Navarre Bartz – Page 4 – WindowsTechs.com

Feathers are Fantastic, but Flummoxing for Engineers

Posted on August 30, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

An image of a pigeon on the left and a breakdown of six of the different kind of feathers on the bird. The bird's right wing is white with black dots and has an arrow pointing to it saying, "Developing wing with feather buds." The left wing is grey with one feather highlighted in pink with the text "Adult wing with feathers" at the end of an arrow pointing to it. The six feather types on the right side of the image are flight feathers, illustrated in pink with the text "enable flight, support aerodynamic loads, morph depending on flying style, building blocks for wing planaform." In green, we have tail feathers and the text "Maneuverability and controlability." In blue are the contour feathers, accompanied by the text, "streamline, camouflage, and sexual display. Found above filoplumes and semiplumes." A black floofy branched structure shows us the downy feathers next to the text "thermal insulation." Filoplumes and semiplumes look to be both thin and bushy feathers in black with the text "Sense underlying feathers, found above downy feathers." Finally, we have a black, stick-like bristle feather with the text "Protect face and eyes, sense surroundings."

Birds are pretty amazing creatures, and one of the most amazing things about them and their non-avian predecessors are feathers. Engineers and scientists are finding inspiration from them in surprising …read more Continue reading Feathers are Fantastic, but Flummoxing for Engineers→

Linear Actuators 101

Posted on August 28, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

A set of three linear actuators set atop a green with yellow grid cutting mat. The electric actuator on the top of the image is silver and has a squarish tube. It is slender compared to the other two. A black, hydraulic actuator sits in the middle and is the largest of the three. A silver pneumatic actuator at the bottom of the image is the middle sized unit.

Linear actuators are a great help when you’re moving something along a single axis, but with so many options, how do you decide? [Jeremy Fielding] walks us through some of …read more Continue reading Linear Actuators 101→

ESticky is a Paperless Post-It

Posted on August 23, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

A hand holds a charcoal-colored rectangle with a black and white screen in taking up most of its face. A bulleted list of items are displayed: "Start work on new blog, Update eSticky FW, Start working on eSticky PCB, New enclosure for eSticky, Buy 18650 battery, Buy 3DP extruder anycubic, FW Update Sigma 18-35."

E-paper screens have opened up a wide variety of novel use cases that just wouldn’t work with the higher power draw of an LCD. [gokux] thought it would be perfect …read more Continue reading ESticky is a Paperless Post-It→

Thermal Batteries for Lower Carbon Industrial Processes

Posted on August 20, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

$A photo of a large warehouse with many skylights and windows near the roof. In the middle of the image extending out into the distance are hundreds of grey refractory bricks stacked on top of a smaller set of brown bricks stacked on top of pallets. There appear to be rails on the floor of the warehouse and small dollies underneath the pallets.$

Heating things up is one of the biggest sources of cost and emissions for many industrial processes we take for granted. Most of these factories are running around the clock …read more Continue reading Thermal Batteries for Lower Carbon Industrial Processes→

Antiviral PPE for the Next Pandemic

Posted on August 19, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

In what sounds like the plot from a sci-fi movie, scientists have isolated an incredibly rare immune mutation to create a universal antiviral treatment. Only present in a few dozen …read more Continue reading Antiviral PPE for the Next Pandemic→

China’s Great Solar Wall is a Big Deal

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

An overhead image of the Kubuqi Desert Great Solar Wall. It shows a series of clusters of bluish solar panels arranged throughout a light brown and dark brown desert. One of the arrays contains an image of a horse made of solar panels.

Data centers and the electrification of devices that previously ran on fossil fuels is driving increased demand for electricity around the world. China is addressing this with a megaproject that …read more Continue reading China’s Great Solar Wall is a Big Deal→

This Polaroid-esque OCR Machine Turns Text to Braille in the Wild

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

A black and white device sits on a beige table. A white rotary knob projects out near the base of it's rectangular shape nearest the camera. Near it is a black rectangular section of the enclosure with six white dots protruding through holes to form a braille display. A ribbon cable snakes out of the top of the enclosure and over the furthest edge of the device, presumably connecting to a camera on the other side of the device.

One of the practical upsides of improved computer vision systems and machine learning has been the ability of computers to translate text from one language or format to another. [Jchen] …read more Continue reading This Polaroid-esque OCR Machine Turns Text to Braille in the Wild→

KeyMo Brings a Pencil to the Cyberdeck Fight

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

A hand with dark skin holds a black device. The bottom is a small keyboard and touchpad. The upper half is split with a square LCD on the left and a square, pink notepad on the right. A sketch of a woman wearing a puffy jacket is on the notepad and an illustration of a woman looking through an old timey film video camera is on the screen on the left.

Computers and cellphones can do so many things, but sometimes if you want to doodle or take a note, pencil and paper is the superior technology. You could carry a …read more Continue reading KeyMo Brings a Pencil to the Cyberdeck Fight→

A Neural Net For a Graphing Calculator?

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

An image of a light grey graphing calculator with a dark grey screen and key surround. The text on the monochrome LCD screen shows "Input: ENEB Result 1: BEEN Confidence 1: 14% [##] Result 2: Good Confidence 2: 12% [#] Press ENTER key..."

Machine learning and neural nets can be pretty handy, and people continue to push the envelope of what they can do both in high end server farms as well as …read more Continue reading A Neural Net For a Graphing Calculator?→

Long Live RSS!

Posted on July 10, 2025 by Navarre Bartz

While we know that many of you are reading Hackaday via our Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed, we suspect that most people on the street wouldn’t know that it underlies a lot of the modern internet. [A. McNamee] and [A. Service] have created a… Continue reading Long Live RSS!→