Peter writes “Here’s a Haile, a robotic drummer that responds intelligently to your playing with an expressive performance on a Native American Pow-wow drum. They’re set to create a Jewish-Arab drum circle composition featuring the robot commissioned for performance in Jerusalem.” Here’s how they did it. Link.
Here’s a fairly old how to, but a good one that could be handy for new projects. If you have a Cisco Aironet card, or want to score a cheap one on eBay to hack up to add an external antenna here’s how. Link.
This is a trend I think we’ll see over and over again this year with phones and the music stores carriers are going to roll out – the slow death of MP3 playback on phones, or having to have a Windows PC and Media player 10 to convert to WMA before your phone can play your music. Techdirt has a story about Verizon phones that will no longer play MP3s one upgraded to use their new music store, if customers complain they’ll get an old refurbished phone with older firmware, but it doesn’t appear that the user is warned before updating that they’ll lose their MP3 playing feature. [via] Link. (and more details here).
Peter writes “In response to the earlier post, I’ve heard back from people who are using circuit simulation software to create highly accurate models of physical circuitry in software. The folks at Audio Damage use the free SPICE model and software to produce audio/music plug-ins like an upcoming bi-phase effects pedal model. That’s not the only geeky tool out there that’s useful for music: an add-on for MatLab lets you visualize MIDI music files.” Link.
Review of one of my favorite new devices of 2005 by Barry Gerber – “When I first heard about LeapFrog’s Fly Pentop Computer it seemed like a perfect product for a half-serious half-humorous review. After all it is marketed as a toy for ‘tweens (ages 8-13) and you conjure up one sort of functionality or another by writing with the pen on a piece of paper. I mean, how much could such a device actually do?” Link.
Here’s a great how to for simple bot “The following article will show you how to build a simple robot, called “The Beetle Robot”. It’s great for beginners and easy to do. Most of the components can be bought for much cheaper at Digi-Key, Jameco, or similar. At Solarbotics you can find the dual AA battery holder and the Mabuchi motor. You can find these components at any good electronic store.” Thanks William! Link.
Alex writes “There was a Videopac 7400 with a broken power switch in the attic. Next to it was a NES which only life sign was a blinking power led and blinking screen. These would be my two victims: I would try to fit the Videopac inside the NES-case. Not hindered by any technical skills whatsoever and with a newly acquired dremel-clone, I made a start.” Link.
