Void your warranty, violate a user agreement, fry a circuit, blow a fuse, poke an eye out. Make: The risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things... Welcome to Make: Online!
The next time you gaze deep into someone's eyes, you might be shocked at what you see: tiny circuits ringing their irises, their pupils dancing with pinpricks of light. These smart contact lenses aren't intended to improve vision. Instead, they will monitor blood sugar levels in people with diabetes or look for signs of glaucoma.
The lenses could also map images directly onto the field of view, creating head-up displays for the ultimate augmented reality experience, without wearing glasses or a headset. To produce such lenses, researchers are merging transparent, eye-friendly materials with microelectronics.
In 2008, as a proof of concept, Babak Parviz at the University of Washington in Seattle created a prototype contact lens containing a single red LED. Using the same technology, he has now created a lens capable of monitoring glucose levels in people with diabetes.
It works because glucose levels in tear fluid correspond directly to those found in the blood, making continuous measurement possible without the need for thumb pricks, he says. Parviz's design calls for the contact lens to send this information wirelessly to a portable device worn by diabetics, allowing them to manage their diet and medication more accurately.
Some crazy Swedish dudes have equipped their tricopter with 100-packs of fireworks and gone to hunt some hydrogen-filled balloons. As an added touch, they created a "defense sentry" that automatically launches rockets when it detects the tricopter. The rockets' fuses are lit with match-heads ignited by a 12-ohm, 1/4W resistor with 12V going through it. [Via Adafruit]
Posted by John Baichtal | Monday January 31st, 2011 5:50 AM
Erik Pettersson couldn't find a digital picture frame he liked, so he rolled his own using an old laptop and a frame from Ikea. With Ubuntu running on the laptop, he created a few scripts for changing the picture at a determined interval and for turning the display on and off at different times of day.
After disassembling the laptop and removing the unnecesary components, he mounted the screen in the frame and the CPU behind it. Using VNC over WiFi, Erik can easily make adjustments to the settings of his newly-hacked digital picture frame. And just in case that doesn't work, he also left the keyboard and a USB port accessible on the back. Nice work, Erik! [via Ikea Hacker]
MAKE pal Jeri Ellsworth has produced the first two in a series of A to Z electronics videos, sponsored by Adafruit. Here are A is for Ampere and B is for Battery (I think I watched too much Sesame Street as a kid).
The first book to cover the Netduino Plus, Cuno Pfister's Getting Started with the Internet of Things, shows you how to create cloud-enabled projects using the Ethernet-equipped Netduino Plus:
The Internet of Things is the new generation of devices that serve as the Internet's interface to the physical world. Today's tiny microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators are powerful, inexpensive, and simple enough to code that anyone with basic programming skills can create a variety of fun, useful, and even profitable systems -- such as devices that detect and extinguish fires or automatically water plants when the soil becomes too dry. This hands-on introductory guide will quickly show you how it's done.
You'll learn how to program embedded devices using the .NET Micro Framework and the Netduino Plus board, and then connect these devices to the Internet using Pachube, a cloud platform for sharing real-time sensor data. Getting Started with the Internet of Things briefly introduces the tools and then walks you though several techniques for using them, using a series of C# examples.
Even though this book is still in progress, you can read it now through our Rough Cuts edition, which lets you read the manuscript as it's being written, either online or via PDF. Available at Safari Books Online.
In the Maker Shed: The Netduino Plus is an open source electronics platform using the .NET Micro Framework. The board features a 32-bit microcontroller, a rich development environment, as well as Ethernet, TCP/IP, and Micro SD card support.
Posted by Brian Jepson | Friday January 28th, 2011 11:07 AM
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