Monopole writes in about an open source 3D camera – “Stereoscopic Camera and Camcorder Synchronizer using the commonly available LANC camera control ports. Based on the Atmel ATMega8 microcontroller. Both the software and the hardware is open source, with board layouts on the website.” Link.
We’ve had a few emails and posts about folks who wanted to build their own lie detector, here’s one (and how it works) – “The circuit diagram of the Lie Detector is shown above. It consists of three transistors (TR1 to TR3), a capacitor (C1), two lights or LEDs (L1 & L2), five resistors (R1 to R5), and a variable resistor (VR1). Suitable transistors to use are BC547, BC548 or BC549, or any other small NPN transistor. The Lie Detector circuit works based on the fact that a person’s skin resistance changes when they sweat (sweating because they’re lying). Dry skin has a resistance of about 1 million ohms, whereas the resistance of moist skin is reduced by a factor of ten or more.” Link.
Harvey writes “Where US Taxpayer’s have already bought the best equipment (Like $2,000 hammers) and you can pick up it up for a faraction of its original cost. Get electronics and test equipment, pumps and motors, battaries and computer equipment by the pallet! Buy entire pallets of parts at a time and make the impractical dream a reality! NOTE: Read the fine print and watch out for shipping costs!” Link. I’m bookmarking this for the occasional requests we get for surplus or bizarre decommissioned gear.
Makers, are you OK with paying more money for ringtone than you would for a complete song? These folks seem to think so – “According to The NPD Group, a leading provider of consumer and retail information, consumers are willing to pay more for a 30-second snippet of a song track to be used as a ringtone than to download an entire song track. In addition, consumers are willing to pay a premium (above the average $0.99 price for paid music downloads from the Web) for the convenience of downloading a full song directly to their mobile phone wherever and whenever they want.” Link. Wouldn’t it be better to buy the song, then make your own?
News to me, the Digg folks are on it “With all the attention on the new ministore presentation, no one seems to have noticed that iTunes 6.02 enables video-sharing to your local network. Whether it’s intended for an upcoming home media appliance or not I don’t know, but it brings videos up to par with music.” Link. I think we’ll see an Airport express AV to stream video to our TVs soon. I need to try this out and see if it works with purchased video, I’m guessing no?
Ian writes “This ‘instructable’ covers my new design that programs 8/14/18/28/40 pin PICs. The circuit is based on the JDM2 programmer, with two enhancements: clock and data line filtering; selectable programming voltage. The ZIP archive contains all the project files. Schematic layout for an updated JDM2 PIC Programmer. Includes clock & data filter, Vpp voltage divider for modern PIC microcontrollers (eg USB PIC 18F2455/4455).” Link.
“This project combines an Apple iPod with a T+A-hifi stereo system (R-system). The iPod can be plugged into the stereo system and does not only deliver the Audio-signal to the T+A-system but is also remote controllable with the T+A remotecontrol without an own infrared receiver.The following iPods are supported: All iPods with dock connector, but not the iPod Mini!” Link.
