Author Archives: James Hobson

Just When You Thought Magnets Weren’t Magic; Magnets Are Mechanisms

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This is magic, big news, both, or neither. It’s so exciting to see magnets behave in this bizarre and wonderful way that we think it’s hard to forecast where this will go. Shown above is a pair of magnets that have several modes of operation. They attract each other, but repel when less than a centimeter apart. However, give one a twist and the two will strongly attract.

The behavior is thanks to a new process of 3D printing magnets to manipulate where the fields occur. With the behavior just described, they would function well as a cabinet latch which …read more

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Could Metal Particles Provide Clean Fuel for the Future?

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The oil age is ending. Electricity and battery power are great, but are we really going to be able to replace the entire oil industry before it’s too late? Researchers at the University of McGill have come up with a possible clean fuel replacement — metal particles.

Tiny metal particles, as fine in grain size as icing sugar, have long been used for fireworks and even for rocket propellants, like the space shuttle’s solid-fuel booster rockets. But very little research has been used on applying this technology for use as a recyclable fuel — until now. 

You see, the beauty …read more

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Finger Print Scanners Really Aren’t That Secure

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Maybe you suspected this already, but researchers at MSU Computer Science just published a paper explaining just how easy it is to spoof a fingerprint scanner with a ink-jet printed scan of a finger.

We’re not talking about casting a new finger using superglue or anything, but rather using conductive ink you can literally print — on paper. A paper-printed-fingerprint that will unlock your smartphone. We’ve already told you fingerprints suck for security, but hopefully this drives the point home.

[Kai Cao] and [Anil K Jain] released this paper (Direct PDF link) outlining their technique. Using an existing scan of …read more

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Electric Skateboard Reaches Neck-Breaking Speeds

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[Mischo Erban], a Canadian speed-freak, just broke a world record on an electric skateboard. 59.55mph! That’s almost 100km/h.

We’ve covered a lot of electric skateboards over the years, as well as some commercial versions — like the Boosted Board, one of the few actual Kickstarter success stories — and of course, people have hacked them as well. But this board from Next Generation Vehicles (NGV), seems to have taken speed to the next level.

Made by a Slovenian tech startup, the board features direct drive motors built into custom wheels. The article is a bit light on details, but we imagine …read more

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Candy Dispenser Riddles You This

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A while ago, someone brought in a candy machine to AdaCore. Sometime after, [Fabien-Chouteau] was challenged to make it more… fun. So he decided to make it harder to receive candy — you know, to encourage knowledge growth — and discourage overeating of tasty treats.

The dispenser itself is pretty simple. It consists of a hopper containing the candies, a motor with a worm-gear for delivering said candies, and a small IR sensor that detects when you wave your hand underneath (in order to receive those sweet sweet candies).

He decided to leave the system operating as is, and …read more

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3D Laser Carving with the Smoothieboard

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Expensive laser cutters have a 3D engraving mode that varies the laser power as it is etching a design, to create a 3D effect. [Benjamin Alderson] figured this could be replicated on a cheap Chinese laser — so he made his own program called SmoothCarve.

He’s got one of those extra cheap blue-box 40W CO2 lasers you can nab off eBay for around $600-$800, but he’s replaced the control board with a SmoothieBoard as an easy upgrade. He wrote the program in MatLab to analyze a grey scale image and then assign power levels to the different shades of grey. …read more

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