The self-cleaning technology involves deposition of a transparent, electrically sensitive material deposited on glass or a transparent plastic sheet covering the panels. Sensors monitor dust levels on the surface of the panel and energize the material when dust concentration reaches a critical level. The electric charge sends a dust-repelling wave cascading over the surface of the material, lifting away the dust and transporting it off of the screen’s edges.
Mazumder said that within two minutes, the process removes about 90 percent of the dust deposited on a solar panel and requires only a small amount of the electricity generated by the panel for cleaning operations.
After witnessing the image of a mosquito in a laser beam outside, I decided to investigate the phenomenon further. I started by locating scuzzy water. Ponds lacking, I decided to take water out of the bowl of my 6 year old spider plant. I then filled a syringe and hung it above a laser so that a drop of water, almost ready to fall, was in the beam path. Below is the incredibly complex apparatus involving a book, sticky-tac, a random bottle, a 250mW laser, and a syringe. Here is the thread discussing this on LPF if you’re interested.
The GfxHax drink shield is an Arduino shield that converts an arduino into an Open Source Breathalyzer. It come complete with a light bar to show the intoxiciation levels. There is a series of 11 lights down one side of the shield that go from green to yellow and ultimately to red. There are also player ready lights. Why are there player ready lights? Well, this is because the shield is not just a standard Breathalyzer but can be used as a party game. With the GfxHax drinkShield you also get a GPL game that lets you play with your friends and keep highscores! This software is licensed under the GPL so you can add features and will have unlimited free updates to new versions.
The drinkShield itself is licensed under the Creative Commons license and is free to modifications. The libraries and Source code are licensed under the GPL or public domain. It comes as a kit and is a really fun starter project to those just learning how to solder. This kit is specifically designed for Hackerspaces around the world. A hackerspace can host a class and afterwards celebrate by throwing a party! We offer bulk discounts on the web for classes wanting to buy kits.
We’re reading Matt Ridley’s “The Rational Optimist” – how prosperity evolves (and listening to a talk by the same author) – he opens the talk up with this quote by Lord Macaulay, a British historian…
History is full of the signs of this natural progress of society. We see in almost every part of the annals of mankind how the industry of individuals, struggling up against wars, taxes, famines, conflagrations, mischievous prohibitions, and more mischievous protections, creates faster than governments can squander, and repairs whatever invaders can destroy. We see the capital of nations increasing, and all the arts of life approaching nearer and nearer to perfection, in spite of the grossest corruption and the wildest profusion on the part of rulers.
Alternators made in Budapest, Hungary, in the power generating hall of a hydroelectric station in Iolotan (Eloten), Turkmenistan, on the Murghab River, ca. 1910… Big Picture by Alan Taylor…
With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun.
Besides the LCD display, many calipers have a digital output port for their data. Name-brand calipers charge significantly more money for the inclusion of a data port, even though they often build it into all of their models, only to be hidden by the plastic case.
Calipers with data outputs can be used as positioning sensors in robotics by attaching one caliper jaw to a moving part, and the other jaw to a fixed part. The absolute and relative position can be determined to a hundredth of an inch. Many hobbyists attach calipers to their milling machine to create inexpensive digital readouts (DRO).
Another potential reason to interface to an electronic caliper is to quickly log dimensions for statistical analysis or quality control.
In order for a microcontroller to read a caliper, you need to know the pinout and data format. These specifications vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. This article provides the measured timing and bit formats for two brands of digital calipers that I own.
Robert Darnton reviews Lewis Hyde’s book “Common as Air”. Hyde discusses, among other things, the importance of knowledge sharing and reasons against over-restrictive notions of intellectual property.
Intellectual property has become such a hot topic that it needs to be doused with some history. Strange as it may sound, this is an argument developed convincingly in Lewis Hyde’s “Common as Air,” an eloquent and erudite plea for protecting our cultural patrimony from appropriation by commercial interests.
The history that Hyde invokes goes back to the Middle Ages, when villagers enjoyed collective rights to common lands, but for the most part it is situated in the era of the founding fathers. Hyde invokes the founders in order to warn us against a new enclosure movement, one that would fence off large sectors of the public domain — in science, the arts, literature, and the entire world of knowledge — in order to exploit monopolies.
This quote, cited in the article, from one B. Franklin of Philadelphia, PA:
“That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.”
In December of 1975, after a year of piecing together a bunch of new technology in a back lab at the Elmgrove Plant in Rochester, we were ready to try it. “It” being a rather odd-looking collection of digital circuits that we desperately tried to convince ourselves was a portable camera. It had a lens that we took from a used parts bin from the Super 8 movie camera production line downstairs from our little lab on the second floor in Bldg 4. On the side of our portable contraption, we shoehorned in a portable digital cassette instrumentation recorder. Add to that 16 nickel cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter application, several dozen digital and analog circuits all wired together on approximately half a dozen circuit boards, and you have our interpretation of what a portable all electronic still camera might look like.
ASK AN ENGINEER – SPECIAL GUEST AMANDA “W0Z” WOZNIAK 8/21/2010 10pm ET! By popular demand – “Ask an engineer” Saturday night – 10pm ET with special guest Amanda“w0z” Wozniak. w0z was on a few previous shows (our most info-packed ones so far) – and she designed the MONOCHRON clock enclosure. W0z also designed the very popular and amazing DefCon Ninja Party Badges. W0z is a staff Electrical Engineer at Wyss Institute and formerly an applications Engineer at Analog Devices. This will be a great show.
What is “Ask an engineer”? From the electronics enthusiast to the professional community – “Ask an Engineer” has a little bit of everything for everyone. If you’re a beginner, or a seasoned engineer – stop in and see what we’re up to! We have demos of projects and products we’re working on, we answer your engineering and electronics questions and we have a trivia question + give away each week. Mosfet the cat stops by too. Previous chats can be viewed at http://www.adafruit.com/ask
Nassim Taleb once advised people to ignore any news you don’t hear in a social context. From people you know and, ideally, face to face. You have two combinatorial filters in social communication. First, you’ve chosen to talk with these people, and second, they’ve chosen to bring it up. Those two filters–a social and an importance filter–are really good ways of identifying what really matters to people. If I hear about news through social means, and if I hear about it three times, then I pay attention.
This takes me to my geeky interests. One thing I’m focused on is the Maker movement. This puts me in the 3D printer, 3D authoring tools, CNC machines, robotics crowd. Some of the leaders in this community have companies with outward-facing blogs that give thoughts, opinions, information, tutorials. A bunch of robotics firms are of that form: Adafruit, SparkFun, MakerBot, Ponoko, Pololu. Then there are a couple geeky magazines I quite enjoy: IEEE Spectrum, Servo, Robot Magazine, Make Magazine, the official magazine of the AUVSI (Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International).
Post up your makerly-reading-list in the comments!
We were searching for some 3.3K 1/8W resistors for our MintyBoosts and noticed something NEW! SORT BY PRICE. This is the latest gauntlet thrown in MOUSER Vs. DIGIKEY WAR FOR DIODE DISTRIBUTION DOMINATION. This day will be forever remembered by all 8-20-2010, the day we got sort. This is massive and game changing, the biggest news in the world, ever.
Recently we put together this interactive Game of Life display as an educational adjunct for a new exhibit by the San Jose Museum of Art on the works of Leo Villareal. Leo primarily works with light sculptures, and we’re very excited to see (and participate in) the exhibit, which opens this Friday.
Printable catalog (PDF) or (EPUB)
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