LightScribe is an innovative technology that uses a special disc drive, special media, and label-making software to burn labels directly onto CDs and DVDs. The labels are laser-etched, not printed, so there’s no ink, no smudging, and no peeling. LightScribe lets you create one-of-a-kind designs with your own photos, text, and artwork. The days of [...]

I recently soldered up a Boarduino from Adafruit Industries. Boarduino is simply an Arduino clone with a smaller form factor, designed to plug directly into a breadboard rather than giving you the female headers of the original. I thought I’d post a few photos of the process. I really like the idea of the Boarduino, [...]

image: Randomskk / cc by-sa My Weller WES51 arrived today (w00t!), and in celebration, I thought I’d compile a list of my favorite soldering tutorials around the web. How to Solder Correctly: An excellent starting point, thanks to a detailed seven-minute video and lots of close-up images. Soldering Tips (PDF, 284K): Ten pages of required [...]

Supercool Open Source Projects based on this Code (1) MIT’s Fab Lab Active Extrusion Machine (2) Pan/Tilt Webcam Robot (3) Walking Biped Robot (4) Wireless XBee Tank-Steer Rover (5) Exuro Kinect/Arduino Gimbaling Robot Eyes (6) Wiimote-Controlled Webcam Platform (7) AtomBot Netbook Rover (8) Automated NERF Vulcan “Portal” Turret (9) Maya 3D/Arduino/Python Servo Control (10) Android/Arduino LED Light Bar Add a link to your project in [...]

My first computer was an Apple IIc. I was thirteen years old and, at that age, it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. It had a gorgeous, green-on-black display screen, 128KB of RAM, no hard disk, and a Slim-line internal 5.25″ floppy drive into which you loaded whatever version of [...]

Hulu.com is a brand-new, free, ad-supported streaming video service which combines content from more than fifty providers including FOX, NBC, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and more. Although Hulu has been live since October, the site just emerged today from its private beta-testing phase and is now open to everyone–as long as you [...]

This excellent video from the TED Talks website deals with biomimicry, the concept of getting engineering inspiration from the natural world. From the abstract: With 3.8 billion years of research and development on its side, nature has already solved problems that human designers and engineers still struggle with. In this inspiring talk, Janine Benyus provides [...]

On January 23, 2008, Burt Rutan and Richard Branson unveiled the new designs of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and its carrier aircraft, White Knight 2. This engaging animation gives you a sense of what a suborbital trip on SpaceShipTwo might be like.

UPDATE: Please read Arduino-Python 4-Axis Servo Control for the most current anddetailed information on using a USB joystick to control one or more RC servos. Inspired by Armadillo Aerospace and their laptop-controlled Pixel rocket, I decided to figure out how to use an Arduino module to achieve wireless remote control of a flight vehicle. Along [...]

UGOBE is a small California robotics company that develops life-like animatronic creatures which they call “Life Forms.” Their first creation is a cute, foot-long, green dinosaur-bot named Pleo. Pleo is an autonomous robot pet which incorporates a range of environment sensors, fluid mechanical movements, and a custom made “Life OS” AI operating system which allows [...]