Category: Technology

Cosmos 1 Set to Test Solar Sail

Solar Sail

I remember reading about the failure of the first solar sail tests, I hope this one will be better.
I find it amazing that somthing that was a concept only found in science fiction books is now being tested for real.

The keys to Cosmos 1’s innovative propulsion system are its eight triangular sails, made from highly reflective, 50-foot-tall Mylar sheets. Mylar is the material commonly used for novelty helium-filled balloons. Once the sails are unfurled in orbit at an altitude of about 500 miles, photons streaming away from the sun will bounce off them, giving the spacecraft a little push as they go. Though these tiny pushes won’t amount to much at first, they are expected to add up over time, propelling Cosmos 1 faster and faster. With each day that passes, the spacecraft is expected to gain another 100 mph in speed. Eventually, it will be able to fight Earth’s gravitational pull and move into a higher orbit

Cosmos 1 set to test Solar Sail

space, Russia, solar sail, Cosmos

Holographic Movies?

Holo-Chopper

I see video games in the future being a whole lot cooler than anyone can imagine.

The system is based on regular digital light processing (DLP) micro-mirror chips, but there is a twist. Instead of using regular lights, the researchers are using laser lights, which are using a unique wavelength. And they feed the chip with interferograms coming from regular 3-D imaging applications. This unique combination leads the micro-mirrors to project a 3-D moving image that appears suspended in air, like a 3-D hologram.

Holographic Movies For Your TV
There is a web version of the PDF here.
(Thank you agent Greg for this. I’ll return your anaglyph glasses soon)
3D, holographic, Texas, optics, science

Mechanical Scanning Video Game

Mechanical Scanning Video GameMechanical Scanning Video Game

I saw this on Hackaday tonight.
This guy devised a way to build a video game using persistence of vision, LEDs, some PICs, and a motor to build a game system. He based his creation on the scanning clock built by Bob Blick – Blick is a great guy, I’ve built a few of his speed controllers and they work very well.
Anyway, he mounted the motor and all the hardware on the spinning arm to balance it all out and used ball bearings as communicators for the ground, power and hand held controller.
So far he can play Pong and a Tetris like game as well as display an analog clock and input from an RS-232 port. Best of all, he has schematics and code is you want to build your own. Any bets that we will be seeing this in an up coming issue of MAKE?

Rickard’s electronic projects page – Virtual Game System

DIY, MAKE, video game, electronics, PIC, project

GBA Robotics

Nintendo-bot

More and more little computers come on the market in the guise of video games, address books, and video players. With each device comes people that take it upon themselves to push them to the limit of how then can be used. In many cases it takes a little hardware to make it all come together. This is one such case.
The Xport plugs into a Gameboy Advanced and gives you the following:

* Fully programmable FPGA with 50,000 or 150,000 logic gates
* 64 user-programmable I/O signals
* 4 Mbytes (32 Mbits) of flash memory
* 16 Mbytes of SDRAM (optional)
* Built-in high-speed communications and debug port
* Free FPGA synthesis software
* Several pre-tested logic configurations
* In system programmability
* Open source software
* Source level debugging
* Comprehensive software distribution
* eCos 2.0, RedBoot, and Insight included

Amazing no?

There is also an ebook (not going to be published in a dead tree sortof way due to the lawyers) that shows how you can program you GBA.
Time to trade in some old PS1 hardware and get a GBA!

Xport 2.0
Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance

cool, DIY, Nintendo, robotics

Robot Prototypes At Expo 05

expo

Loads of photos and video from the big robot demo at the 2005 Expo in Japan. The site is all in Japanese but don’t let that scare you, just click on the links and be amazed…
Walking robots, drum playing robots, robots that climb trees, robots that swim, robots that fly. Could this be the future? I hope so.

“Love terrestrial Hiroshi (Aichi international exposition)” on the 9th, displays the robot of 65 types “prototype robot spreading/displaying”

Love and earth Expo “Prototype robot exhibition” holding

Translated if you want to read the text. (Good chance that the links worn’t work.)

technology, robots, Japan,

Flybook A33i

Flybook

For a 9″x6″ laptop this is a fantastic deal. This would be the perfect computer to take with you on a trip so you can dump camera photos to it. Heck, it even comes in diffent colors!

The TechReport has some nice photos of the tiny Flybook. Measuring only 235x155x31mm and weighing 1.2kg, the Flybook has a 1024×600 pixels screen and GPRS, Bluetooth and Wi-fi connectivity built-in (3G Card available). The model in the photo is the A33i running a 1GHz Transmeta Crusoe-based system with 512MB. The A33i is already available already in Europe with a price ticket of about $2,000. The new Flybooks V33i and V35i feature the Pentium M “Dothan” running at 1.1 to 1.2GHz. Those new models are not yet on sale.
The Flybook A33i comes in six fun colors (see photo below). I would definitely get the yellow one. Flybooks are not available yet in the US, but might come soon. I would wait for the new V33i and V35i with the Intel CPUs.

Flybook A33i

cool, small, sub mini, computer