Bowden’s Hobby Circuits
Excellent resource – A small collection of electronic circuits for the hobbyist or student. Site includes over 100 circuit diagrams, links to related sites, commercial kits and projects, newsgroups and educational areas. Most of the circuits can be built with common components available from Radio Shack or salvaged from scrap electronic equipment. Most all of the circuits have been built and tested and believed to perform as described, however possible mistakes may be found. Link.
Nissan unveiled Pivo, its imaginative electric car concept, in partnership with renowned Japanese artist Takashi Murakami at the company’s Nissan Ginza Gallery in downtown Tokyo. Pivo, which will be on display at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show, features an innovative cabin that revolves 360 degrees, eliminating the need to reverse. Thanks to its compact body, the car is also exceptionally easy to maneuver. Pivo is powered by Nissan’s compact, high-performance lithium-ion battery and its unique Super Motor, resulting in zero emissions. 
$3,000, but it’s tempting…E Ink’s Active Matrix Electronic Paper Display (EPD) Prototyping Kit is designed for product designers, engineers and technologists who want hands-on access to a high-resolution paper-like display. The kit includes a production sample of a 6″ SVGA (800 X 600) active matrix display made using E Ink Imaging Film, along with all of the hardware and software necessary to produce a fully functional portable device. The prototyping kit is based around the Gumstix single-board computer, which combines a 400 MHz Intel XScale® PXA255 processor with a Bluetooth transceiver, USB, a serial port and an MMC card reader. For mobile prototyping, the kit also includes two Li-ion batteries with a total capacity of over 4000 mW-h, and an integrated battery charger. [
Brother corp Japan has launched the Innovis range of sewing machines which connect to the PC via USB and can be operated via the PC. There are two models the “Innovis M200” and the “Innovis N150” A special embroidery add on can be attached to the N150 for complicated designs. There are preset designs in their internal memory such as Traditional Chinese and Japanese fonts, Patterns, Stitches and Mickey mouse. New designs can be downloaded from the company’s website which will be updated regularly with fresh designs. I wonder if you’ll be able to do your own designs too. [
Bob writes “Cornell student Levi Lorenzo wanted to do a project about MIDI music technology, so the project he came up with was to build a hamster controlled music generator. The hamster controller uses 6 hamsters to control 3 rythmic tones. One hamster controls the “rythmic qualities of the melodies”, and the other controls the note sequence. As the hamsters wander back and forth in their passages, the music created changes according to their position. The music is actually not bad!” [
Brian writes “T-Mobile recently lit up EDGE on most of their network, including my neck of the woods. I picked up a $50 Sony Ericsson EDGE card on eBay, popped my SIM into it, and it works great. I’m getting unlimited EDGE for $20 a month (compare to Cingular’s $80). Here’s my HOWTO in pictures.”