Blog
This project is a LED fade in and fade out dimmer based on simple electronics components.
LED Fade-In Fade-Out Dimmer - [Link]
Scientists at the University of Glasgow have created an ultra-fast 1,000-core computer processor. The core is the part of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU) which reads and executes instructions. Originally, computers were developed with only one core processor but, today, processors with two, four or even sixteen cores are commonplace. [via]
1,000 cores on one chip – [Link]
Nature’s photosynthesis process far outperforms man-made light-energy-converting devices. The highly efficient mechanism for rapid separation and transfer of photo-excited charge pairs in the photosynthetic reaction center is a key step… [via]
Nature-inspired solar panels are self-healing – [Link]
Today’s method of flexible solar cell manufaturing, is based on highly purified silicon compounds, which is an expensive procedure. MIT came a step closer to cheaper flexible solar cells, by using organic (carbon-containing) compounds to make lightweight, cheap and flexible cells.
The main problem why carbon did not work so far, was that graphene repels water. Typical procedures for making an electrode on the surface, by depositing the material from a solution do not work. But the MIT team added some impurities onto the surface (doping) and this changed the behavior of graphene, making it possible to bond tightly. Moreover, this doping increased the conductivity of graphene.[via]
MIT is a step closer to cheap organic solar cells - [Link]
This project shows how to make a tweeter enabled power meter. “adafruit” used an existing Kill-a-watt power monitor.
My plan is to have each room connected to a 6-outlet power strip which powers all the devices in that room (each kill-a-watt can measure up to 15A, or about 1800W, which is plenty!). That way I can track room-by-room usage, for example “kitchen”, “bedroom”, “workbench”, and “office”.
Tweet-a-watt: a twittering power meter – [Link]
How to hack the Logitech Revue, Google TV… with an Arduino [via]
The reason this is possible is due to the “out of factory” state of the Logitech Revue boxes not disabling the UART port on the board and allowing access to a root shell in recovery mode. After discovering this we were able to reverse the update files and manually upgrade the Revue to the most recent update. The attached files are our output of all the effort put forward by our team. Also as a notice to anyone performing the update, we are not responsible for any harm that may come of your box as an outcome of running our scripts. We will attempt to help you with any issues you may experience and have tried to make the process as safe as possible. Also if you have any suggestions or ideas on how we can make this process better please feel free to drop by our IRC channel and tell us.
Hack the Logitech Revue, Google TV… with an Arduino – [Link]
Tweet-a-Pot: Twitter Enabled Coffee Pot using an Arduino and power switch tail. [via]
Like the idea of making coffee on the fly? from your bed? While you’re on the bus coming home? Then the Tweet-a-pot is for you! Tweet-a-pot is the next in fancy twitter enabled devices. This coffee pot enables its owner to make a pot of coffee from anywhere they have cell phone reception, using twitter and an arduino board.
Tweet-a-Pot: Twitter Enabled Coffee Pot – [Link]
Jeremy Blum has a new web series all about learning to use Arduino. A new episode every Monday on his YouTube channel.
Arduino Tutorial Series from Jeremy Blum - [Link]
What does it do? Where did it come from? And why is it shaped like that? An interesting little mystery.
The overall size of the object is about 1.75 inches long. The cylindrical part appears to be made of 300-series stainless steel or a similar alloy.
Mystery electronic part - [Link]
adafruit.com writes:
These displays are small, only about 1″ diameter, but very readable due to the high contrast of an OLED display. This display is made of 128×64 individual white OLED pixels, each one is turned on or off by the controller chip. Because the display makes its own light, no backlight is required. This reduces the power required to run the OLED and is why the display has such high contrast; we really like this miniature display for its crispness! The driver chip, SSD1306 can communicate in multiple ways including I2C, SPI and 8-bit parallel.
Monochrome 128×64 OLED graphic display – [Link]
