Collaborate Disseminate
Ham radio is having a bit of a resurgence these days, likely due to awards programs like Parks on the Air (POTA) and Summits on the Air (SOTA), which encourage …read more Continue reading Super-Portable, Tunable VHF Antenna
There are some technologies first imagined in the Star Trek universe have already come to exist in the modern day. Communicators, tablet computers, and computer voice recognition are nearly as …read more Continue reading Conductive Gel Has Potential
In theory, batteries and capacitors are fairly simple. One stores energy chemically and the other stores energy in an electric field. In practice though, building an energy storage device that …read more Continue reading Battery of the Future, Now Buildable Yourself
The bill of materials for even the simplest IoT project is likely to include some kind of microcontroller with some kind of wireless module. But could the BOM for a useful IoT thing someday list only a single item? Quite possibly, if these electronics-less 3D-printed IoT devices are any indication.
While you may think that the silicon-free devices described in a paper (PDF link) by University of Washington students [Vikram Iyer] and [Justin Chan] stand no chance of getting online, they’ve actually built an array of useful IoT things, including an Amazon Dash-like button. The key to their system is …read more
One of our favorite turnips, oops, citizen scientists [The Thought Emporium], has released his second Grab Bag video which can also be seen after the break. [The Thought Emporium] dips into a lot of different disciplines as most of us are prone to do. Maybe one of his passions will get your creative juices flowing and inspire your next project. Or maybe it will convince some clever folks to take better notes so they can share with the rest of the world.
Have you ever read a recipe and thought, “What if I did the complete opposite?” In chemistry lab …read more
Continue reading Casein, Cello, Carrotinet, and Copper Oxide, Science Grab Bag
If you have a project in mind that requires some sort of gesture input or precise movements, it might become a nettlesome problem to tackle. Fear this obstacle no longer: a team from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard have designed a novel way to make wearable sensors that can stretch and contort with the body’s natural movements.
The way they work is ingenious. Layers of silicone are sandwiched between two lengths of silver-plated conductive fabric forming — by some approximation — a capacitance sensor. While the total surface area doesn’t change when the sensor is stretched …read more
