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2012-05-23T10:10:29Z

Having one of those days? Work driving you mad? Just can't seem to find the time to visit Gadget Master as much as you would like to?

Well, don't stress, help is at hand. If you can't come to us, we'll come to you!

You can now sign up for the Gadget Master newsletter to ensure you receive the latest and greatest Gadget Master news, hot and fresh, straight into your inbox!

Signing up only takes a second and then you can sit back and relax as we do the rest.

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Having one of those days? Work driving you mad? Just can't seem to find the time to visit Gadget Master as much as you would like to?

Well, don't stress, help is at hand. If you can't come to us, we'll come to you!

You can now sign up for the Circuits newsletter to ensure you receive the latest and greatest Gadget Master news, hot and fresh, straight into your inbox!

Signing up only takes a second and then you can sit back and relax as we do the rest.

Go on, sign up - it will be the best decision you've ever made!

MIT student races self-built Mario-Kart

2012-05-18T14:36:16Z

A bit of fun for a Friday afternoon... Ever found time passing heavy at work? Fancy spicing things up a gear? Maybe, racing round the corridors on your castor-based chairs? (No chance the boss will see you, he's away on a golfing trip...)

Well, it seems one MIT student found himself in this position, but also raised the stakes, putting his engineering prowess to the test to build a replica Mario-Kart, for aforesaid corridor racing...

Mark Raby, of SlashGear writes:

]]>
A bit of fun for a Friday afternoon... Ever found time passing heavy at work? Fancy spicing things up a gear? Maybe, racing round the corridors on your castor-based chairs? (No chance the boss will see you, he's away on a golfing trip...)

Well, it seems one MIT student found himself in this position, but also raised the stakes, putting his engineering prowess to the test to build a replica Mario-Kart, for aforesaid corridor racing...

Mark Raby, of SlashGear writes:

Guan calls himself an "electromechanical hobbyist" and says that Mario Kart had a big influence on him in his early days - apparently he was fascinated with the electromechanical properties of the miniature karts. we're not quite sure. But he never lost the passion for that game, so one night when the hallways of MIT were empty, he decided to take his contraption for a test drive.

Read the full article >>

According to the YouTube posting, there are some spec details: "A four-wheel drive ulta-compact go-kart with 100mm custom hub motor wheels. The frame is 34" long and 18" wide (870mm x 460mm)."

Check it out. Full credit to the chap driving AND videoing!

Makey Makey circuit board turns objects into computer keys

2012-05-15T08:41:32Z

This is a nice one to share with Gadget Masters, from our sister site New Scientist - DIY circuit turns your alphabet soup into a keyboard

Jacob Aron writes about some wizardry from MIT:

Ever wanted to move Pac-Man using pencil drawings, make music with bananas or type an email with alphabet soup? Now you can thanks to Makey Makey, a simple circuit board that turns almost any object into a computer key (see video here).

"It works with anything that is a little bit electrically conductive," says Eric Rosenbaum, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Things like food, Play-Doh and lots of different metallic or organic materials."

]]> New Scientist - DIY circuit turns your alphabet soup into a keyboard

Jacob Aron writes about some wizardry from MIT:

Ever wanted to move Pac-Man using pencil drawings, make music with bananas or type an email with alphabet soup? Now you can thanks to Makey Makey, a simple circuit board that turns almost any object into a computer key (see video).

"It works with anything that is a little bit electrically conductive," says Eric Rosenbaum, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Things like food, Play-Doh and lots of different metallic or organic materials."

In its simplest form, Makey Makey plugs into a computer via USB and lets users reassign the arrow keys, space bar and left mouse click to objects. All you have to do is connect one end of a wire to the circuit board using a crocodile clip and the other end to your new computer key.

Holding another wire attached to the board and touching your chosen object completes the circuit, triggering the "button press". No software is required and more advanced users can reassign other keys and mouse motions.

Rosenbaum and his colleague Jay Silver hope their easy-to-use kit will encourage anyone to start inventing things for themselves. They have set up a campaign on fund-raising website Kickstarter to fund a large production run, making it cheap enough for use in schools.

Read the original article >>

(Image: Jay Silver/Makey Makey)

Breathing on the IOIO board for an Android Breathalyser

2012-05-11T07:40:09Z

Here's a nice example of what you can do with the IOIO Android-friendly breakout board that we've featured previously.

It's a DIY Android Breathalyser. It's still in prototype form, but is shown working in cable-less form, courtesy of Bluetooth.

Note you would need a phone with Android 2.3.3+ ("Gingerbread") - for the requisite Bluetooth support - or else old-fashioned USB cable connectivity will be required... ]]> featured previously.

It's a DIY Android Breathalyser. It's still in prototype form, but is shown working in cable-less form, courtesy of Bluetooth.

Note you would need a phone with Android 2.3.3+ ("Gingerbread") - for the requisite Bluetooth support - or else old-fashioned USB cable connectivity will be required...

The IOIO board works with a Seed Studio alcohol sensor - which are "the brains", says the commentator.

Check out the video below:

This was uploaded by "OpenGadgets", and it is not clear if this is the work of Michael Mitchell - a PhD Computer Science student at FSU - but Mr Mitchell does showcase similar IOIO-based examples on his website MitchTech.

For his breathalyser, he lists the parts needed as:
    * Android Device (1.6+, 2.1 for Bluetooth)
    * IOIO (available at Sparkfun)
    * 330 ohm resistor
    * Alcohol Gas Sensor MQ-3 (available at Sparkfun)
    * Breadboard
    * Power supply
    * Hook-up wire

And he provides a link to his source code, and IOIO Bluetooth library projects...

An example circuit diagram of the system is shown, below.

The Kindle Touch competition

2012-05-08T07:28:05Z

It's time for another Gadget Master competition! The theme we are taking for this one is the recent Mindstorms roundup, but the prize is not Lego-based! Time for a more conventional consumer electronics gadget, I feel...

Step forward the Kindle Touch, as a prize kindly provided by Gadget Master sponsor RS. With a touchscreen, audio and built-in Wi-Fi, the Touch version of Amazon's popular e-book reader would set you back £109.

]]> Gadget Master competition! The theme we are taking for this one is the recent Mindstorms roundup, but the prize is not Lego-based! Time for a more conventional consumer electronics gadget, I feel...

Step forward the Kindle Touch, as a prize kindly provided by Gadget Master sponsor RS. With a touchscreen, audio and built-in Wi-Fi, the Touch version of Amazon's popular e-book reader would set you back £109.

Features highlighted by Amazon include:
    * E Ink display, with multi-touch
    * Reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight
    * Built in Wi-Fi - get books in 60 seconds
    * Sleek design - Only 213 grams, holds up to 3,000 books
    * EasyReach touch technology lets you read easily with one hand
    * New X-Ray feature lets you look up characters, historical figures, and interesting phrases. Learn More
    * Text-to-speech, audiobooks and mp3 support
    * Up to two month battery life

The prize question:

As always, we'll keep the format familiar and straightforward: correctly answer this question for a chance of winning the powerful e-book reader.

The recent Whipping up a (programmable Lego) Mindstorm featured a number of posts relating to Lego Mindstorms. But which one has a picture of five USB connectors coming out of a brick?

Once you know the correct response, just email competition@electronicsweekly.com stating the title of the blog post that has the correct image in it.

The competition closes end of play Friday 1 June. You can view the Terms and Conditions.

Good luck!

MIT student builds mobile phone from parts

2012-05-07T09:01:41Z

David Mellis, a PhD student at MIT has published the circuit and case designs and the source code for a working mobile phone that he built using parts worth
$1 50 (£93). The body is laser-cut from veneered plywood, and it has a 160x128pixel TFT screen ]]>
David Mellis, a PhD student at MIT has published the circuit and case designs and the source code for a working mobile phone that he built using parts worth $150 (£93). The body is laser-cut from veneered plywood, and it has a 160x128pixel TFT screen. The DIY instructions come complete with 18 pictures.

The phone is only good for voice calls right now, but there are plans to take it further. What struck me as retro about it is the clunky looking external aerial - no doubt that will be internalized at some point too.

Source: MIT via gizmag

Whipping up a (programmable Lego) Mindstorm

2012-05-07T07:55:24Z

Before we launch the imminent May/June 2012 compo, let's have another themed roundup of posts... on Mindstorms ("Lego sets combining programmable bricks with electric motors, sensors, Lego bricks, and Lego Technic pieces (such as gears, axles, and beams)", as Wikipedia once put it).

Mindstorms has its historic roots, apparently, in a programmable brick created at the MIT Media Lab...

Anyway, the plastic brick-based platform has long proved fertile ground for Gadget Masters, so there are quite a few Lego-related posts to choose from... ]]> Mindstorms ("Lego sets combining programmable bricks with electric motors, sensors, Lego bricks, and Lego Technic pieces (such as gears, axles, and beams)", as Wikipedia once put it).

Mindstorms has its historic roots, apparently, in a programmable brick created at the MIT Media Lab...

Anyway, the plastic brick-based platform has long proved fertile ground for Gadget Masters, so there are quite a few Lego-related posts to choose from...

14 year-old New Yorker designs and builds Lego

Lego Mindstorms robot learns to play Rock-Paper-Scissors

When you can't find the camera you want

Lego + microprocessor + Bluetooth == TimeTwister

Lock up your Rubik's Cube - CubeStormer II is coming!

Robots to "Hunt The Easter Egg" at Embedded Live

Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0

Programming LEGO Mindstorms NXT

Spider silk conducts heat as efficiently as metals

2012-05-04T08:00:00Z

A post about spider silk might sound more like biology than electronics; and the strength of spider webs is the stuff of legend, as Spiderman fans will tell you. But recent research at Iowa State University by Xinwei Wang has raised some issues that might mean we need to rethink the pigeonholing.

]]>

His investigations of the silk produced by Nephila clavipes, golden silk orbweavers, found that the draglines that spiders use to anchor their webs conduct heat better, even, than silicon, aluminum and pure iron and, counter-intuitively, conductivity improves when web is stretched.

"New Secrets of Spider Silk: Exceptionally High Thermal Conductivity and its Abnormal Change under Stretching" is published online by the journal Advanced Materials.

The hope is that spider silk could be used to make flexible, heat-dissipating parts for electronics, along with a range of other goods where temperature control in limited space is an issue. Wang said the defect-free molecular structure of spider silk, including proteins that contain nanocrystals and spring-shaped structures connecting the proteins, are the keys to understanding the silk's useful properties.

So if you're working on something where thermal management is an issue don't squish that spider in the corner, harness it.

14 year-old New Yorker designs and builds Lego printer

2012-05-03T10:08:59Z

World of Mindstorms is one of the blogs of Leon Overweel, a fourteen-year-old New Yorker who includes robotics in his extensive list of interests. A recent post particularly caught my eye: PriNXT - Mindstorms NXT Printer ...

]]>

World of Mindstorms is one of the blogs of Leon Overweel, a fourteen-year-old New Yorker who includes robotics in his extensive list of interests. It is where he publishes details of the Mindstorm NXP creations he has worked on.

It's well worth a visit, and a recent post particularly caught my eye: PriNXT - Mindstorms NXT Printer details how he designed an built a working mono printer using Lego, including explanations of the hardware, design, image processing and programming.

Are there 14-year-olds in the UK doing this kind of thing that I'm not hearing about? Let me know...

Most read Gadget Master posts in April

2012-05-02T08:04:16Z

May - and the season of Bank Holidays - is upon us! But before April 2012 becomes but a distant memory let's tarry just a while to consider the most popular posts on the blog in the foregoing month.

Topics covered include: Geiger counters, Android and NFC, calculator pranks and Flea robots...

Taking it in reverse order, for maximum suspense:

10. DIY Geiger counter smartphone app helps measure

9. Video: Hacking a calculator for pranks

8. When you can't find the camera you want

]]>

Topics covered include: Geiger counters, Android and NFC, calculator pranks and Flea robots...

Taking it in reverse order, for maximum suspense:

10. DIY Geiger counter smartphone app helps measure

9. Video: Hacking a calculator for pranks

8. When you can't find the camera you want

7. Build your own laser harp

6. Stanford students && (Android + NFC + TV) == Fun

5. Keep your property where you can see it

4. The Beagleboard XM competition

3. Build your own LED cube

2. Small Sand Flea robot jumps tall buildings

1. A fool for Moog's PolyTheremin...

Let the latest blog posts come to you, instantly. Get the Gadget Master RSS feed, delivering new entries as they are posted, whether to your browser or favourite Feed Reader.

And the winner is...

2012-05-01T12:47:06Z

Time to announce the winner of the most recent Gadget Master competition, sponsored by RS Components. Up for grabs was an BeagleBoard XM, the ARM Cortex-A8-based open source develepment system.

Thanks to all those who took part, but there can only be one winner...

[cue drum roll]

]]> Gadget Master competition, sponsored by RS Components. Up for grabs was an BeagleBoard XM, the ARM Cortex-A8-based open source develepment system.

Thanks to all those who took part, but there can only be one winner...

[cue drum roll]

...A Mr Stevens from Essex! The prize will be posted very shortly.

We asked:

The recent BeagleBoard in the spotlight featured a number of posts relating to the BeagleBoard project. But which one has a picture of a display with "Music" and "GPS-Test" icons visible?

The correct answer was: A DIY Android Gadget Starter Kit

Stay tuned for the next compo, which will be coming along shortly!

Cardboard camera

2012-04-30T11:00:50Z

Ikea has been working on a digital camera largely made from cardboard.

Called KNÄPPA, the folk over at PetaPixel have a witty video about it, and details.

The whole thing is neat - even the USB connector.

]]>
Called KNÄPPA, the folk over at PetaPixel have a witty video about it, and details.

The whole thing is neat - even the USB connector.

Lego Mindstorms robot learns to play Rock-Paper-Scissors

2012-04-25T13:46:47Z

When Robots take over the world, will they play Rock-Paper-Scissors to pass the time? Well, one of their precursors does (featured at Robogames 2011 for the Lego Open challenge, where it won first place).

A canny inventor has constructed a Lego Mindstorms NXT-based device to play the game. That is to say, it learns how to play the game from past experiences. And it won't just learn to take part (apparently simulating a simple neural network), it will "beat a person 100% of the time!" the creator boasts. ]]>
A canny inventor has constructed a Lego Mindstorms NXT-based device to play the game. That is to say, it learns how to play the game from past experiences. And it won't just learn to take part (apparently simulating a simple neural network), it will "beat a person 100% of the time!" the creator boasts.

They write:

This robot does not play rock-paper-scissors in the way people play. It first asks the user to input a move (either rock - paper - or scissors). The robot then calculates the best move to play, and then will extend a retractable arm that shows its next move (a Lego rock, paper, or a Lego scissors). The player must then tell the robot if the robot won, lost, or tied, against the player.

While you may think that this robot is cheating, since it waits for the player to make a move, I did not program the robot to know the rules of the game! The robot does not know that rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, or scissors beats paper! Instead, the robot relies on the player to tell whether it won/lost/tied to learn from past success/failures and to use this information in the future!

The parts list is:

1x Lego Mindstorms NXT - the brain!
3x Lego Mindstorms Touch Sensors - User Inputs
3x Lego Mindstorms NXT Motors - Peripherals for the robot
Tetrix Pieces for the Base (aluminium chassis)

The inventor, one prrgg14935, describes themselves as "a 17 year old who likes building robots and programming them! Currently work as a teacher's assistant for robotics/java classes". Obviously a young inventor to keep an eye out for in the future!

Read more about the construction process >>

[via Instructables.com]

See also: Lego + microprocessor + Bluetooth == TimeTwister

Let the latest Gadget Master posts come to you, with RSS

2012-04-22T10:24:26Z

The best way to get the very latest Gadget Master posts as soon as they are published? RSS!

And it's not just Gadget Master. Check out all the RSS feeds that are available for Electronics Weekly content. The feed for Latest News, for example, can be found here.

There are 12 Electronics Weekly feeds you can tap into:
News
Jobs
Products]]>
And it's not just Gadget Master. Check out all the RSS feeds that are available for Electronics Weekly content. The feed for Latest News, for example, can be found here.

There are 12 Electronics Weekly feeds you can tap into:
News
Jobs
Products

(Blogs)
Mannerisms
LED Luminaries
Gadget Master
Made by Monkeys
Electro-ramblings
Directive Decoder
Tech Startups
Open Source Engineering
Parallel lines

To use an ElectronicsWeekly.com RSS feed you simply need to download and install a RSS reader. Alternatively RSS functionality is built into the personalised areas of sites such as Google & Yahoo, or in Internet browsers such as IE7 and Mozilla Firefox.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, by the way. And if you are unfamiliar with this technology, just check out the What is RSS section of our RSS page. electronics news

Stanford students && (Android + NFC + TV) == Fun

2012-04-11T10:57:14Z

Stanford students are demonstrating the potential of NFC-based hackery with a number of projects "showing how NFC-equipped phones and televisions can work together". Very impressive it is, too.

The five applications - running between their NFC-linked Android phones and a TV - include:
* displaying photos in a slide show
* rigging up a collaborative whiteboard
* sharing a slide show presention
* playing a game of online poker and
* streaming Netlix videos...

Apparently, the TV components are done in Javascript and HTML, and the Android apps were written in Java, as is standard for Google's mobile platform.

]]> NFC-equipped phones and televisions can work together". Very impressive it is, too.

The five applications - running between their NFC-linked Android phones and a TV - include:
* displaying photos in a slide show
* rigging up a collaborative whiteboard
* sharing a slide show presention
* playing a game of online poker and
* streaming Netlix videos...

Apparently, the TV components are done in Javascript and HTML, and the Android apps were written in Java, as is standard for Google's mobile platform.

They detail their work on the Stanford MobiSocial website >>

In terms of design, the team writes:

As mentioned, we do not have an NFC-equipped television, and so we wrote a simple socket server to handle our NFC messages. We store the configuration information of this proxy in an NFC tag stuck to the back of our TV's remote. When the phone detects this tag, it hands the NFC connection over to our proxy server, sending the NDEF messages to the listening socket.

A real-world implementation of an NFC-equipped remote control could work in one of two ways. First, the remote control could have an active NFC chip in it, forwarding messages to the TV or settop box. Second, the remote control could have a passive NFC tag in exactly the same way as we've done, storing configuration information for a listening service. This would keep the price of the remote lower, and an NFC sticker could be put on the back of an existing remote as we've shown. However, this would require that the phone's operating system supports the connection handover protocol specified by the NFC Forum. Furthermore, the latter would not support scanning passive NFC tags.

Thanks to TalkAndroid for highlighting this one.