Although the Arduino platform is ideal for standalone applications, it really comes to life when interfaced with a PC. Connect Arduino to a personal computer and you instantly add a ton of versatility and processing power to your project. This tutorial will describe how to use Arduino to control a bank of four independent RC [...]

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 [...]

One of the cool features of the Arduino platform is its ability to talk to other electronic devices using standard protocols. The big draw of physical computing, in my opinion, is the power it gives you to affect a limitless range of real-world objects with your PC, rather than just boring old monitors and printers. [...]

The digital pins on the Arduino board can be set (with code) to output either HIGH (5V) or LOW (0V) — essentially ON or OFF. This is great for applications like blinking LEDs or activating relays. But what if we wanted an output voltage somewhere in between 0V and 5V? This might be useful in [...]

Check out this cool video from the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) July 23-27, 2007 in Portland, Oregon, featuring (two of my heroes) Phillip Torrone, Senior Editor of MAKE Magazine and Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit Industries, discussing the relatively new idea of open-source hardware. It’s worth a look, if only to see Limor jam [...]