The photo above is taken from a Wikipedia entry titled Xbox 360 Technical Problems, which describes a hardware failure issue that is not uncommon for Xbox 360 owners. The general problem is that the array of solder joints that attach the GPU and CPU to the motherboard can break overtime due to heat expansion during […]
A friend of mine was commenting today on a common scenario that a lot of us run into. When you’re actively working on a project, you often times have several tabs open in your browser solely related to that work: some API documentation, a couple versions of a site you are working on, a google […]
Bruce Land writes: Students at Cornell University were given the responsibility of choosing, designing and building a microcontroller project,. This year’s projects include laser pong, air guitar, an evolving neural robot, and a USB host controller. During the last 5 weeks of the spring semester in ECE476, Microcontroller Design, students have to combine sensors, actuators, […]
New World Notes posted an interview with Zora Spoonhammer, a Second Life hacker who created an enormous in-world earth model, complete with dynamic weather that’s pulled from real world weather sources: “Come back up here!” Zora Spoonhammer shouts after him, before he disappears over the horizon. “He’s my husband in real life. He’s silly that […]
Instructables hosted an iRobot Create competition a little while ago, and one of the third place winners was Damon Kohler’s OLPC Telepresence bot. It mashes two of my favorite consumer product designs into a cute mutant bot that’s controllable via a web interface. Rather than a huge electronics/robotics exercise, this project is fairly accessible to […]
Chris Anderson came up with a kid-hackable UAV, the GeoCrawler 2, using an RC aircraft and a Lego NXT: Features: In GPS mode, unlimited pre-programmed waypoints, with programmable options such as circle and hold. Ability to integrate other sensors, such as ultrasonic, compass, gyros, accelerometers, or barometric pressure (altitude). With optional bluetooth cellphone integration, control […]
I use the standard Radio Shack “helping hands” tool a lot when I’m working on electronics. It’s pretty useful for holding components in the right place while you’re soldering or working with small parts. They can be a bit of a pain, though, because the little alligator clips tend to move around, causing components or […]
