German designer Dennis Siegel from the Bremen University of Arts was able to obtain power from appliances like computer, coffee maker and other electronic device through electromagnetic waves.There will always be electricity in the form of electromagnetic waves around us and we should harness it as it as a free source of power. Continue reading
LEGO will now be competing with RaspberryPi and Arduino in the field of microcontrollers. LEGO has announced earlier that they will be using the LINUX firmware platform on their latest robots to reach out for more developers and programmers. LINUX users will now be able to use LEGO robots to control, build and teach.
“Fifteen years ago, we were among the first companies to help children use the power of technology to add life-like behaviors to their LEGO creations with the MINDSTORMS platform,” said Camilla Bottke, LEGO MINDSTORMS project lead at The LEGO Group in a statement. “Now, we are equipping today’s tech-literate generation of children with a more accessible, yet sophisticated robotics kit that meets their tech play expectations and abilities to truly unleash their potential so that they may surprise, impress and excite the world with their creativity.” Continue reading
The e-Health sensor Shield enables Arduino and Raspberry Pi designers to conduct biometric and medical applications where body monitoring is required implementing nine unique sensors such as Pulse, Oxygen from the blood (SPO2), airflow (breathing), body temperature, electrocardiogram (ECG),glucometer, Galvanic skin response (GSR sweating), blood Pressure (sphygmomanometer) and patient movemnt (accelerometer). Continue reading
The Bulgarian manufacturer Olimex has just released an open source low cost single board computer based on i.MX233 integrated circuit from Freescale.This board features a powerful ARM926J core running at 454 MHz, 64 MB RAM, one high speed USB host port, and even a PAL / NTSC video output. This board is able to run Linux from the SD card bringing you a powerful system at the cost of an 8-bit microcontroller development board. Continue reading
MSP430 Launchpad from Texas Instruments is one of the cheapest microcontroller development boards (4.30 $), but it was lacking a free IDE (I mean free as in freedom, not as in free beer). Now there is Energia, an Arduino-like IDE for MSP430 Launchpad, which makes it easy to get started, no matter the technical level of the user.