Here are the 105 things we at MAKE liked best as we toured Macworld SF – these are things you probably won’t see anywhere else. As we are taking photos, we’re automatically uploading them to Flickr via WiFi-Kodak wireless camera and the roaming EVDO Wifi network we’re broadcasting. Enjoy. Link.
We spent some time with the new Intel-based Macbook. Wow–it’s super fast. As we take photos, we’re automatically uploading them to Flickr via WiFi-Kodak wireless camera and the roaming EVDO Wifi network we’re broadcasting — so here they are, some of the first photos with hot system info action, too! Link.
MAKE Magazine's Associate Editor Phillip Torrone is reporting live from Macworld San Francisco. Listen to the first podcast from Macworld all about all the new products, hardware and more! Click the play button on the audio player to hear his live reports from the show, download the MP3 or click here to subscribe to MAKE's iTunes audio and video podcast feed.
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Derek writes “The gumbrix came about because so many of my robot projects required the kind of rapid prototyping that Lego really excels at, yet required more in the way of control electronics than Lego was capable of. With a maximum of 3 motors and 3 sensors, the Mindstorms kit was not really capable of the more complicated control strategies that I was interested in.” [via] Link.
Chad writes “For a while I have wanted to control things with a serial port. It was pretty easy to control a relay with a serial port. With a standard serial port you can control 2 relays. (with a parallel port you can control 8 relays, but I don’t have a parallel port on my system). A standard PC serial port has 9 pins. Pin 4 – DTR (data terminal ready) and Pin 7 – RTS (request to send) can be used to control a relay. These two ports don’t actually send data. They are used to signal the other device to tell it when to send data.” Here’s the HOW TO – Link.
“BFO (beat frequency oscillator) metal detectors use two oscillators, each of which produces a radio frequency. One of these oscillators uses a coil of wire that we call the search loop. The second oscillator uses a much smaller coil of wire, and is usually inside the control box and is called the reference oscillator. By adjusting the oscillators so their frequencies are very nearly the same, the difference between them is made audible as a beat note, this beat note changes slightly when the search loop is moved over or near to a piece of metal.” Link.
“A small wireless battery powered device – Turn it on near a friendly wireless network that contains iTunes shares and plug your headphones in. It picks a random iTunes share, picks a random tune and starts playing. Repeat until bored or the batteries are dead. The size of the system is amazing. The main board is about the size of my little finger. By default it’s running an ssh server, a web server and advertising itself to the network with bonjour.” Link.
