Author Archives: jonathan

Twine

Now this is interesting.

Supermechanical has created a Kickstarter project to manufacture very simple wireless sensors such as sensor, temperature, moisture and switches, people to monitor their surroundings by using a web interface to define rules for when each sensor should alert via SMS, Twitter, or email. Want to know when the dryer shuts off? Put a vibration sensor on it, and you’ll get an email when it’s done.

For decades now, we’ve been promised the smart home, where appliances would interact with each other, but those visions always seemed to involve homeowners replacing all their belonging with new smart appliances that have never arrived. Also, if my experiences with digital home entertainment is any guide, I strongly suspect that homeowners would be left with a selection of mutually incompatible, or barely compatible devices that make me just want to cry. (DLNA, I’m looking at you.)

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Airdrop

The winner of this year’s James Dyson Award, Edward Linnacre’s Airdrop is a device that extracts water from air for use as in irrigation. If this sounds, like a Tatooine moisture farm, it should. However, unlike Uncle Owen’s GX-8 water vaporator, the Airdrop doesn’t use refrigerant, but rather the temperature differential from air to soil.

The Airdrop consists of a small reservoir buried about two meters in soil. Rising out of the tank and up to the surface is a cylinder containing a copper coil filled with copper ball bearings used in home distilleries. The copper tubing continues up to a turbine like those used on attic vents, but with the vanes turned around so that air is driven into the tubing instead of out of it. Also in cylinder is a submersible pump that transfers water from the tank to a drip irrigation line. The pump is controlled by an embedded microcontroller and solar powered. In times of little wind, the turbine can be powered by an electric motor.

Cloud Mirror

Daniel Burnham, Anuj Patel, and Sam Bell created for their embedded systems class at Georgia Tech a bathroom mirror / information display. Dubbed Cloud Mirror, it is essentially a partially silvered mirror placed in front of an LCD television, hooked up to a WinCE box with some Phidget sensors.

The User controls the display by waving his/her hand across eight infrared sensors (four across the top, and four down the side). Swiping across the top. the display is toggled on and off, while various modes (weather, news, traffic, and calendar) are controlled through the sensors on the right side. (Video after the jump.) Obviously, it is prototype level technology, but is a bit interesting. Basically, they were thinking about how to integrate typical morning information gathering into daily grooming rituals.

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And Now A Reading From St. Gordon to the Proles

There is something seriously wrong when condemning one of the seven deadly sins is a taboo. Why? Evangelical preachers don’t want to alienate wealthy donors. In other words, they want the money that’s used to line their pockets. Maybe it’s because I grew up Catholic, but I never trust anyone that says he’s doing “God’s work” and doesn’t take a vow poverty. Or as George Orwell said, saints should be considered guilty until proven innocent. Personally, I blame the the Prosperity Theology and the canard that Mark 10:25 actually doesn’t mean what it says.

Bonus points for the article quoting the right winger that says that envy is the real problem.

1% Want Landmark for Garage

Not content with having an exception to land their party plane at Moffett Field, Google’s triumvirate want a historic landmark for their eight private jets. That’s right. The triumvirate says they’ll pay for restoration, if they get to park their planes.

While I support keeping Hanger One, it just feels to essentially like an an attempt by the ultra rich to indulge their whims on public property. If it was a straight up philanthropic gesture that’s one thing, but this is reeks of a crass move. They (and numerous other Silicon Valley multi-millionares) have wanted to use the NASA field as their own private airfield, and now it looks like they’ve sensed the opportunity to get it. The most depressing part of this whole thing is that this could be the only way to keep the landmark.