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With Watson, I.B.M. claims it has cracked the problem — and aims to prove as much on national TV. The producers of “Jeopardy!” have agreed to pit Watson against some of the game’s best former players as early as this fall. To test Watson’s capabilities against actual humans, I.B.M.’s scientists began holding live matches last winter. They mocked up a conference room to resemble the actual “Jeopardy!” set, including buzzers and stations for the human contestants, brought in former contestants from the show and even hired a host for the occasion: Todd Alan Crain, who plays a newscaster on the satirical Onion News Network.
I.B.M built a chess computer (Deep Blue, 1997) that beat Kasparov – but it wasn’t without drama…
After the loss, Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine’s moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players had intervened on behalf of the machine, which would be a violation of the rules. IBM denied that it cheated, saying the only human intervention occurred between games. The rules provided for the developers to modify the program between games, an opportunity they said they used to shore up weaknesses in the computer’s play that were revealed during the course of the match. This allowed the computer to avoid a trap in the final game that it had fallen for twice before. Kasparov requested printouts of the machine’s log files but IBM refused, although the company later published the logs on the Internet. Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM refused and dismantled Deep Blue/ Owing to an insufficient sample of games between Deep Blue and officially rated chess players, a chess rating for Deep Blue was not established.
We still think that IBM should open source Deep Blue.
It’s BIG week! We have some new products – MicroSD, Red & Black LCD, Patch shield for Arduino… Viewable in the new products section or below! Let’s get it on –
Patch shield for Arduino – v1.0 – The patch shield is a cross between a patch panel/bay and a Wingshield. Its designed for times when you want to have remote sensors, or a control panel, or LEDs, or…practically anything where you want to avoid doing a lot of icky wiring!
The shield comes with 4 breadboard-friendly satellite headers. To connect, use any off-the-shelf Ethernet cable. On the shield itself, the sockets act as a patch bay so you can quickly try out different wiring schemes. We think this design will come in handy!
When Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence was a kid, he would peer through the bionic eye of his Six Million Dollar Man action figure. After a shooting accident left him partially blind, he decided to create his own electronic eye. Now he calls himself Eyeborg.
Spence’s bionic eye contains a battery-powered, wireless video camera. Not only can he record everything he sees just by looking around, but soon people will be able to log on to his video feed and view the world through his right eye.
You can check out the video too, but be warned that it contains some graphic medical imagery. And you have to love the way Fox News is completely dismissive about the whole thing.
Normally smartphone events are tightly coupled to your phone device itself. When your cell phone is ringing, your phone speaker plays a ringtone. When you get a new text message, your phone displays it on its screen. Wouldn’t it be thrilling to make thoses phone events visible somewhere else, on your wearable, in your living room, on your robot, in your office or where ever you want it to occur? Or would you like to use your smartphone sensors, like the accelerometer, light sensor, compass or your touchscreen to control other devices? ‘android meets arduino’ is a toolkit, basically consisting of an Android application and an Arduino library which will help you to interface with your phone in a new dimension. You can build your own interfaces almost without any programming experience.
We have two new sections of the store – a “New Products” section and “View all” section. The “View All” section is Date Added – New to Old by default but you can change that to price, etc – Check’em out, more new features coming soon!
This project is near and dear to the sprout board crew. Ultimately this concept was the genesis of a flexible platform with many applications. As our designs evolved we realized the tremendous opportunity to create something meaningful with this concept. This focus ultimately guided our decision process create completed projects in place of generic code snippets as a way to encourage the actual use of our projects.
The server room environmental monitoring system is a low cost high performance device with the same onboard features as commercial devices costing hundreds of dollars more. In addition to a low cost platform we will provide low cost sensors for many important devices to insure your equipment stays safe and sound.
Full instructions are available at sproutboard.com as well as several kits to create some very unique projects.
It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career. Business leaders have cried “scientist shortage,” but scores of thousands of young Ph.D.s are laboring in U.S. university labs as low-paid, temporary workers, ostensibly training for permanent faculty positions that will never exist. By Beryl Lieff Benderly
Above is an an example of the new track feature in Google Earth 5.2 (released today) showing a bike route to work. You could/can use these new features to do all sorts of great data logging and display.
Visualize your hiking, biking, and running tracks – Google Earth has always been a great tool for viewing your outdoor activities, whether it be hiking, running, biking, skiing, sailing, or just about any other way you choose to explore the world. With the release of Google Earth 5.0, we added the ability to connect your GPS device directly to Google Earth and import your track. Now, with Google Earth 5.2, we’ve added the ability to view elevation, speed, and other data as a graph directly in Google Earth. Just connect your GPS device to upload your track, and select “View Elevation Profile” from the menu. This will bring up elevation and speed graphs. If your GPS device records additional information such as heart rate or cadence, these will also be available to view in the graph. You can also see statistics such as total elevation, maximum slope, and average speed. You can select a portion of your ride and get statistics for just that section.
A few months ago, we posted the music video for the song “This Too Shall Pass” by the band OK Go. This video features an elaborate “Rube Goldberg” device that interacts with the band and, in effect, becomes part of the composition. Since first appearing on the web the video has gone viral, and folks are wondering how it came to be. Here’s the TED talk by machine creator Adam Sadowsky about the process his team and the band went through to create that awesome video, and the engineering that made it so special.
MicroSD card breakout board+ – v1 – Not just a simple breakout board, this microSD adapter goes the extra mile – designed for ease of use.
Onboard 5v->3v regulator provides 150mA for power-hungry cards
3v level shifting means you can use this with ease on either 3v or 5v systems
Uses a proper level shifting chip, not resistors: less problems, and faster read/write access
Use 3 or 4 digital pins to read and write 2Gb+ of storage!
Activity LED lights up when the SD card is being read or written
Four #2 mounting holes
Push-push socket with card slightly over the edge of the PCB so its easy to insert and remove
Comes with 0.1″ header (unattached) so you can get it on a breadboard or use wires – your choice
Tested and assembled here at the Adafruit factory
Works great with Arduino, with tons of example code and wiring diagrams
To use with an Arduino, connect GND to ground, 5V to 5V, CLK to pin 13, DO to pin 12, DI to pin 11, and CS to pin 10. Then you can use the wonderful SDfatLib which supports FAT and FAT32 SD cards. For details on getting started, check out this relevant tutorial from the data logger shield instructions
The HMC6352 Compass – Module is fully integrated and combines 2-axis magneto-resistive sensors with the required analog, digital, microprocessor and algorithms required for heading computation.
The HMC6352 Compass Module provides a direct heading angle and includes internal calibration algorithms within its firmware. Stray magnetic field protection and temperature compensation are also included.
Features:
Small package size
Stray magnetic field protection
Temperature compensation
Internal calibration algorithm
Can run with 3.3V or 5V logic using i2c communication
Key Specifications:
Power requirements: 2.7 VDC to 5.2 VDC @ ~2 mA (@ 5V)
Communication: 2-Wire I2C Serial Interface (100 kbps max)
Dimensions: 0.46 x 0.59 x 0.54 in (11.7 x 14.9 x 13.65 mm)
Sensiron Temperature/Humidity Sensor – SHT11 – Humidity is notoriously difficult to measure. Some of the scientific and electronic considerations to measuring humidity include: analog to digital interface and external circuitry which might require op-amps or oscillator circuitry; temperature compensation adjustments to calculate dew point; calibration against a known humidity source; mounting, protection and response time in the real-world. If you’re interested in the details see Tracy Allen’s web site (EME Systems) for his discussion.
The Sensirion SHT1x addresses many of these issues head on. It is a smart sensor for both humidity and temperature, and it comes from the factory in a tiny package that incorporates the analog to digital interface. All that your microcontroller has to do is read out the humidity and temperature values through the two-wire digital serial interface. The only math required is a simple scale and offset. The SHT1x is factory calibrated so that it returns temperature with a resolution of 0.01 degrees Celsius and relative humidity with a resolution of 0.03 percent. The accuracy is better than most other sensors too. Worst-case temperature accuracy is +/- 2 degrees C – but in the “room temperature” range the accuracy better than +/- 1 degree C. The relative humidity sensor is similarly accurate: +/- 3.5% in the range 20% to 80%. This is quite remarkable for a low-cost sensor. Excellent for commercial or home-based projects that require such readings.
Features:
Provides a fully calibrated, digital output
Measure temperature with a resolution of 0.01 degrees and within +/- 2 degree accuracy
Measures relative humidity with a resolution of 0.03%and within +/- 3.5% accuracy
Low power consumption (typically 30 μW)
Key Specifications:
Power requirements: 2.4 to 5.5 VDC
Communication: Two-Wire Serial
Dimensions: 0.43 x 0.49 in (11 x 12.5 mm)
Operating temp range: -40 to +254.9 F (-40 to +123.8 C)
ChronoDot – Ultra-precise Real Time Clock -The ChronoDot RTC is an extremely accurate real time clock module, based on the DS3231 temperature compensated RTC (TCXO). It includes a CR2016 battery which should last at least 8 years if the I2C interface is only used while the device has 5V power available. No external crystal or tuning capacitors are required.
The DS3231 has an internal crystal and a switched bank of tuning capacitors. The temperature of the crystal is continously monitored, and the capacitors are adjusted to maintain a stable frequency. Other RTC solutions may drift minutes per month, especially in extreme temperature ranges…the ChronoDot will drift less than a minute per year. This makes the ChronoDot very well suited for time critical applications that cannot be regularly synchronized to an external clock. Here is a live demo of a DS3231 chip that has been keeping time since it was last synchronized in 2005: DS3231 Web Demo The ChronoDot will plug into a standard solderless breadboard and also has mounting holes for chassis installation. The I2C interface is very straightforward and virtually identical to the register addresses of the popular DS1337 and DS1307 RTCs, which means that existing code for the Arduino, Basic Stamp, Cubloc, and other controllers should work with no modification.
3-axis accelerometer (+-3g analog output) – ADXL335 - Triple-axis accelerometer with 3 analog outputs for X, Y and Z axis measurements on a 0.75″x0.75″ breakout board. The ADXL335 is the latest and greatest from Analog Devices. Runs from 1.8-3.6 volts (3.3 is suggested), with ratiometric output. That means that 0g measurement output is always at half of the supply voltage Vdd, -3g is at 0v and 3g is at Vdd with full scaling in between. Fully assembled and tested. Comes with 6 pin 0.1″ standard header in case you want to use it with a breadboard or perfboard. 4 x 0.125″ mounting holes for easy attachment. See the ADXL335 webpage for datasheets and more
Printable catalog (PDF) or (EPUB)
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