Category: Mad Science

DIY Drones

DIY UAVI’m sure this is going to end up like the guy that has had a site about building the DIY cruise missiles.This

is a resource for all things about amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): How-to’s, links, videos, images and a discussion group. Among other things, this is where we’ll be listing all the parts, software and instructions to build each of our UAVs.

I know that I’d like to have a plane with a camera built into it. An autopilot would make lining up a good photo a lot easier. How cool would that be? It’s simply amazing what you can do with off the shelf stuff and some brains. Oh yeah, and LEGOS. Yes, one of these planes has a servo actuated camera mount that is built from LEGO parts. That in mind your not going to be loitering over your target all day looking for the guy that has been stealing your newspaper every morning. These UAVs get about 20 minuets in the air and can only go about five miles. Still, it is very cool.
DIY Drones

The Sultan’s Elephant


This is a thing of beauty, I blogged this before but these clips are a whole bunch better.

 

The Sultan’s Elephant is a giant marionette show put on by the French street theater company Royal de Luxe. It has been performed in several European cities.

I find it simply amazing that a gargantuon marionette can be manipulated in such subtle ways. If it weren’t for the block and tackle surrounding her you might almost forget that it’s 30 feet tall.

 

DIY GPS Jammer

DIY GPS JammerHackers listen up. Everyone understands and enjoys the utilitarian benefits that GPS has brought to our lives but what if it didn’t work any more? I suppose you could build some sort of surface to space missile robot that would systematically seek and destroy all the GPS birds in orbit, but that might attract unwanted attention by the authorities. No, your best bet would be to build a little portable device that just affected a small area. That is exactly what this does. It works by blanketing the GPS L1 frequency (1475.42 MHz) with noise rendering the receiver unable to get an acquisition code. Without one of those it can’t see any satellites. Pretty clever. Now, I have to say that I have no idea if this circuit is going to work, I’ll leave that up to you. I mean, it’s from Phrack magazine after all so that makes it pretty hardcore. Use some common sense in the operation of this device. It might be best used as a conversation starter and that’s all.

[via navigadget]
Low Cost and Portable GPS Jammer

MAKE Halloween Something Special

I don’t usually toot my own horn but this time I’m going to. I was recently asked if MAKE magazine could use a few of my photos of a Halloween display that I had made a few years ago. I agreed to it of course, I mean who wouldn’t want to see their photos in a national magazine? So I signed some paperwork and waited for the issue to hit the stands. All my waiting paid off when I saw the issue on Saturday and saw my photos printed up in glorious color. My photos of glow sticks, black light, and electric arcs fit right in with the other amazing projects that are being showcased in the Halloween issue. If your looking for a way to add a little something to your garage turned haunted house or  even if your just  wanting to  scare the crap out of a coworkers with some automated nasty in the cube farm this is the magazine to buy!

So You Wanna Build A Rocket?

Atomic Rocketships of the Space Patrol, or So You Wanna Build A Rocket?If I’m asked what kind of book I like to read my answer is science fiction. And the style that I prefer is usually called ‘hard scifi‘. That would be stories that deal with the technological details and loads of information about far fetched star drives, energy beams, and what not. Needless to say I love reading about all the made up details that are in these stories. No wonder my top three favorite authors are Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, and William Gibson. I happened across the ‘Atomic Rocket’ page today and just had to post about it.

"Another annoying fact is that realistic spacecraft propulsion systems are incredibly weak. They will take forever to push the ship to anywhere farther than, say, Luna. So SF authors try to jazz things up by postulating more powerful propulsion systems. Alas, they then run full tilt into Jon’s Law for SF authors.
Jon’s Law for SF authors is closely related to Niven’s Kzinti Lesson. It states: "Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction. It only matters how long you want to wait for maximum damage." It goes on to say: "Interesting is equal to ‘whatever keeps the readers from getting bored’".
As an example, a spacecraft with an ion drive capable of doing a meager 0.0001g of acceleration may be scientifically realistic and the exhaust is relatively harmless. However, to most of the audience it will not be interesting. "Nine months just to travel to Mars? How boring!"
The author, not wanting his book sales to go flat, hastily re-fits the hero’s spacecraft with a fusion drive. The good news is that the ship can make it to Mars in twelve days flat. The bad news is that the ship’s exhaust is putting out enough terawatts of energy to cut another ship in two, or make the spaceport look like it was hit by a tactical nuclear weapon."

How cool is that? The page is for ‘science fiction authors who wanted a little scientific accuracy’ but the heck with that, I’m going to read this from ‘cover to cover’.

[via retro thing, boingboing]
Atomic Rocketships of the Space Patrol

If you want to read a few book by my favorite masters of scifi, go on over to Amazon and flex the credit chip.

The Mote in God\'s Eye Off the Main Sequence: The Other Science Fiction Stories of Robert A. Heinlein Burning Chrome

Production Line Built From Legos Builds Lego Cars


This is a wholly amazing example of what can be done with LEGOs and their line of microcontrollers. It’s a production line that creates little LEGO cars, you can even choose the colors of the bricks.
But can someone make a LEGO machine that builds production lines and in turn builds more production lines?

Constructigasm: Production Line Built From Legos Builds Lego Cars – Jalopnik