[Fraens] has been re-making industrial machines in fantastic 3D-printable versions for a few years now, and we’ve loved watching his creations get progressively more intricate. But with this nearly completely 3D-printable needle loom, he’s pushing right up against the edge of the possible. The needle loom is a lot like the flying shuttle loom that […]
There’s no shortage of movies, TV shows, and books that show a dystopian future with corporations run amok in outer space with little or no effective oversight. Dune, The Expanse, and The Dispossessed spring to mind as predicting different aspects of this idea, but there are plenty of other warnings throughout sci-fi depicting this potential […]
The oft-quoted saying “all models are wrong, but some are useful” is a tounge-in-cheek way of saying that at some level, tools we use to predict how the world behaves will differ from reality in some measurable way. This goes well beyond the statistics classroom it is most often quoted in, too, and is especially […]
HVAC – heating, ventilation, and air conditioning – can account for a huge amount of energy usage of a building, whether it’s residential or industrial. Often it’s the majority energy consumer, especially in places with extreme climates or for things like data centers where cooling is a large design consideration. When problems arise with these […]
Join us on Wednesday, September 11 at noon Pacific for the Machine Learning with Microcontrollers Hack Chat with Limor “Ladyada” Fried and Phillip Torrone from Adafruit! We’ve gotten to the point where a $35 Raspberry Pi can be a reasonable alternative to a traditional desktop or laptop, and microcontrollers in the Arduino ecosystem are getting powerful enough […]
There are usually two ways to go about any task: the easy way and the hard way. Sometimes we might not know there are two options, but once we see someone else’s solution we might feel differently. When running a greenhouse or small farm, for example, we might decide to set up dozens of sensors […]
Over the years, readers have often commented that microcontrollers (or more specifically, the Arduino) are overkill for many of the projects they get used in. The admonition that the creator “Should have used a 555” has become something of a rallying cry for those who think modern electronic hobbyists are taking the easy way out. […]
If you’ve got a working Model 33 Teletype, every project starts to look like an excuse to use it. While the hammering, whirring symphony of a teleprinter going full tilt brings to mind a simpler time of room-sized computers and 300 baud connections, it turns out that a Teletype makes a decent AI conversationalist, within […]
The common garden slug is a mystery. Observing these creatures as they slowly emerge from their slimy lairs each evening, it’s hard to imagine how much damage they can do. With paradoxical speed, they can mow down row after row of tender seedlings, leaving nothing but misery in their mucusy wake. To combat this slug […]