A few months ago I was asked by an American set designer, if I would let them use InMoov hand for to make the front cover of The Atlantic magazine.
Attribution is to be expected inside the magazine. Behing abroad, I have not the chance to buy it for to check it out.
Looking at the result, they did a good job on the finishing touch. If I remember correctly, it was printed in PLA with a 0.3mm thickness. They did a finishing coating with paint, but I would guess they had to use a primer with a good sending job.
The onboard microcontroller does the decoding, optionally some more processing, and sends byte-sized data to the main project board. The byte contains information about direction, push-button status and maybe even about average rotation speed (encoded in the higher bits). I think I will like it – if it works
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Quick and dirty application: Volume control knob for Amarok or kmix. All you need is a 5V USB-serial adapter and a little perl script that listens for data. Oh, and linux of course. Amarok’s volume is controlled using dbus calls. Very simple to do, actually. Part of the demo code for this little project!
This project details an open-source colorimeter, which is made from open source electronics and 3-D printable components. This is part of a larger project to reduce the cost of scientific equipment using open-source hardware.
Colorimetric analytical methods are likely to be the most commonly applied methods for determining the concentration of dissolved species. Many dissolved species absorb light of a particular wavelength and the amount absorbed as the light passes through a given length of solution increases with increasing concentration the species; higher concentrations absorb more light than do lower concentrations. The relationship between absorption and concentration is defined by the Beer-Lambert law:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer-Lambert.
A colorimeter or a spectrophotometer is employed to measure absorption at a specific wavelength. Light is usually filtered to permit only a narrow band of light at the absorbance peak wavelength for the species measured. The apparatus typically reports results in concentration units but also reports absorbance units or transmittance.
This new Adafruit shield makes it easy to use a 16×2 Character LCD. We really like the Blue & White 16×2 LCDs we stock in the shop. Unfortunately, these LCDs do require quite a few digital pins, 6 to control the LCD and then another pin to control the backlight for a total of 7 pins. That’s almost half of the pins available on a classic Arduino! With this in mind, we wanted to make it easier for people to get these LCD into their projects so we devised a shield that lets you control a 16×2 Character LCD, up to 3 backlight pins AND 5 keypad pins using only the two I2C pins on the Arduino!
As a professional hardware engineer with little time, I have been working evenings and weekends to create a Bluetooth 4.0 heart rate monitor without a chest strap – all open source hardware and design for such devices should not be proprietary or expensive.
I need help with 8051 firmware modifications of TI’s BT stack (simple changes to send data, sleep). Simple DSP filtering for heart rate sensor data (optical sensor based on pulse oximetry) or need mechanical design help on industrial design of the enclosure. I aim to fit this into the iPod nano 6th generation “watch” form factor so most wristbands can be used.
Would you post this opportunity to work on such a great product on your blog for all to see? I believe all can be accomplished open source with tools such as EagleCAD, FreeCAD, etc. I am very close but could use community help.
Thank you,
Fatih
Hardware Engineer, former customer, believer in open source hardware.
Open Source Hardware fosters a collaborative community that is breeding innovation and changing the shape of the world. This film introduces the concept of Open Source Hardware, comments on its impact and projects at what the future may hold. For more on our contributors and sponsors please see imaginen4tion.com
OpenXC is an API to your car – by installing a small hardware module to read and translate metrics from a car’s internal network, the data becomes accessible from most Android applications using the OpenXC library. You can start making vehicle-aware applications that have better interfaces based on context, can minimize distraction while driving, are integrated with other connected services, and can offer you more insight into your car’s operation.
Ford Motor Company and Bug Labs joined up to create a standard way of creating aftermarket software and hardware for vehicles. Every new car is full of computers and electronics, and there is growing interest in connecting the output from those systems to third-party applications and the web. Many companies are already offering tools to hook into the driver’s interface, but for the most part they have limited availability for hobbyists and developers. What if the system was designed from the ground up to be open source and to give insight into the vehicle itself? With proper hardware isolation to ensure you can’t “brick” your $20,000 investment in a car, OpenXC imagines when your car is as easy to program as your smartphone.
Today’s version of OpenXC runs on a combination of the Arduino and Android platforms. It uses tools you already know and opens up thousands of possibilities.
Open source pinball hardware and software – one group’s quest to build the perfect pinball machine, or at least a pinball machine for a reasonable price!
Mr. Preston-Werner thinks the way open source requires a high degree of trust and collaboration among relative equals (plus a few high-level managers who define the scope of a job and make final decisions) can be extended more broadly, even into government.
“For now this is about code, but we can make the burden of decision-making into an opportunity,” he said. “It would be useful if you could capture the process of decision-making, and see who suggested the decisions that created a law or a bill.”
Can this really be extended across a large, complex organization, however?
As complex as an open-source project may be, it is also based on a single, well-defined outcome, and an engineering task that is generally free of concepts like fairness and justice, about which people can debate endlessly. Even on a less lofty plane, companies like GitHub and Asana will ultimately test themselves against complex corporate processes lasting years, and involving skills in both science and the humanities. Google once prided itself on few managers and fast action, but has found that getting big can also involve lots more meetings.
Open-source software development has had significant impact, not only on society, but also on scientific research. Papers describing software published as open source are amongst the most widely cited publications (e.g., BLAST, and Clustal-W), suggesting many scientific studies may not have been possible without some kind of open software to collect observations, analyze data, or present results. It is surprising, therefore, that so few papers are accompanied by open software, given the benefits that this may bring.
Publication of the source code you write not only can increase your impact, but also is essential if others are to be able to reproduce your results. Reproducibility is a tenet of computational science, and critical for pipelines employed in data-driven biological research. Publishing the source for the software you created as well as input data and results allows others to better understand your methodology, and why it produces, or fails to produce, expected results. Public release might not always be possible, perhaps due to intellectual property policies at your or your collaborators’ institutes; and it is important to make sure you know the regulations that apply to you. Open licensing models can be incredibly flexible and do not always prevent commercial software release.
Simply releasing the source under an open license, however, is not sufficient if you wish your code to remain useful beyond its publication. The sustainability of software after publication is probably the biggest problem faced by researchers who develop it, and it is here that participating in open development from the outset can make the biggest impact. Grant-based funding is often exhausted shortly after new software is released, and without support, in-house maintenance of the software and the systems it depends on becomes a struggle. As a consequence, the software will cease to work or become unavailable for download fairly quickly, which may contravene archival policies stipulated by your journal or funding body. A collaborative and open project allows you to spread the resource and maintenance load to minimize these risks, and significantly contributes to the sustainability of your software.
If you have the choice, embracing an open approach to development has tremendous benefits. It allows you to build on the work of other scientists, and enables others to build on your own efforts. To make the development of open scientific software more rewarding and the experience of using software more positive, the following ten rules are intended to serve as a guide for any computational scientist.
Open source hardware, open source firmware and open source industrial design has seeped into our reality. Open development of products, art projects, and all physical things occur on a blindingly rapid and ever forking path. From circuits to software to housings, learn about engineering on a different plane of transparency.
In this talk you’ll hear about how the almost accidental open sourcing of one small chip, the Realtek RTL2832U, is causing huge ripples through entire disciplines. Join the ride with the blindingly fast hardware iterations of an open source hardware company, and the often hidden implications for the hardware. Be pulled into the story of strange fringe knitting machine hardware, the Brother KH930, brought back from obsolescence. Learn about weird art projects like the Orchidarium and Massage Couch that might not be so artsy and actually useful after all. Watch strange ideas become actual items in our world, and how all of this is possible primarily with open hardware.
Our Fritzing library parts make an appearance at around 6’20″ in the video!
As the United States military marches further into the age of networked warfare, data networks and the mobile platforms to distribute and access them will become even more important.
This fall, the (retired) eighth Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described a potential future of the military that’s founded not only in open source thinking, but in next-generation user interfaces and biohacking straight out of science fiction. If even some of the strategic thinking he described at this year’s Military Open Source Conference in D.C. is applied to how the technology that supports the next generation of war fighters is built, dramatic evolutionary changes could cascade down the entire supply chain of one of the world’s biggest organizations.
Ladyada was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine today! Thank you everyone in the maker, open-source, hacker, artist, engineer and designer community who nominated and voted for Ladyada Entrepreneur of the Year, from the beginning of the process, the nomination and the finals, it all took us by surprise. The fantastic folks nominated all have amazing companies, causes and efforts, we’re trilled to be included with them. Thank you!
The magazine’s Entrepreneur of 2012, Limor Fried, founded Adafruit Industries in 2005 and through it, is educating and inspiring the next generation of engineers and scientists. The open-source hardware and electronics company not only designs a catalog full of cool tech products that clients can order–it gives away the step-by-step instructions and tutorials for them to learn how to do so themselves. Fried’s new badging system also makes learning exciting for kids, by rewarding them for mastering new tech-savvy skills, and furthers the educational mission of Adafruit Industries.
FAVE QUOTE:“We are what we celebrate.” —entrepreneur and inventor Dean Kamen
WORDS OF WISDOM:“Be the change. If you want to live in a world that looks a certain way, don’t wait around for someone else to do it.” —business partner Phil Torrone
ENTREPRENEURIAL IDOL: Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, publisher of countless maker-friendly magazines and books
BIGGEST MOTIVATOR: Feedback that Adafruit is inspiring the next generation of engineers
DESIGN INSPIRATION: New York City
Previous profile here, and here’s a preview of the article January 2013: Feature: Entrepreneur of the Yearhere. And an interview “Magazine names hacker Limor Fried ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’” on CNET here.
With this award comes great expectations and responsibilities for all of us at Adafruit to keep doing a good for our community, customers and for our team. Thank you everyone for all the support.
Check out this fascinating open source and state-of-the-DIY conference in Berlin, the EHSM:
Some electronics books from the 50s claimed making triode tubes would be an impossible endeavour for amateurs. Today, there are at least two DIY laboratories making not only triodes but also all sorts of vacuum electron devices.
Three years after the first GPS satellite was launched, few people used the technology, which was perceived as very complicated and expensive. Yet, someone successfully operated his homebrew receiver made from hundreds of that time’s electronic parts.
These days, microchips are often thought to be impenetrable and impossible to manufacture without large-scale facilities. But many individuals are reverse engineering microelectronics designs, often breaking security systems based on the obscurity of the silicon layout. Some are even devising DIY methods to replicate parts of the microchip manufacturing process, with impressive results.
What are the frontiers of DIY technology? The first Exceptionally Hard & Soft Meeting (EHSM) will feature presentations of the brightest DIY achievements. But we do not want to stop at DIY. In fact, we should not, because teamwork is the only way to get the big things done.
The open source ethos is about keeping the freedom and openness of DIY when many people are involved. At a time when thousands of developers from hundreds of companies contribute to Linux and the world’s largest physics laboratories share openly licensed hardware designs on OHWR, we will explore the cutting-edge open source hardware and software practices.
This premiere of the EHSM will be held in Berlin on December 28-30 2012. Everyone is welcome to attend it. Curiosity is enough to qualify, and we have kept the minimal entrance fee affordable.
Printable catalog (PDF)
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