For all the home hobbyists, you knew that dealing with microcontrollers is a fun thing. Once you have been hooked with it, there was no turning back.

Do you know that a microcontroller’s GPIO (General purpose input/output) pins cannot handle higher power requirements? An LED was easy enough, but how about the large power items such as light bulbs, toaster ovens or blenders that required more circuitry?

In this case, a relay is wanted in this situation. However, building a 5V controllable power outlet can be handy for many applications, thus a relay is the perfect choice for this project! For your information, a relay is a large mechanical switch, where the switch is toggled on or off by energizing a coil constantly.

By applying the relay in the project, it will ensure your safety. Let’s take an example, if you have 120VAC running through the paddles, you don’t have to worry about that 120VAC will sneak back into and vaporizing your microcontroller that connected to the coil, as the paddles are capable of carrying very large currents! Furthermore, you can use the relay to control a DC motor or an AC lamp if you want to.

Ok, you’re now in the mood listening music with your iPod or cell phone, but it suddenly running out of charges! Yeah, aren’t you a little bit frustrated about this situation?

For overcome the above matter, the tiny fuel cells that powered by combustible liquids or gasses have been looked forward as the permanent solution. The great part about this fuel cell is it could power an iPod, cell phone or laptop days!

The concept of the fuel cell is a tiny amount of fuel flows into a small chip to generate electricity without combustion, and it would allow users to skip the wall plug. Hence, the users don’t have to worry about run out of charge anymore.

The Liliputian System Inc. has planning to introduce a portable fuel cell late next year for any device, where it can be easily charge by a USB port. The cigarette-pack-size charger will use a canister of butane, which it’s the same fuel that being used in cigarette lighters to power an iPod, GPS device or even digital camera.

The most interesting part about the fuel cell is each teaspoon of the fuel can provide 20 times the run time of Li-ion battery!

Surgeons in Australia are excited over new surgical robots they are with to work surgical operations on patients. These new robots tolerate surgeons to work operations using enhanced precision in a way that reduces post-operative complications and actually requires fewer poles during the surgical method. Read the rest of this entry »

Air muscles are accessible commercially from Shadow Robotics in the U.K, in different sizes. For investigational reason it is pretty effortless to build your individual air muscle in whatever magnitude you entail.

The internal tube is prepared from spongy silicone tubing, around ¼” OD and 1/8″ ID. Go to a limited pet shop that advertises aquarium supplies. Acquire a minute amount of PVC apparent tubing. Make a choice of a few aquarium air regulators and pairings too.

A lot of electronic dispensers trade the polyester braided interlock sheath. The plaited sheath is worn as a lithe conduit for electrical cabling. Purchase a small extent (6 feet) of 3/8″ diameter.

Terminate the resources obtain with a few 3/8″ long 10-24 twists and a minute extent of 24 gauge stimulated wire obtainable at a limited hardware hoard.

Engrave a 4-inch piece of silicon tubing. Place in the 10-24 screw in one part of the tube. Add an aquarium air coupling in the other part of the tube.

Slice a 7 inch piece of 3/8″ braided lattice sleeve. To avoid the ends of the sheath from conflicting and approaching apart we char the ends by means of a counterpart or candle flame. The thought at this time is to just sear the ends of the polyester sheath, its simple to depart too remote and soften too much of the sheath. In that case sever another bit and initiate over. Read the rest of this entry »

After looking at the Robosapien, I was meddling to see how distort Tilden’s involvement in the mission “shape originate of the robot”-especially one so closely deprived on batteries!
Casually looking at the Robosapien gives you very little idea regarding just how well the robot is designed. The robot is surprisingly well engineered and manufactured; still this means many parts of the robot are genuinely hard to take severed excluding breach it. To this day I cannot get into the arm or lower-body areas, seeing there are some very stiffly positioned screws that will demand a specialized (bendy) screwdriver.
Nonetheless, I could open up the primary chest area, allowing access the grope “brain” and sensor/motor connectors, as well as the foremost arm motors. Furthermore, I managed to unlock one of the leg cavities, revealing the feet sensors and leg display.

The core circuitry is all herein, along using a immense array of connectors. The complete path append resolve is immense and well-marked. I affect the IC patent U3 is the interior core of the robot. The connector to the bottom-right connects to the right alter and lecturer at the rear of the robot. Read the rest of this entry »

Qrio was a little bigger than I’d imagined, and had a little golf trifle close to his left hand. Qrio would look around announcing what he was burden through the sermon synthesis software. Once Qrio had patterned the sphere, he looked for the hollow – I’m arrogant all this recognition was done through the cheerful colors that both the sphere and hollow were painted in. Next, Qrio walked around to the section of the sphere to take his booster. Qrio’s passage is very fluid, short any of the erratic passage characteristic of the AIBO makes. Qrio then crooked 90 degrees and stirred the push into section. After salient the sphere, Qrio tracked the sphere as it stirred near the hollow and then commented on his booster (which wasn’t all that good!). Read the rest of this entry »

The Ground Bot is a circular sentinel designed to swing up to 6 mph through just regarding anything-mud, sand, flurry and even water. Two gyroscopically steadied wide-angle cameras and a suite of sensors give isolated operators a real-time, 360-degree consider of the landscape, hire them zoom in on prowlers or detach gas leaks, radioactivity and biohazards.

Originally pretend by Swedish physicists to explore other planets, the Ground Bot skin a tough plan that requires almost no maintenance and can also be programmed to run autonomously. Its sealed bomb protects its interior onto sand and allows it to outlast steep drops, while a rubber features dampens trembling and provides footing. To get rolling, the robot cleanly shifts its ballast. Its focus of bulk is perched from a pendulum within the sphere, so motors just advocate the pendulum to the front, to the back, or to the section. Lithium-ion batteries impart up to 16 hours of spy time

The key code of a Stirling engine is that a down right calculate of a gas is sealed within the engine. The Stirling cycle involves a cycle of check that mutation the hassle of the gas within the engine, causing it to do work.

There are numerous properties of gasses that are risky to the venture of Stirling engines:

• If you have a rigid amount of gas in a rigid level of celestial and you hoist the temperature of that gas, the hassle will improve.
• If you have a rigid amount of gas and you compress it (decrease the level of its space), the temperature of that gas will improve. Let’s go through apiece part of the Stirling chain while looking at a simplified Stirling engine. One cylinder is heated by an outdoor heat bound (such as fire), and the other is cooled by an outdoor cooling bound.
• The gas chambers of the two cylinders are allied, and the pistons are allied to apiece other mechanically by a linkage that determines how they will move in relation to one another. Read the rest of this entry »

A mouse (Not the pesky rodent!) is a pointing device, where it functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. To be more precisely, a mouse consists of an object that hold under one of the user’s hands, with one or more buttons.

As you can see that, the contemporary computer mouse has a wheel that allows the user to perform various system dependent operations.

Do you know that inventor Douglas Engelbart was creating the first computer mouse in Dec 9 1968? After a glorious 40^th anniversary years, Douglas said, “Although there’s been an explosion of technology in the past 4 decades, but it hasn’t reached the level of potential he envisioned in the early 1960’s yet!”

Engelbart also stated that most of the present day’s mouse is being created to fit the commercial and entertainment, where it getting documents to look nicer and crank them out faster!

Honestly, Engelbart is somewhat upset with the progression of computer mouse, because he’s former vision was subverted by commercialism. Due to the disappointment, he thought there is nothing more to celebrate here…

However, there is still a memorable moment, where the celebration tried to get the audience into the mindset of time by displaying old black and white photos of the SRI team at work on how to create the world’s first computer mouse. Mr. Engelbart was very grateful with it and he’d also signed up some autographs and taken some photographs as well!

Are you tired of turning on and off the switches in your house? Would you want to create a high tech home automation system that interfaces a PC and microcontroller? Today’s the right time for you to DIY a home automation system!

With this smart home automation system, you can easily control the home thermostat; turn on a sprinkler from anywhere you want, and it can react with the motion detector floodlight automatically etc., this home automation is definitely a very simple tool, where you can compiled plenty of resources for you to create a fully automatic home!

The best thing about this home automation system is it will help you to practice the energy conservation. This means more money can be saved and less carbon dioxide to be emitted into the Earth!

For this DIY project, you must apply a 386DX with 4MB RAM 40MB HD. Beside that, you’ll need gcc to compile the program and you’re going to need the telnetd or sshd if necessary!

There are more benefits of using the home automation system. If you haven’t try it yet, then you should take the opportunity and test it out!