It’s always good to keep your eyes open, ready to see new things. I came across this striking not-particularly-small spider with a bright red velvety abdomen, just hanging out on the concrete side of a building here in Sunnyvale, California.
I’ve never seen one of these before! How might you go about identifying it?
The Maison d’Ailleurs (translated as “House of Elsewhere”), is a museum of science fiction, utopia and extraordinary journeys in Switzerland.
A new version of our Interactive Game of Life exhibit, shown above, is part of their new show, Playtime – Videogame mythologies. The show is devoted to the culture of video games, and exploring how the relationship between play, the various manners of gaming, and technology interrelate.
Playtime – Videogame mythologies runs through December 9, 2012 at Maison d’Ailleurs.
Here is a short video (YouYube link here) showing off the new museum display:
We’ve also just posted an extended introduction to this project here in our post about our new Interactive Game of Life kits.
One of the joys of working with basic digital electronics– and logic gate ICs in particular –is that it almost works like building with a set of Lego blocks: One output goes here, which connects to the next input here, and so forth until it does what you wanted.
If you’ve played with chips like these, you’ve probably also come across chips with “open collector” outputs. And if not, they’re worth knowing about. Open-collector outputs form the basis of a number of clever tricks for level-shifting and interfacing between different types of logic, and from logic to other types of electronic circuits.
In what follows, we’ll work with the SN7407N, which is one of the most basic ICs with open-collector outputs. We’ll discuss what it means to have “open collector” outputs, and show some of the different ways that they are used. Continue reading Basics: Open Collector Outputs
…We’ll just go ahead and file this one under the sillier uses of the Peggy LED kits.
Maui Makers from SelfMadeinHawaii on Vimeo.
Jerry Isdale, founder of Maui Makers, sent in this great clip about their maker space. (The video is embedded above, and the Vimeo link is here.) The video, from TV series Self Made in Hawaii,More information about the video is available at the Maui Makers blog.
A hack-box to go, filled with interconnects, LEDs, and love. Because, what better way to say I love you, than with the gift of electronics? Continue reading Five minute project: Heart-Shaped Hack Box
An ever-present challenge in electronic circuit design is selecting suitable components that not only perform their intended task but also will survive under foreseeable operating conditions. A big part of that process is making sure that your components will stay within their safe operating limits in terms of current, voltage, and power. Of those three, the “power” portion is often the most difficult (for both newcomers and experts) because the safe operating area can depend so strongly on the particulars of the situation.
In what follows, we’ll introduce some of the basic concepts of power dissipation in electronic components, with an eye towards understanding how to select components for simple circuits with power limitations in mind. Continue reading Basics: Power dissipation and electronic components
