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December 20, 2008

DIY USB microscope for $15

You can make your own USB microscope using an old webcam and a cheap toy microscope. All it takes is a soldering iron, some hot glue, and an hour of your time. Instructables user moris_zen has the details, which basically involves a little focusing trial and error before gluing things together:

While you view the image via the SW used for the webcam - position it so you get a clear image. You may need to play with it for a while. After you find the exact location use a hot glue gun to fix it to that position. Then tape the wires tidily to the microscope and start taking pictures...

I imagine you'd get even more interesting results substituting the old 320x240 web cam for an old 2 megapixel digital camera.

Also worth checking out would be to skip the optics entirely, positioning the CCD right up against the sample with a proper light source. I believe this is the technique being used in the UCLA cellphone microscope. The output is supposedly low-res and blurry, but it's decent enough to capture the shadows of individual cells, making cellcount-based diagnoses possible.

Build a USB Digital Microscope
Aydogan Ozcan, UCLA Lensless Imaging System

November 18, 2008

Backyard beekeeping - 120 pounds of honey

treasure stolen gold
low the sun and busy bees
prepare for winter

We collected honey from our two backyard hives this fall and I've finally finished jarring it. The new hive, split from last year's hive, produced over 20 pounds of honey. This is more than our first hive produced last year, but the older hive was not to be outdone.

Queen Ann, in the second year of her reign, ran a very productive operation. Her daughters produced some of the lightest, most delightful honey I've ever had. The water content is so low that it pours out like a sheet of glass, folding at the bottom like you might expect from taffy.

From Ann's hive, we collected 100 pounds of honey, making the grand total 120 pounds between the two hives. This is the part we harvested. We leave enough behind for the bees to survive on during the long Minnesota winter, which amounts to another 80-100 pounds.

What's incredible is that all of this honey is produced from the flowers, trees, and vegetable gardens within a 2-3 mile radius of the hives. Two years ago, before I began this hobby, I wouldn't have thought this was possible in the city.

If you're interested in starting a backyard hive next spring, this is what you can look forward to. The real challenge of this urban agricultural experiment is to figure out what to do with the harvest.

Previously
Backyard beekeeping - splitting a hive

November 5, 2008

Programming DNA

At last year's Chaos Communication Congress conference, Drew Endy presented a lecture titled "Programming DNA - A 2-bit language for engineering biology". He does a fantastic job of laying out the state of bio-engineering technology, including some of the potential applications and societal challenges, all from a hacker perspective.

Genetic engineering is now a thirty year old technology. For reference, over a similar period of time, modern computing machines went from exclusive objects used to design weapons of mass destruction, to the now ubiquitous panoply of personal computing devices that support mass communication and construction. Inspired by this and many other past examples of the overwhelmingly constructive uses of technology by individuals, we have been working over the past five years to develop new tools that will help to make biology easy to engineer. We have also been working to foster a constructive culture of future biological technologists, who can reliably and responsibly conceive, develop, and deliver biological technologies that solve local problems.

This talk will introduce current best practice in biological engineering, including an overview of how to order synthetic DNA and how to use and contribute standard biological parts to an open source collection of genetic functions. The talk will also discuss issues of human practice, including biological safety, biological security, ownership, sharing, and innovation in biotechnology, community organization, and perception across many different publics. My hope is that the conferees of 24C3 will help me to understand how to best enable an overwhelmingly constructive hacker culture for programming DNA.

Programming DNA - 24th Chaos Communication Congress

November 2, 2008

Telescope control with stepper motors

If you want to take a stab at amateur astrophotography, or have a telescope with "goto" or auto tracking capability, you either need to make a substantial investment in hardware and software, or you can built your own computer controlled mounts and use a variety of open source telescope guidance software packages. I caught the following discussion on the Twin Cities Robotics Group's mailing list today. Robot hacker Bruce Shapiro posed this question to the list:

I've started another one of my "bits to bots" classes-- this time out here at the local art center, and with adults. One of the students is very keen on the idea of stepperizing his telescope, and already has put in a lot of effort rolling his own stepper drives. I seem to recall that this is a common goal, and that there is both some decent free/shareware out there that will control your motorized scope, as well as plans for the retrofit. But a quick search just turned up a bunch of individuals' pages that didn't have the pizzazz I think I remember once seeing. Basically, I'd like to save him from reinventing this wheel. I suspect some of you may be able to point us in the right direction?

The quick response from list member Alan Kilian was to check out Mel Bartels' BBAstroDesigns site. It contains a wealth of information for hobbyists looking to build a DIY computer operated telescope. A lot of the information is for Dobsonian mounts, and you'll find howtos for adapting your telescope, building the stepper control electronics, and software for controlling the rig from a PC. Depending on what you choose to do, you can completely automate your scope for somewhere between $100 and $500.

BBAstroDesigns - Computer Operated Telescopes
Mel Bartels' Telescopes and Telescope Making
Twin Cities Robotics Group

Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders: Get it now at the Maker Shed

September 24, 2008

Google Gadget that monitors Arduino sensor data

Matthew Karas sent us a hack for creating an iGoogle homepage interface for physical measurement devices. Using an Arduino and a python script, he found a clever way to send real-time sensor data to a Google Gadget, and it doesn't even require having a web server.

I managed to hack up an arduino to upload data to google docs in real time. I then created a real time data gadget and sent that to google home page. That way I can monitor a sensor network from anywhere, with minimal cash outlay. I don't need to have a web host. I did it in two evenings.

The python code can run on a laptop connected the the Arduino. This script reads sensor data from the device and then posts it to a Google Spreadsheet using the python gdata API. From there, you can easily use the spreadsheet as a datasource for a Google Gadget which is then embedded in iGoogle or wherever you want to view your sensor data.

He's posted the necessary code and instructions for making this work. You should be able to customize it for your own projects and get something like this up and running in no time flat.

Real Time Arduino Data To iGoogle Homepage
gdata - Google Data Python API

September 22, 2008

Plotting streaming data in real-time with Gnuplot

Our friend Thanassis Tsiodras, who you may remember as the creator of the offline Wikipedia reader, wrote in to tell us about a handy way to plot real-time data using standard unix tools.

For the last couple of years, I've been working on European Space Agency (ESA) projects - writing rather complex code generators. In the ESA project I am currently working on, I am also the technical lead; and I recently faced the need to provide real-time plotting of streaming data. Being a firm believer in open-source, after a little Googling I found Gnuplot; and quickly hacked a Perl script that spawns instances of Gnuplot and plots streaming data in real-time. Googling doesn't reveal anything similar, so I published it here.

You can easily pipe any data stream into his druveGnuPlots.pl script, choose the zoom and y-range and it will take care of reading in the data and passing it to Gnuplot with your specifications. This is pretty neat, since it means you can easily plot just about anything and all you need to do is get your measurements into a newline-delimited output format.

Visualize real-time data streams with Gnuplot

September 1, 2008

LEGO 3D printer

Gene Hacker created a 3D printer out of LEGO. It's like a lo-rez reprap that operates in polar coordinates instead of the more familiar cartesian system. This is still very alpha and his demos show some promising 3D blobs of frosting. With that in mind, however, most of the basic functionality of a rapid fabrication system is here. Hacker posted the necessaries to Instructables, so you should be able to replicate his design and put your mind to making it even better.

Build a Polar 3-D Printer from Legos [via BoingBoing]

August 31, 2008

Basement Apollo Guidance Computer

In November of 2000, John Pultorak got to thinking about building a replica of a 60's or 70's era digital computer from scratch. By 2001, he started placing orders for technical documentation and had chosen his target machine, a Block I Apollo Guidance Computer.

Four years later, in September 2004, he had completed a fully functioning replica of the worlds first integrated circuit computer.

In the 1960's, each Apollo moon mission had one AGC in the command module, and a second in the lunar module. These were used by astronauts to collect real-time flight information and control the spacecrafts' navigation and guidance systems. Almost half a century later, John Pultorak has one in his basement, and thanks to his remarkable documentation and collection of reference materials, you can have one in your basement too!

Block I Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC):
How to build one in your basement

August 25, 2008

Wii Physics

Wii Physics is a clever little homebrew app. You use the Wiimote to rotate, size and place objects on a stage. Pulleys, ropes, gears and joints can be used to connect objects together, and when you press the play button, a 2D physics system is turned on, causing the objects to fall and interact with each other.

You can download this for free and run it from the Homebrew Channel. If you're ambitious, you can also download the source, add new features, or base a new game off of it. It's written using libwiisprite, a library you'll want to check out if you're thinking of doing any 2D game dev for the Wii.

Wii Physics
libwiisprite

August 11, 2008

Super Mario World and quantum physics

You may recall a post last month about Kaizo Mario, the ridiculously cruel fan-made Super Mario World level. Hackszine reader Guy Russell sent us a link to an article on the Mechanically Seperated Meat blog that uses this level to visually illustrate the concept of the "Many Worlds Interpretation" of quantum physics.

One good example of this is the Quantum Suicide "experiment" that some proponents of the Many-Worlds Interpretation claim (I think jokingly) could actually be used to test the MWI. The way it works is, you basically run the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment on yourself- you set up an apparatus whereby an atom has a 50% chance of decaying each second, and there's a detector which waits for the atom to decay. When the detector goes off, it triggers a gun, which shoots you in the head and kills you. So all you have to do is set up this experiment, and sit in front of it for awhile. If after sixty seconds you find you are still alive, then the many-worlds interpretation is true, because there is only about a one in 10¹⁸ chance of surviving in front of the Quantum Suicide machine for a full minute, so the only plausible explanation for your survival is that the MWI is true and you just happen to be the one universe where the atom's 50% chance of decay turned up "no" sixty times in a row. Now, given, in order to do this, you had to create about 10¹⁸ universes where the Quantum Suicide machine did kill you, or copies of you, and your one surviving consciousness doesn't have any way of telling the people in the other 10¹⁸ universes that you survived and MWI is true. This is, of course, roughly as silly as the thing about there being a universe where all the atoms in your heart randomly decided to tunnel out of your body.

But, we can kind of think of the multi-playthrough Kaizo Mario World video as a silly, sci-fi style demonstration of the Quantum Suicide experiment. At each moment of the playthrough there's a lot of different things Mario could have done, and almost all of them lead to horrible death. The anthropic principle, in the form of the emulator's save/restore feature, postselects for the possibilities where Mario actually survives and ensures that although a lot of possible paths have to get discarded, the camera remains fixed on the one path where after one minute and fifty-six seconds some observer still exists.

To create the many-worlds video, the author hacked together a custom version of the SNES9X emulator. The application, which you can download in source or binary form, allows you to record the hundreds retry attempts you make through a level. It then compiles all of the attempts into a single Quicktime video that represents all of Mario's potential histories.

Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics
Previously: Cruel Super Mario World hack

August 4, 2008

Photos of the Large Hadron Collider

View of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment Tracker Outer Barrel (TOB) in the cleaning room. The CMS is one of two general-purpose LHC experiments designed to explore the physics of the Terascale, the energy region where physicists believe they will find answers to the central questions at the heart of 21st-century particle physics. (Maximilien Brice, © CERN)

The following link contains a number of high-res photographs from CERN of the Large Hadron Collider. It's set to begin testing this month, and I must say it's about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Large Hadron Collider nearly ready

July 24, 2008

Farm Fountain - edible eco-sculpture

Equal parts hydroponic garden, aquarium, and interactive art, the Farm Fountain is an experiment in self-contained, indoor ecosystem design created by artists Ken Rinaldo and Amy Youngs. The idea is that you can raise edible fish and cycle their waste nutrients through a hanging garden which filters the water before returning it to the aquarium.

Their 4th generation Farm Fountain is currently on display at the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand until January 2009. From the Farm Fountain website:

This project is an experiment in local, sustainable agriculture and recycling. It utilizes 2-liter plastic soda bottles as planters and continuously recycles the water in the system to create a symbiotic relationship between edible plants, fish and humans. The work creates an indoor healthy environment that also provides oxygen and light to the humans working and moving through the space. The sound of water trickling through the plant containers creates a peaceful, relaxing waterfall. The Koi and Tilapia fish that are part of this project also provide a focus for relaxed viewing.

The plants we are currently growing include lettuces, cilantro, mint, basil, tomatoes, chives, parsley, mizuna, watercress and tatsoi. The Tilapia fish in this work are also edible and are a variety that have been farmed for thousands of years in the Nile delta.

A Basic Stamp program controls the pump mechanism, allowing the plants to be watered at regular intervals for a set period of time. Depending on available natural light, supplemental lighting can be provided by a combination of fluorescent and grow-spectrum LED lighting, switched from a standard light timer. Ken and Amy worked out a lot of the details during the construction of their 3rd Farm Fountain design (pictured above) and they've assembled a how-to instructional gallery which you can use to design your own Farm Fountain system.

There are a lot of external inputs required to keep the ecosystem healthy for a long period of time including fish food, PH and nitrate monitoring, and general gardening tasks. Once you've gotten accustomed to it, though, it's probably not much more work than maintaining a lawn, and a lawn can't give you tomatoes in the middle of winter.

Farm Fountain - a sculptural ecosystem you can eat

April 21, 2008

Post your Earth Day hacks

In celebration of my favorite planet, I'd like to open the comments up to any and all Earth Day hacks, links and activities. Think of it as an opportunity to quickly catalog a list of ideas and tools that can be used for the other 364 days of the year.

Here are a few simple things that you can do tomorrow. I figure it's as good a day as any to start forming a few practical habits, so for my list, I just chose a number of things that you can easily make a regular part of your day.

Bike to work. If you need to find a route, citybikemap.com is a good user contributed resource
Compost the garbage. If you don't have a composter, here are some construction ideas from Instructables: Sinmple Pentagon Composter; Mini Wooden Portable Compost Bin; Trench Composter
Avoid the purchase of anything with excess packaging
Turn lights off when not in use. Convert remaining incandescent bulbs to CFL
Check faucets and toilets for leaky valves. For your toilets, shut off the water while you are at work and see if the water level goes down in the tank. It's a common problem that's easy to fix.
Print no emails.
Bring a mug to work and use it instead of styrofoam or paper cups.
Reconnect with nature: start a garden; go for a hike; take the kids out and identify some plants and birds.
Reclaim some of the yard for native plants and grasses.
Encourage others to do the same, and share your own Earth-friendly tips and hacks.

You may be more or less ambitious, but I think this represents something that's feasible for much of the year. It'd be cool to get a read on what the hacker community is doing to make a positive impact on the globe, so make sure to post your own Earth Day hacks and resolutions in the comments.

April 3, 2008

Practical fluid mechanics

Mick West from Cowboy Programming posted a two part series to his blog titled Practical Fluid Dynamics. Originally written for Game Developer Magazine, it covers a number of clever (and down-to-earth) techniques for simulating the movement of fluids in games and other software environments where real-time speed and visual authenticity matter most.

Special attention is paid to the simulation of particulate matter being carried around within a fluid volume—think effects like smoke, fire, and bubbles. I know I've seen a number of people using particle systems to do this sort of thing, but the methods Mick describes are all based on a grid model where you represent the system with a velocity field and a density field. Unlike a particle system, these fields represent a continuous fluid surface, allowing you to measure the density and velocity of the fluid at any location on the surface by interpolating the values from the nearest cells in the field array.

Practical Fluid Mechanics

March 22, 2008

Easter egg anemometer

Here's something fun to do with the kids tomorrow after they've finished emptying those big plastic eggs of jelly beans and malted milk balls.

The basic ingredients are plastic eggs, a small DC motor from an old CD player, and a cheapo multimeter. It's a quick afternoon project, and you'll be able to measure the wind's speed—a useful addition to your toolkit for backyard experiments.

Easter Egg Anemometer (Wind Speed Meter)

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