cost: Since 5mm LEDs are cheaper then 10mm LEDs and 4mm plywood is cheaper then 3mm acrylic, this is a 'budget' version of the traffic light. The traffic light can be connected to (and off course programmed with) any microcontroller (such as Arduino UNO). Tip: use an Attiny 85 development board if you wish to keep your entire project very small. With many thanks @ pcvnes for a very good and clear instructable! I really appreciate that even includes instructions (lesmateriaal) in Dutch!" [...]

BT Based Voice\ Remote Controlled Car Using TIVA MC

"This is a Tiva microcontroller based project. As there is a fewer data regarding projects based on Tiva, I as an individual am taking this initiative. I hope the readers will encourage it. The project named as bluetooth based voice controlled and remote controlled car is a project executed by young electrical engineering students at the University of Engineering and Technology(UET), Lahore, Pakistan. The project is focussed on wireless control of a robot car using voice commands. In this project, we are going to control the movement of a car with human vocal commands. The idea behind the project was to make it easier for people with disabilities to effectively perform tasks in their daily lives as simple as driving a car. The project is just a basic demonstration of the technology, and will need to be much further developed before it can be put into practice. The main idea is to make a car go forwards and backwards and turn left or right through voice control mechanisms. Moreover, the car has the ability to detect the presence of obstacles and change its path accordingly. The application used for this is an Android based application. The app is easily available on the internet and there are many other applications like this available on the internet. Voice controlled and bluetooth based android apps can also be made using the Android Studio and other related softwares. You are encouraged to make your own app :) The app uses the Google Voice service to convert your voice command as into corresponding string which is read using UART(Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) circuit in the Tiva micro-controller. To study more you can read the datasheet for tiva C series." [...]

A PWM Dimmer Revisited

"This project revisits one of the (inspirational) earlier projects of dyi_bloke: the "AC PWM Dimmer for Arduino". There were a number of things in the original design that I wanted to understand in detail and a couple of things I thought are worth trying to improve. The things of which I wanted to dig into their details are related to the latency/response times, something on the line of "how far can I go in increasing the PWM frequency until the things won't go as expected anymore?" The things I thought worth trying to improve: the big, hundreds of volts, capacitor - I'll let aside the price for it, but that's such a waste of PCB/box space; the fact that the PWM logic is "polarity inverted" - when the input of the optocoupler is on, the load goes disconnected and viceversa. Additionally, I threw a challenge in front of me. Some year-and-something ago, quite a beginner in electronics (not that I'm hugely more advanced now), I bought a handful of FDP46N30 MOSFETS to use on projects dealing with main power. At the time, I forgot that the main AC 220-240V is RMS voltage, and not the maximum voltage, so I ended with that handful of MOSFETs with a maximum Vds=300V. As a "lest I forget" lesson for myself and to quench the regret of spending $20 for 50 NMOS-es only to decorate the inside of a drawer seldom opened, I challenged myself in using them instead of buying some other more appropriatelly rated MOSFETs - if I'd succeed in doing it (I have), I'll theoretically be able to switch up to 46Amps - man, that's like 10kW of power to control with PWM ;) !" [...]

How to Make a Robot Snake

"Materials: -Electric wire channel (flat, not round, and no less than 3 feet), Circular Beads, Ball Point Pins (or sewing needles), 2 3V DC motors, Popsicle Sticks, Saw, Drill, -PCB board, Switches, Battery, Super Glue, Hot Glue, Acrylic Paint, Paper Clips, Sander, -Wire cutters, Aluminum Wire, or any thin wire, Scissors, Soldering Iron and Soldering metal" [...]

DIY Cathode Ray Tube: Interacting With Electrons

"Electrons: they are all around us, but we cannot really see or interact with them. Luckily, there is a device that will let you. A cathode ray tube, or CRT, is a glass tube with electrodes on either end. When there is a vacuum drawn and a high voltage across the two electrodes, a cathode ray forms. This is a stream of electrons that looks like a brilliant blue-purple line of plasma. You can manipulate and bend this stream of electrons with a magnet. This line not only looks cool, but it can be used to prove a scientific theory; electrons are a subatomic unit with a negative charge. I'll explain how it proves this theory later in this instructable. This piece of test equipment that I will show you how to build can be used as an awesome scientific demonstration for any physics and chemistry class, or it can be used just as a way to confirm a long standing scientific principal. The video below compliments this instructable with a visual demonstration of this Cathode Ray Tube in action. Lets Get Started!" [...]

BLEWeather: a Portable Bluetooth Weather Station

"Imagine having the ability to collect information about your surroundings from the comfort of your own house! In the age of the internet, this may not seem quite so impressive, but trust me when I say it's awesome. This instructable will outline the process of creating a portable Arduino-powered bluetooth weather station and a native android application to receive data." [...]

DIY Laser Tag

"For this project, I decided to step away from what I do usually which is make use of several components to create an interactive project to do with basketball. However, for this project, I decided to focus on an aspect of design and technology that I have always wanted to further research and develop into my project. This aspect of design and technology that I plan to focus on for this project is the aspect of wearable technology. More specifically, I decided to make use of several components common in wearable technology. For this project, I have decided to make a DIY laser tag for all of the children who want to play laser tag with their friends at home. To do this, I have made two items. One of these items is a gauntlet with a laser pointer that can be worn on the user's arm and the other is a target which would be worn on a vest that another person would wear. Once both have these have been made, one can wear the gauntlet while the other wears the vest. One will aim the laser pointer at the vest which will cause a buzzer on the vest to sound and show that it has been shot. The main purpose of this project is to get children more active at home with friends and family while still having as much fun as possible!" [...]

IR Remote Controlled Home Automation Using PIC Microcontroller

"In this project, we are going to use a PIC microcontroller to remotely control few AC loads by just using an IR remote. Here we designed it on PCB using EasyEDA’s online PCB designer and used their PCB designing services to order the PCB boards as shown in the subsequent section of the article. At the end of this project you will be able to toggle (ON/OFF) any AC load using an ordinary Remote from the comfort of your Chair/Bed. To make this project more interesting we have also enabled a feature to control the speed of the fan with the help of Triac. All these can be done with simple clicks on your IR remote. You can use any of your TV/DVD/MP3 remote for this project. The different IR signals from the remote are received by the microcontroller which then controls the respective relays via a relay driver circuit. These relays are used to connect and disconnect the AC Loads (Lights/Fan)." [...]

Arduino Dynamic Web Control

"This project shows how to control a servo motor from a web browser in real -time using WebSocket. To connect Arduino to internet, we need to use some kind of internet shield such as Ethernet shield, Wifi shield, PHPoC shield, or PHPoC Wifi shield. The outstanding feature of PHPoC shield is that PHPoC shield not only provides internet connection like Ethernet and Wifi shield, PHPoC shield also is a web server, allowing to control and monitor Arduino from a web browser. PHPoC shield also support WebSocket, therefore we can control and monitor Arduino in real-time without reloading a webpage. PHPoC Shield has some built-in web applications. Refer to this link for more detail. In this project, I just need to change UI (User Interface) of Web Remote Control/Slide web application and write Arduino code to rotate servo motor angle according to angle received from web browser." [...]

Laura: Emotional Compass Lamp

"Laura is a "counseling" who is helping me to find myself and to understand where I want to go. For his great help, I wanted to give him a present that represents the work we are doing. The inspiration came from the need to find my street, and not get lost in the various paths that life presents you. From this, I have devised a "compass / lamp" that, in addition to helping you keep the "direction", illuminates the path." [...]

Chinese Rings Puzzle With Arduino

"The Chinese Rings Puzzle with Arduino is my version of a centennial Chinese puzzle. It is very simple to play and it is an example of a combinatorial puzzle and lots of patience and concentration is required to solve it. The objective is to disentangle the long loop from all nine rings, and the solution takes 341 moves (minimum possible). Once you learn the method to solve the puzzle, you will see that is very easy to play it! This project is very simple to be assembled, using only an Arduino UNO R3 and a LCD Keypad Shield. It took me some time, but the code I developed reproduced exactly the same conditions and constraints as the original mechanical puzzle. Let's do it and have a fun for a long time!!" [...]

Phil05: A Raspberry Pi Robot

"This is a demo project aimed to give life to an old toy, implanting a Raspberry Pi inside." [...]

UTC IoT Clock

"This is a UTC Clock that displays UTC and PST time, syncs to the internet and has APIs for displaying messages or setting brightness. " [...]

Virtual Reality using Arduino and Processing

"This is a very interesting project in which we are going to learn how to implement virtual reality using Arduino and Processing. For most of us, the movie Iron man by Jon Favreau has always been an inspiration to build new things that will make our life easy and more fun. I have personally admired the Techs that are shown in the movie and have always wanted to build something similar to that. So, in this project I have tried to mimic the Virtual reality stuffs that happen in the movie, like we can simply wave our hand in front of the computer and move the pointer to the desired location and perform some tasks. Here I will show you how you can simply wave your hand in front of webcam and draw something on your computer. I will also show you how you can toggle lights by virtually moving your hand and making clicks with your fingers in the air." [...]

Weather Forecast Cloud

"This project makes a weather cloud using a Raspberry Pi Zero W. It connects to the Yahoo Weather API and depending on the forecast for the next day changes colors. I was inspired by the Wisconsin Gas Building that has a flame on the roof that changes depending on the forecast. Its an iconic landmark in Milwaukee, WI. The following poem goes with it. When the flame is red, it’s warm weather ahead! When the flame is gold, watch out for cold! When the flame is blue, there’s no change in view! When there’s a flickering flame, expect snow or rain! I thought a cloud would look nicer on the wall. For the code if the forecasted high for the next day is greater than 10% warmer it will be red, if the forecasted low is more than 10% colder it will be gold. But just in case both criteria are met the color red will always win. If neither criteria is met the cloud stays blue. If there is any rain or snow in the forecast it will blink." [...]

One Transistor Audio for Pi Zero W

"The Raspberry Pi Zero (and Zero W) are amazing devices for such a low cost. But they are missing one feature needed for many projects. That is sound. The only audio they have by default is via HDMI TV monitor. They support “earphone” audio, but lack the jack and audio filter circuitry that the bigger Raspberry Pi’s have. I wanted simple audio, good enough for speech and sound effects, but not necessarily high fidelity. There are plugin modules for adding sound (including high quality stereo) available, such as this one: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3346 but I was after something simple from spare parts I already had. This describes a one transistor mono amplifier capable of driving a small speaker and providing decent sound, much better than just a buzz or beep. All that is needed are a few resistors and capacitors, a 2N2222 NPN transistor and a small speaker. It runs off the Raspi’s 5V power and only needs 3 wires to connect to Pi." [...]

Peltier controlled from an Android App

"Arduino temperature control sketch, managed from an Android. This is another example project of the Abetoo IoT Framework. In this case an application for remote control of an arduino-based circuit from an android app. The arduino board used is based on the popular module esp8266. The main goal of the application is to control a Peltier element, a Fan and to show messages sent from the android app. A board with relays is used to activate/deactivate both the Peltier element and the fan. A LCD is used to show the messages received." [...]

Android Things Capacitive Touch Piano

"Play music like a scientist using Android Things and a MPR121 capacitive touch sensor controller." [...]

TIVA Based Digital Calculator

"This project is aimed at making an LCD based Digital Calculator performing various functions. A Calculator is an electronic device which will evaluate various mathematical expressions and calculations. The calculator of this particular project was designed using Tiva TM4c1233GXL micro-controller. The calculator first gives the user various operations to be performed. The user selects the particular operation to be performed, enters the desired arguments and the calculator evaluates the operation and displays the result on the LCD Screen. This particular calculator can perform the following operations: Arithmetic Functions; Trigonometric Functions; Conversion of numbers between different bases; Evaluation of Infix Expressions; Factorial of a number; Calculation of the nth power of a number." [...]

Indoor Greenhouse With Touch Screen Control

"Growing your own herbs and flavorings is not just a healthy alternative but is both fun and cost effective too! To further make the project worthwhile, the automated greenhouse will make an attractive addition to any room as a highlight piece and provide an ever-changing centerpiece for the entire family to enjoy. Having a greenhouse in my kitchen has been a great addition, but the existing interface was clunky with buttons and knobs to activate and adjust most aspects of its operation. By up-cycling an existing greenhouse project to incorporate a touchscreen instead, more of the operations can be automated, the user interface is cleaner and current status is always visible. From a maker standpoint, there is significantly less wiring and functionality can be expanded to include more features and data collection - both now and in the future because no new physical input devices are required. So without further fanfare, if you are interested in growing your own herbs and spices or just interested in getting some ideas for programming your touchscreen, let's get right into it." [...]

Do-it-yourself Autonomous Tiny Robot

"I've built a cheap robotics platform capable of autonomous movement with modern and readily available parts you can find online. Follow this guide if you want to build a robot but feel limited by platforms like Mindstorms, VEX, and Tetrix but don't have enough money for professional platforms (I assuming most of us don't have $20k laying around to spend on projects)." [...]

DIY Class D Audio Amplifier

"In this project I will show you why a class AB amplifier is pretty inefficient and how a class D amplifier on the other hand improves this efficiency. At the end I will show you how we can apply the theory of operation of a class D amp to a couple of common components in order to create our own DIY class D audio amp. Let's get started!" [...]

Arduino based Bluetooth Biped Bob (Walking & Dancing Robot)

"Welcome to another project in which we will build a small Robot which can walk and dance. The project aims in teaching you how to make small hobby robots using Arduino and how to program your Servo motors for such applications. At the end of the project you will be able to make this walking and dancing robot that takes command from an Android application to perform some pre-defined actions. You can also use the program (given at the end of the tutorial) to easily manipulate the actions of your very own robot by controlling the position of the servo motors using the Serial monitor. Having a 3d printer will make this project more interesting and look cool. But, if you do not have one you can use any of the online services or just use some cardboard to build the same." [...]

Build a Raspberry Pi Rover Robot With Smartphone Control

"Isn’t it neat to have a Raspberry Pi robot with a camera onboard? For this project, I created a Raspberry Pi rover robot that can be controlled using a smartphone with video streaming! Sounds interesting? Here’s how. A rover is basically a remote controlled vehicle used to access areas that are inaccessible by humans. NASA’s Curiosity is a well-known rover robot. I decided to build my own simple rover using a Raspberry Pi board and a web camera. The USB webcam acts as the controller’s eyes which is typical of rovers (they are not autonomous). We can then control the movements of the robot using buttons on a locally hosted web page where the same video stream from the camera is embedded. I made the robot control more secure by making the RPi a WiFi access point. This means only users that know the WiFi ID and password of the robot can view the video stream and control it." [...]

Build a Letterbox That Sends You Alerts

"So I need to be able to detect every time someone puts a letter into the box and also detect the movement of the rear flap, indicating someone has removed letters. Being able to do this without having to destroy the letter box and have it work reliably, was hard. I want to avoid any microswitches as they are more exposed to the elements, are messy and can be unreliable. So a sensor was needed that could respond to something moving from a distance. I didn't want to use a PIR as I may get false readings, especially if the back flap was left open. Same story with ultrasonic sensors and most of them run off 5 volts which limits the choice of MCU. An IR shooting sensor could work, but would rely on some fiddly positioning in the mailbox. 5mA current draw was also a little high. Likewise Phototransistors would be fiddley to work with and would require more cables that I'd want. So, I eventually settled on this simple distance sensor, which is capable of responding to an object between 20 and 200mm away. Perfect size for my mailbox and there won't be any noisy bounce or false triggers. I also needed something on the flap that was cheap and reliable. This Fast Vibration sensor would do the trick and is dirt cheap. It also needed to be battery operated, charged by solar, and since there's going to be an ESP8266 onboard, might as well chuck in some humidity and temperature sensors." [...]

Presenting a robust and simple CNC Milling Machine

"Supplied with a robust chassis (made of plastics) and with three stepper motors, it is provided with a 9,000 RPM electro-spindle, to which it is possible to apply different kinds of milling parts, for the purpose of working wood, plastics, synthetic resins, and for carrying out small engravings on aluminum. It is not the first time that we deal with numerical control machines for domestic use, that are suitable for milling or for fine engraving, for the creation of mechanical parts, and objects having different shapes – for the purposes of 3D printing and subtractive manufacturing. We did that already when we showed you one of the many transformations of our 3Drag printer, at that time turned into a CNC milling machine, used for the purpose of engraving printed circuit boards and equipped with a Proxxon electro-spindle. In the meantime, we had the chance to try other machines, and in these pages, we will show you a CNC machine that is available in its assembly kit, and that stands out because of the excellent value for money. That was achieved also because of the fact that compact PVC was used for the chassis. The machine has been designed mainly for the purpose of engraving PCBs and plates (such as those for mailboxes, intercoms, doorbells) built it is possible to use it in order to work with wood, plastics (even the POM ones); it is also possible to engrave aluminium plates (at a low depth), but without overdoing it. As with most of the CNC machines, even this one is supplied with a control board for the three axes and interfacing the parallel port, so that it may be driven by means of software such as the well-known Mach 3 (or the more recent Mach4). The latter is a software that converts the G-Code in pulses, that are directly produced on the parallel port. This could be seen as a problem, because of the port disappearing on the modern PCs, but we already thought to a solution that we will describe in the next installment, and that will allow you to drive it directly from USB (and therefore via all the modern computers). Someone might object that it should be enough to use a USB/parallel adapter (of those that are commonly found for sale), but it is not as easy as it seems. In fact, the problem is twofold: first of all, since the data is sent in a virtual parallel, it would then be converted to parallel form with a certain delay, or worse, with unequal delays that would bring to movements on the three axes that are not perfectly synchronized. The second reason is that many programs for the CNC control do not natively consider managing via USB ports (but by means of their plug-ins, they do). Our proposal is instead the one of a hardware that, starting from the USB and taking advantage of open-source software, enables the reconstruction (on the machine) of the command pulses for the CNC control board, thus fixing the temporal inconsistencies of the common USB/parallel adapters." [...]

3D Printer Status Jacket

"This jacket has 40 neopixels sewn to the back to display the status of the 40 3D Printers in Duke’s Innovation Co-Lab Studio. Each light corresponds to one printer and is either blue (in use), green (available), or red (offline) to show the real-time status of the printer. The printer status is retrieved via Duke’s Innovation Co-Lab’s 3D printer status API, documented here: http://apidocs.colab.duke.edu/." [...]

SmallyMouse2 – Universal USB to Quadrature Mouse Adapter

"SmallyMouse2 is a universal USB to quadrature mouse adapter for many 8-bit and 16-bit retro computers and allows the use of modern USB mice on machines such as the Acorn BBC Micro, Acorn Master, Acorn Archimedes, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and many more. Unlike most existing mouse adapters, SmallyMouse2 implements a fully USB compatible interface (most current adaptors are PS/2 based) this allows the use of any modern mouse including those that use wireless communications." [...]

Circuit Playground Bike Glove

"In this guide we will use the Circuit Playground to create a bike turn signal indicator. By sewing the Circuit Playground to a bike glove and using the accelerometer to detect hand position the standard hand turn signals are enhanced with some nice NeoPixel animations." [...]

Arduino LCD 16x2. Turn Single Screen Into Multiple Screens

"Hi! Do you think your lcd is not bigger enough for your project? What if i tell you maybe you are wrong and with a simple code trick and two buttons you can enlarge your lcd and create sub screens to show more data or messages, and with an extra button we can create an eficient interface to navigate beetwen pages and change states and setpoints. Also, this tutorial is useful if you have reduced space for your project. I have divided this tutorial into 5 progresive steps to understand the code better.From simple menus to nice functions like auto return , auto scroll, backlight auto off and a functional interface. Also, i have included fritzing schematics and a video!. Maybe the codes seems complex, but are just a few instructions repeated several times for the different items." [...]

How to Make L293D Motor Driver Board

"Hello Guys, In this instructable I will instruct you how to make your own L293D driver board with less number of components which will also compatible with all development boards. Here is some intro about L293D IC. L293D is a motor driver IC that can drive two motor simultaneously. L293D IC is a dual H-bridge motor driver IC. One H-bridge is capable to drive a dc motor in bidirectional. L293D IC is a current enhancing IC as the output from the sensor is not able to drive motors itself so L293D is used for this purpose. L293D is a 16 pin IC having two enables pins which should always be remain high to enable both the H-bridges." [...]

Build a Tank Volume Reader in Under $30 Using ESP32

"The Internet of Things has brought a lot of formerly complex device applications into the homes of many craft brewers and wine makers. Applications with level sensors have been used for decades in large refineries, water treatment plants, and chemical plants. With sensor prices falling, now both industrial and DIY can monitor the volume of any tank, barrel, or canister. The sensors available on the open market can sense most anything and are classified accordingly. Sensor used for measuring humidity are termed humidity sensor, pressure called pressure sensor, distance are called position sensors,and so on. In a similar fashion, the sensor used for measurement of fluid levels is called a level sensor. The level sensors are used to measure the level of the free-flowing substances. Such substances include liquids like water, oil, slurries, etc as well as solids in granular/powder form (solids which can flow). These substances tend to get settle in the container tanks due to gravity and maintain their level in rest state. In this guide you will learn how to build your own home-made level, temperature, and humidity sensor. Also included are instructions for you newly collected data to be utilized via Ubidots, an application enablement platform." [...]

Tiny Face Watch

"This is the third in my series of minimalist watches based on the ATtiny85. This version displays the time by drawing an analogue watch face on a miniature 64x48 OLED display. It uses a separate crystal-controlled low-power RTC chip to keep time to within a few seconds a month, and puts the processor and display to sleep when not showing the time to give a battery life of over a year." [...]

Game of Life on Nokia 5110 LCD

"The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. The "game" is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves, or, for advanced "players", by creating patterns with particular properties." [...]

Arduino Uno R3 Board

"Happy to share one more best design of my PCB work, That is ARDUINO UNO R3 Custom Board. Currently we can observe that Arduino sounds like anything and anywhere. Its a basic component in the tool kit. We as engineers believe that Arduino is best prototyping compact device or development board for us. So what if we need to do project for industry and other companies. Is it that Arduino is fine ? My experience in electronics says NO!!!! Because Industry need Custom board instead a General one. So I though of making One custom board for my project and its successful. So here I'm sharing all information and data believing that this is useful for viewers !" [...]

Make a Lost Plane Finder

"Presented here is a lost RC Plane Finder or plain crash indication system. This helps to find you a crashed or downed RC Plane.The LED Lights up when there are no signals caught up associated with Radio Controlled Transmitter." [...]

Build an Arduino 101 Data Logger with the TI SensorTag

"In this project, we build an economical and full-featured Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) data logging system that takes readings from multiple sensors and saves the data to an SD memory card. A data logger is an integral part of environmental monitoring with wide application. Essentially, the logger reads sensor data and records the readings over time. In our project, the sensor array for the data logger is provided by a TI SensorTag that operates as a battery-powered BLE peripheral. To read the SensorTag, we use an Arduino 101 operating as a BLE central device. To log the sensor readings, we use the Arduino 101, along with an SD shield, to write the time-stamped sensor data to a standard Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) memory card (up to 32 GB) that can be read by multiple computer systems." [...]

18650 Lithium Ion Battery Capacity Tester

"I had bought few 9800 and few 4200 mAh lithium ion batteries from Aliexpress last year. They were quite cheap... and as I researched more on them, I found that these are fake and their actual capacity may be very less. Then I extracted Lithium ion batteries from old laptop battery. But wondered are these still at original capacity or have reduced their capacity. For a beginner DIYer it is difficult to buy expensive testers.... So, in this instructable, I will share how to make 1s lithium ion battery capacity tester" [...]

Carputer

"Carputer is a 1/10th scale self driving car. It drives based on video camera and speedometer inputs. It uses a neural network to drive. The camera image and speedometer get sent to the neural network and the network outputs steering and throttle motor controls for the car. Since the car uses a neural network for driving, it has to be trained. The training process is basically driving it around a track about 20 times or so using the car's radio control. During that driving, we record all of the radio control inputs along with the video and speedometer data. Once we have that, the neural network can learn how to mimic our driving style by outputting steering and throttle based on the video and speedometer. The process is to record, train, and then run autonomously, as seen in the steps below. This is an experimental setup, so it's not super-clean code or hardware." [...]

Wireless RFID Door Lock Using Nodemcu

"This project was build as part of a Network Communications class at Universidade do Algarve in collaboration with my colleague Luís Santos. Its main purpose is to control the access of an electric lock through wireless with the use of RFID tag cards or key rings. Although this project was designed to work with a door lock, it can be easily modified to support any kind of solenoid switch (this will be referred further during this tutorial). This first version will be done with the support of a server and a simple txt file. In future work, there'll be added different variants that will suit different needs and present a more secure alternative." [...]

Fidget Spinner to Brushless Motor

"Fidget Spinners have become the latest fad. I was curious about them so I ordered one from eBay and spun it a bit. While it was great fun for a short time it left me bored and wondering what else it could be used for. Having once taught science to elementary school students I remembered trying to explain to them how an electric motor worked. The bearings in the spinner and the overall shape reminded me of the armature in a simple DC motor. I set about building a few different motors, ranging from a very simple one to one that is way too complex. I found this part of the spinner experience was more fun that just spinning them. This article presents what I have done in hopes that you might enjoy experimenting with them, too." [...]

Crazy Engineer’s Drawing Robot / Arduino GRBL CoreXY Servo Drawbot

"Hi. Thank you for showing Interest in this project. This Project was my engineering’s final year capstone project. It took me a month to make this Project and I had fun building it. Below I am writing a step by step DIY guide to help you build your own CNC Drawing Robot. The guide is quite long with both text and video. I have given most details so that you will not feel any problem if you are new to making projects of this kind. The Crazy Engineer’s Drawing Robot or Arduino GRBL CoreXY Servo Drawbot is a CNC based drawing robot. It is open source and open hardware based project. It uses Arduino UNO (Atmega328p) as the brain of the robot and a special GRBL firmware for G-Code Interpretation and motion control. It also uses a core [X, Y] Cartesian movement to control both X and Y axis. The Z axis is controlled by a servo motor to lift pen up and down. Crazy Engineer’s Drawing Robot is a simple CNC Drawing Robot, capable of writing or drawing on almost any flat surface. It can write with gel pens, permanent markers, and a variety of other writing implements to handle an endless number of applications. Its writing head extends beyond the machine, making it possible to draw on objects bigger than the machine itself." [...]

ESP8266 - Thermometer

"For my projet I made a thermometer by using an ESP8266 cheap WiFi module (you'll say ok an other one... yes but using AA battery for 1 year) I'm using MQTT an Jeedom for my domotics and I would like to perfom a thermometer for heater regulation in room, my specification is : low cost; simple to use and install; 1 year autonomy with simple AA battery." [...]

LED Light With PIR Motion Sensor, Soft On/off and 2yr Battery Life

"A friend needed a light for a basement storage room with no mains electricity available. Wishes: assume 1 minute of ON time per day, works from cheap and common batteries, long battery life (1 year+), possibly hands-free operation. I decided to use a widely available hobby PIR sensor board as the switch and design around that, aiming for 2 years of battery service." [...]