HOW TO – IR remote control
Sans writes “The cheapest way to remotely control a device within a visible range is via Infra-Red light. Almost all audio and video equipment can be controlled this way nowadays. Due to this wide spread use the required components are quite cheap, thus making it ideal for us hobbyists to use IR control for our own projects. This part of my knowledge base will explain the theory of operation of IR remote control, and some of the protocols that are in use in consumer electronics.” Link.
Nice outdoor webcam installation – “…the final webcam installation including painting to comply with our homeowners’ association. You may need a stepladder and a piece of cardboard to “frame” (as a movie director might) your intended view from a workable location in space. If you’re lucky, you just attach your cam housing to an existing surface. Get a sense of the angle of coverage afforded by your camera before you do this. High school geometry and its study of triangles may be finally useful to you here.” [
Mac writes “A while back, I happened upon the application note “Interface to Optical Mouse Sensor” on the Kronos Robotics website. It discusses the use of a sensor from an optical mouse for use in position sensing coprocessor on a robot. The application note did not go beyond the proof-of-concept stage. That is, could the sensor be directly interfaced and controlled? Since I didn’t have easy access to the GE mouse described in the application note, I wanted to see if there were other optical mice available that had an Agilent optical mouse sensor, which I could use in its place. I also wanted to go beyond the proof-of-concept stage and acutally use an optical mouse sensor in a robotics application. Before developing that application, though, I first needed to gain familarity with interfacing to the optical mouse sensor in a Forth environment. This webpage describes the hack I did to a BTC optical mouse to enable direct control of the Agilent (now Avago, see below) ADNS-2610 Optical Mouse Sensor and the Forth code written to control it.” [
Here’s this week’s “cool stuff being made!” – “…animation of the making of a flat panel display. In fact, you’re probably looking at one now. This shows you how once again you are surrounded by manufactured products: cars, food, clothing, flat panel displays. Without manufactured products, the world would be a quiet and empty (and hungry) place.” [
Jake posted up an Instructable for our mousebot “Mousebot from 
Refik writes “Why do we need Amplifiers? How to build a simple one? LM 741 – You have some output source (for example an analog sensor) where the voltage is very low, just few mV (millivolts), and you would like to measure the output with your ADC (Analog to Digital converter) and with the results do some calculations with your MCU (Microcontroller) or some other device. The values the ADC gives you are all almost the same because its bit resolution is too small to show you any differences between the different states of the sensor.” 
Peter writes “Neutrik, the pro audio connector maker, was handing out samples of their new USB connector at NAMM. It’s screaming out to be be built into a DIY project, like a crazy audio USB patch bay for all these USB drums and keyboards and things that are proliferating.” 