iRobot and Frontline Robotics are teaching robots how to work together. The goal of iRobot’s swarm project is to coordinate the actions of groups of hundreds of individual robots. A Swarm Operating System (SwarmOS) is under development to control as many as 10,000 robots or SwarmBots. Link.
I checked out the Biodiesel station at Laurelhurst oil in Seattle over the weekend- really neat stuff. Here are some photos of the pump. For more information, what vehicles it’ll run in and more- here’s Laurelhurst’s site with the same info as the flyer they had there. Link. Voulme 3 of MAKE will have a lot of interesting biodiesel info, stay tuned!
Here’s a good step by step on making your own Power over Ethernet (POE) cable to supply power to your router/access Point/wireless gateway using only your RJ-45 connection. Power over Ethernet allows you to run only a single RJ-45 cable (Ethernet) to your access point, and run the power over the unused pairs of wires within the RJ-45 cable. Link.
AizeMashu via the MAKE Flickr blog made the coolest OS switch (literally). “I bought a generic electrical switch from Radio Shack and wired it to switch my computer OS between Linux (left,) Windows (right) and boot disc (the off setting.) To get an idea of how macro this image is, the switch is mounted on a 3.5″ external drive plastic knockout”. Link.
Another homebrew MP3 project from awhile back…Procyon MP3 is a hardware MPEG 1 Layer 3 (MP3) audio player which supports user-controlled playback of MP3 files stored on a typical IDE hard disk connected to the device. With the emergence of MP3 as a popular standard for storing, playing, and exchanging music, droves of electronics and computer companies have introduced both portable and desktop MP3 player devices into the consumer market. The rise of MP3 has also produced dozens of personal engineering projects like this one. Link.
Tonepad is dedicated to providing ready-to-use layouts for effects and amplifier projects to the do-it-yourself music community. All layouts are provided free of charge and are subject to the limitations set forth on our legal page. Parts are available from Small Bear Electronics, and ready-made PCBs for many projects are now available directly through tonepad. Link.
Qucs is an integrated circuit simulator which means you are able to setup a circuit with a graphical user interface (GUI) and simulate the large-signal, small-signal and noise behaviour of the circuit. After that simulation has finished you can view the simulation results on a presentation page or window. The software aims to support all kinds of circuit simulation types, e.g. DC, AC, S-parameter, Harmonic Balance analysis, noise analysis, etc. Link.
