Raspberry Pi Tour at Hackerdojo

Quick post! @heartsy and I are at hackerdojo listening to Rob Bishop speak about the Raspberry Pi. It's great that they are sharing so much with the hacker community. We're able to bring along projects, so I've brought my RPi to show. Thought it would be neat to post from it!

Freescale Freedom-KL25Z has arrived

A few months ago I jumped on the pre-order impluse buy for the Freescale Freedom-KL25Z. Thankfully I had forgotten about it until I recieved shipment notification. It was nice that I didn't have to wait too long. Today it as arrived. Here are some close-up pictures - thought it would be nice to have some since there doesn't seem to be any up yet.

If you would like to get one, I ordered it from element14\newark.com.

Here are the specifications as listed on Newark's website. I cannot wait to start playing with it!

FYI: If you order it now, I am pretty sure you don't get the headers. The orginal listing was a prototype board with headers and when they released the final version, it didn't have headers, so they included them with the pre-orders at no extra cost.

Wishlist: Circuit Board Tent

Check out this neat limited edition circuit board tent from FieldCandy. It would be awesomely ironic to use while camping!

The holidays are approaching, what's on your wishlist? Each Thursday, from now until January, we will be featuring list-worthy products to help you decide on gifts for your family/friends or for yourself! Of course, we're open to accepting gifts too... 

Stay posted for more ideas!

Driverless Cars in California

Google just chalked up one of the more important victories for driverless cars. California Governor Jerry Brown has signed bill SB1298 into law, formalizing the legal permissions and safety standards needed to let automated vehicles cruise on state-owned roads. While the bill lets anyone move forward with their plans, it's clear from the ceremony that local technology darling Google is the primary impetus for the measure: Brown visited Google's Mountain View headquarters to put ink to paper, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin oversaw the signing with his Google Glass eyewear on full display. If you're dying to see driverless vehicles become mainstays of the Golden State, the official act making that possible is already available to watch after the break.

Source: Engadget

London Underground Circuit Map Radio

Circuit Map Radio of London Underground

A friend sent this to me a few weeks ago before it was popping up all over the web. I finally decided I might as well post it. It is pretty incredible and I wonder how many countless hours were put into it.


Source: Yuri Suzuki on DesignBoom

Scale of the Universe

I came across this site in my travels across the interwebs. It is pretty incredible when you put things in perspective of how small humans or even our planet or solar system. Even so as a whole we can still can have an impact on the universe. Check it out at source link below.

Source: Scale of the Universe

Raspberry Pi Factory pictures from South Wales

A very quick set of photos taken this morning at the Sony factory in Pencoed, Wales, where Raspberry Pis are being built at a rate of around 2500 a day. Pete, Eben, Mike from Farnell and I were visiting the factory to celebrate its 20th anniversary (and the 40th anniversary of Sony in Wales). This is a bit quick and dirty – these were taken with my phone. We’ll have some nicer photos and some video of the line, the automated processes and some pictures of the whole team to show you later on, but I know a lot of you were waiting to see these today: so here they are!

Source: Raspberry Pi

Dropping the nitrogen bomb in science class

Via: Hack a day

Valve's full-scale Portal turret

Great video of a full scale Portal turret.


Via: Engadget

Neil Armstrong, Expert Pilot

Most of us know Neil Armstrong as the first man to step foot on the moon. Rightly so, but lost in all this is the fact that Armstrong was also a truly awesome pilot.
During Armstrong and Dave Scott’s Gemini VIII mission, the spacecraft malfunctioned and set itself into a roll (starting around 19’00″ in the video above), with a rate approaching 60 RPM (1 revolution every second). At roll rates such as this the danger of humans blacking out becomes very real. Armstrong, as the Command Pilot, kept his cool and managed to stop the roll by activating the Reaction Control System, and then orienting the Gemini craft for a perfect emergency landing into the Pacific Ocean.
When I say perfect, I mean perfect. The craft came down exactly where it was supposed to be, and exactly whenit was supposed to be there. Between RCS activation and re-entry, Gemini 8 completed another whole orbit around the Earth with Armstrong at the controls. He then had to manually pilot the capsule into re-entry attitude at just the right moment in order to land in the right spot.
By his actions on Gemini 8, Neil Armstrong may have single-handedly saved the space program. The loss of two astronauts in orbit would have meant months- or perhaps years-long delays while investigations and design revisions were worked out. We may never have gone to the moon, and the course of manned spaceflight would have been changed forever.
Thank goodness for Neil Armstrong.

Source: Adafruit 

Labor Day Weekend: LED Audio Meter

Two weeks ago I received some MAX7219 samples from Maxim. So this past labor day weekend was the perfect opportunity to try one out. I started out by assembling another Atmega Lite from Gizmoz USA. I have three of them, of which this is the second to use. My friend bought me two and I bought another one while I was visiting Portland, OR last year. These are great, cheap and breadboard usable, or good to embed in a project like I have done with my Smart Outlet. Plus you can use the Arduino bootloader. So the first thing was to get one LED to light up, which I thought would be easy. Ha!

Adafruit Show and Tell: 09/01/2012

Adafruit's Show and Tell is a must if you're looking to get ideas on various projects. Ladyada hosts a Google+ Hangout each Saturday evening in which she invites makers to share their latest projects.

Today I was able to show my fume extractor. Check it out if you want to see it in action.