From the MAKE Flickr pool Matt the modulator picked this rather sweet 80’s Maplin Harmony Generator kit on ebay. Though nonfunctional after the initial assembly, a bit of rewiring got things up and running for the above-seen demo processing a Gameboy/LSDJ sequence. He was also kind enough to post the relevant schematics/article for those interested.
From the MAKE Flickr pool Flickr pool member fdecomite shares his recreation of George Hart’s geometric sculpture, 72 Pencils – the intersection of four hexagonal tubes.
These industrial robots move at inhuman speed while deftly maneuvering in unison and maintaining a sub millimeter tolerance.
Netbook hacker Rob928 created this excellent tablet mod by tearing apart his Dell Vostro A90 netbook, adding a Hoda Technology solderless touchscreen kit, and filling in the gaps with plastic epoxy.
(photo by Michael L.) Though some of the fuller featured multimeters offer similar abilities, this ATMega8-based transistor tester project, identifies pins, measures gain, plus resistance and capacitance. Looks like a welcome addition to the workbench – schematic + source code can be found here [via Electronics-Lab]
This video, of high-speed actuation of robot fingers and tracking cameras (developed by researchers from the Ishikawa Komuro Lab at the University of Tokyo), gets the big Keanu Reeves “Whoa” Award. [via Boing Boing] Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory
Last week, at the annual MassTEC conference an interesting collection of science and technology teachers gathered to share experiences and information. Here are some highlights:
Johanna Bunn of the Boston Museum of Science introduced the Engineering the Future curriculum, with interactive demonstrations of hands-on projects introducing students to structures, fluids and electricity.
The forum on the Massachusetts state science and technology curriculum frameworks introduced a series of strand maps that show how the concepts and possible activities in the various STEM subjects interrelate. Their hope is that existing and new courses could be designed so that they step students through learning ideas within courses and how the courses could build upon each other. Right now the maps are static PDFs, but their goal is to have them be more interactive in the way they connect projects and concepts.
