Category: Technology

DIY Sentry Gun

Kevin sent me this weapon of choice the other day:

The idea of this project was to create a fully-automated sentry gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking and shooting him or her in the heart. Really, the idea was to find a cool robotics project for the summer while I was working at an advertising agency, and I’d only ever seen sentry guns in movies (like Congo) and video games (Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress Classic). I couldn’t find any record of anyone building one, even the military, although it seems likely I just didn’t look hard enough. It’s a pretty simple technology.

I think I can answer why there arn’t any of these systems in the real world. You just can’t trust a robot to not shoot you in the back. Thats a tough one to code around.

Sentry Gun

Sony’s PCM-D1 Digital Field Recorder

Looks cool, hope it sounds good too. I can see these being used by the pro bloggers as soon as they hit the market.

The PCM-D1 is a retro-looking field recorder that can capture audio at 96 KHz/24-bit quality on either the 4GB of built-in memory or any size MemoryStick Pro card. Since one microphone is totally amateur-hour, the Sony model sports two angled, high-sensitivity condenser mics along with a five-line LCD for displaying recording and playback info, and two analog level meters.

Sony’s PCM-D1 $2000 digital field recorder

Adaptive Optics Produces Ultrasharp Images Of Sunspot

Adaptive Optics

Greg sent this to me:

The Dunn has two high-order adaptive optics benches, the only telescope in the world with two systems, which enhances instrument setup and operations.
This image was built from a series of 80 images, each 1/100th of a second long (10 ms), taken over a period of 3 seconds by a high-resolution Dalsa 4M30 CCD camera in its first observing run after being added to the Dunn. Speckle imaging reconstruction then compiles the 80 images and greatly reduces residual seeing aberrations.

I wonder if any digital camera makers will ever offer adaptive optics on their products. It may not be practical to do the layering of images if your subject is moving, but it might be useful to chart out the lens flaws and build a digital filter to correct them in camera.

Adaptive Optics Produces Ultrasharp Images Of Sunspot

CD Sextant

CD Sextant

This is by far one one the more impressive DIY projects that I have seen of late. Normaly a sextant is an expencive and very precice instrument but with a CD case, some LEGO bricks and a few mirrors you can build one. I don’t think you wan’t to use it to sail around the world but you could ( by the way you had better be an ace at celestrial navigation before you start Mister!)
Anyway, the project is simple enough that you could build it in a weekend. It would be fun to take out on trips and ‘shoot the sun’ and try to figure out where you are on this big ‘ol sphere we call home.

[via hack a day]
CD sextant

Wireless Medic Monitor

Medic monitor

saw this today, looks like to will make things easier for folks in the medical profession.

AdvancedBPM is a revolutionary solution in blood pressure diagnosis and management. Unlike conventional cuff-based blood pressure monitors, AdvancedBPM is a cuffless, wrist-worn sensor that continuously measures a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate and pulse oximetry. A mobile device receives data from the sensor and wirelessly sends this information to a website. With AdvancedBPM a physician can monitor a patient’s vital signs over a 24-hour period while the patient goes about their daily life.

[via The Red Ferret Journal]
Medic monitor