Gizmodo & i4U have posts about a $35k book scanner, it seems really neat and eventually they will come down in price – but I have an old collection of out of print books I want to scan in (now). I’m guessing I’m not alone, so we’ll likely see a few DIY versions sprouting up […]
Matthew writes – “There are a lot of LEGO Mindstorms robots out there, but I finally found the best. Nic_1 is a Johnny V impersonator that detects the direction of sound and follows it. Detection is accomplished by calculating the cross-correlation of two audio signals from the binaural sensor. The data is used to estimate […]
Here’s a Flickr photo set from LinuxMatt on making your own LEGO based iPod dock. I think the next step would be to use the Mindstorms to control the iPod. [via] Link.
Andrew Carol’s LEGO contraption “Before the day of computers and pocket calculators all mathematics was done by hand. Great effort was expended to compose trigonometric and logarithmic tables for navigation, scientific investigation, and engineering purposes. In the mid-19th century, people began to design machines to automate this error prone process. Many machines of various designs were eventually built. The most famous of these machines is the Babbage Difference Engine. Because of engineering issues as well as political and personal conflict the Babbage Difference engines construction had to wait until 1991 when the Science Museum in London decided to build the Babbage Difference Engine No.2 for an exhibit on the history of computers. Babbage’s design could evaluate 7th order polynomials to 31 digits of accuracy. I set out to build a working Difference Engine using LEGO parts which could compute 2nd or 3rd order polynomials to 3 or 4 digits.” [via] Link.
Nextbrick has a great LEGO project from Tom Johnson – “This is an orrery I made to help explain to my children why we have so much light in the summer and not nearly enough in the winter (we live in Alaska). No attempt was made to get relative sizes, distances, or the orbit periods correct. Rather, this model shows the inclination of the earth’s axis and why it causes the seasons.” Link.
NextBrick.net has a post about some really cool LEGO’s from the 60’s and 70’s from Mario, he writes “Dedicated to those of you LEGOmaniacs who are too young to remember the first years of Lego, or who have never had the opportunity to see some of these relics. During my childhood I spent tons of hours playing with Lego, and a large part of my small week’s pay buying spare parts. It would have been strange not to receive at least one Lego set at or birthday. My sister Elena and my brother Stefano are just one and two years younger than I am. They were very fond of Lego too and we usually played together to build very large cities. Not all of our Lego survived, but we still own a very large bunch of pieces, which I am pleased to share with you in this page.” Link.
