Month: April 2005

I try to maximize my “hostage” time as much as possible- waiting in line means it’s checking email time and while taking showers or exercising, fill that time with audio. Here’s a fun way to listen to podcasts (audio programs) in the shower. Project at a glance: Creative Muvo MP3 player -> Stereo wire -> RF transmitter -> RF input of 87.7FM -> Sony shower radio. I’m not sure why we haven’t seen a waterproof wireless MP3 player/receiver for the shower to stream in your music yet.

This is pretty neat- using red LEDS to grow lettuce is 60% more efficient than fluorescent light when growing vegetables hydroponically. The red LED technology produces 7000 heads of lettuce per day all year round in a 10-floor building on just 1000 square meters of space. The lettuce matures more than three times as fast under the LEDs than outdoors. The Metaefficient site also has a lot of other interesting products that are just, better. Maybe when we’re all done with our POV projects we’ll grow plants.

Don Dunkee converted his EVT 4000E scooter into a mobile electric solar power station complete with fold out solar panels. He has a set of panels that can generate up to 120 watts/hour which charge the on board battery for the scooter. Great way to charge the battery while it’s sitting outside all day. So far he’s put 900 miles on it using sun juice.

Here’s a pretty clever hack for finding deals on the web by bolting together Thunderbird and RSS feeds from shopping sites. You use Thunderbird to subscribe to all your tech/computer related sites you might buy from via RSS and set up a folder with filters to watch for specific things you’re looking for. “Now, instead of spending a bunch of time watching these sites, you only have to keep an eye on the “watched for deals” folder. If it’s ever bold, then it means there is something in the folder that is of interest to you”.

Matt writes in and says “Two bored physicists, a machine shop, a spoon, a leatherman, and a vision…”. Jen bought me a Leatherman tool adaptor for my Leatherman. It came with a few square attachments crytpically referred to as “Robertson,” and I had no idea what these were for. But, what I did need, desperately, was a spoon attachment for my Leatherman. Thinking quickly, I gathered the raw materials and headed to the machine shop with Greg Snyder, my trusty side-kick and budding photojournalist… Here’s what happened.

Here’s a great project if you’re interested in turning an EVDO card in to a portable WiFi access point. The best part about this project is it uses Google Maps (Satellite photos) to do live vehicle tracking as well as uploading pictures from an onboard web camera as the car is driven around. How-to via /.