Science Projects

Via nycresistor.com: Do you enjoy playing Space Team, but find that you want tactile controls? Or like the Artemis Bridge Simulator, but think it is too serious? Do you love pushing buttons, turning knobs and shouting at each other? Then you’ll really have fun playing Future Crew at the NYCR Interactive Party! Read more and sign up for NYCR Interactive Party here! Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro”? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi. We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Here’s an interesting use of a Raspberry Pi to control the PSU on a server. [Martin Peres] is going to be away for a few months and still wants access to his PC. This isn’t really all that tough… it’s what SSH is made for. But he also wants lower-level access to the hardware. Specifically he needs to control and get feedback on what the PSU is doing, and even wanted to have access to the serial console without having to go through the computer’s NIC. The image above shows one part of his solution. This is a custom Ethernet port that connects to his Rasberry Pi header breakout board. Inside the computer the jack is wired to the motherboard power LED to give feedback about the current state of the power supply. It also patches into the green wire on the PSU, which lets him turn on the power by pulling it to ground. After working out the cable routing he developed a web interface that makes it easy to interact with the setup. As with other hacks along these lines letting an embedded computer run 24/7 is a lot less wasteful than leaving a PC on. That’s a concept we can really get behind. Filed under: Network Hacks, Raspberry Pi

Via raspberrypi.org: If you’re familiar with the Raspberry Pi desktop experience, you’ll have noticed that windows on the desktop can be a bit slower to move around than you’re used to on your PC or laptop. This is because X, the windowing software (or composition protocol) that we use, is not optimised to use the graphics core of the BCM2835, the chip at the heart of the Raspberry Pi. All the work is done by the ARM processor instead, which slows things down and leaves the graphics core twiddling its thumbs. That graphics core is extremely powerful, so we’re working on putting it to good use to fix the issue. Read more here!

Circuit Bending Basics: Independent Multi Button Triggering Circuit bending is about the non-thereoretical exploration of sound making circuits via shorting different points together. Take a toy (that is battery powered – important!) and let’s get to work!

Super nice Raspberry Pi car installation via flamelily.co.uk: I have always loved those old TV series with futuristic tech in those futuristic vehicles, like Knight Rider, Air Wolf, Street Hawk etc. So it got me thinking about how easy it would be to add a computer to a vehicle. Now I know its been done before and a quick Google search shows multiple websites and companies making very complex car and other vehicle computers, but at a large cost. Read more about the installation and see more photos here! Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro”? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi. We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

That banner image may seem a little bit theatric, but it’s a good representation of what this 3W handheld laser can really do. Turn the thing on in a slightly smoky room and it looks exactly like a thin beam Lightsaber. What kind of tricks would you expect this thing to perform? Perhaps it’ll pop some black balloons? Prepare to be shocked because it’s orders of magnitude more powerful than that. The video below shows it burning and igniting a collection of items almost instantly. [Styropyro] tested his creation by igniting paper, cardboard, flash paper, flash powder, burning through a stick of wood, and igniting an undisclosed substance at the end of the video. But one of our favorites is when he drives a solar powered toy car with the intense beam. He pulled the diode from a DLP projector, and drives it with a pair of 18650 Lithium Ion batteries which are commonly found in laptops. He made the enclosure himself. It looks great but we can’t help but wonder if the components would fit in a painstakingly made replica. Filed under: laser hacks

A scattered array of fifty mirror balls reflect light from three projectors, filling a room completely with small reflections, casting patterns that fill the visitor’s peripheral vision. Creating a curious space that alternates between a meditative state, and an uneasy imbalance. An experiment in combining a found object with computer vision to create a profound and unusual experience.

Fedora Remix for RPi: Pidora is a Fedora Remix optimized for the Raspberry Pi computer. Download link here.

Kickstarter and the view from the trenches of TechShop @ PandoDaily. Dehmlow says Kickstarter has even transformed the TechShop. He started to notice the difference about a year ago, when the scope of the projects came a lot bigger. The workshop’s clientele falls into three evenly divided categories: people from existing companies experimenting with new prototypes, artists and craftsmen, and entrepreneurs. He said that since the breakthrough of Kickstarter, the entrepreneurial set that frequents the place have become a lot more aggressive about the business ambitions of their projects. He can’t give a percentage of how many members have or are planning Kickstarter campaigns because it’s all anecdotal and the company doesn’t keep records of that sort of thing. But he says it’s a common occurrence. The makeshift launch ceremonies at TechShop almost sound like the CEO of a newly public company ringing the opening bell at a stock exchange on IPO day. And while the scale is nowhere near the same, there are some parallels to the daunting challenges ahead for companies in both situations. For a newly public company, a new type of work emerges with your freshly issued ticker symbol. In the same way, when a Kickstarter campaign launches and – God willing – closes successfully, the entrepreneurs begin to fathom the mountain of work ahead after the dopamine wears off. “They come in the next day and realize what they have to do,” Dehmlow says. They go from having to build a few units to building hundreds or thousands, and TechShop is no longer the place for them. But Dehmlow says he tries to make the transition as easy as possible. He gives those members advice on where they can buy tools to mass-produce, gives them tips on cheap places to rent out space, and shares contacts in TechShop’s network. He hopes that over time, TechShop can formalize that process. He says he doesn’t want to charge for it, but wants it to work in an organized manner. “We want to help them cross that chasm,” he says.

Jessica MacNeil writes: On May 17, 1902, a Greek archeologist noticed precision gear wheels embedded in an ancient artifact of corroded bronze and wood. The device would come to be known as the Antikythera mechanism, the oldest known complex scientific instrument. Discovered in 1900 on the wreck of an ancient Roman merchant vessel near the island of Antikythera, the 2000-year-old device was designed to calculate astronomical positions, predict eclipses, and calculate the timing of the ancient Olympics. It is now regarded as the world’s first mechanical computer. Gears are discovered on the Antikythera mechanism, May 17, 1902 - [Link]