Our favorite armchair astronaut, Rachel, is sleeping off all the adrenalin and exhaustion of covering the STS-130 shuttle launch for MAKE. (Great job, Rach!) So, we crowd-sourced a few more pictures from Make: Online member Volkemon, who was also on-hand for the big blast. Here are a couple of his pics (that's him and his mom in the top one, the causeway and the moon before launch, and the launch). There are a few more pics, and others from previous launches, in his Flickr sets. Thanks, Volkemon!

Volkemon's photostream

More:

• Rachel in Space: A dream realized
• Rachel in Space: Wake up (or stay up) for shuttle ...
• Rachel in Space: Coverage of the STS-130 shuttle ...

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!

Gray Matter: Batteries Out of Thin Air @ Popular Science...

A battery that runs on air? Why, that’s almost as good as a car that runs on water! Those cars are fantasy, but batteries that run on air are actually quite common, especially among older people. Tiny zinc-air batteries are widely used in hearing aids, where they have replaced toxic mercury-based batteries in providing a small but steady stream of power. They supply more energy for their size than any other battery, because they draw some of their power straight from the air.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!

Jaroslav Ju?ica, who graduated at the Swedish Lund University School of Industrial Design, has posted a very clever working paper pin-hole camera for free download on the Hubero Kororo site:

Rubikon is a cut-out, which becomes a functioning camera (camera obscura) after putting together. In 1979 the ABC magazine published a jigsaw called Dirkon, which paraphrased the at that time very popular single-lensed reflex cameras. Rubikon, as a redesign has come back to react to the digital techno.

The cut-out Rubikon was first published in 2005 in the 8. issue of the ABC magazine, 25 years after introducing Dirkon. Since that time it has been also published in foreign media dealing with photography. Rubikon is also used as a teaching aid at some schools of photography and elementary schools.

Technical description

The Rubikon – camera obscura is distributed free of charge in PDF format. Its further utilization and propagation is subjected to Creative Commons license - some rights reserved. Rubikon is also available for download on our website. Before putting it together, read the manual carefully, please! I will be very grateful for any feedback, comment and idea for improvement.

PDF - Rubikon 2 beta 2009 (560 kB)
PDF - Rubikon 1.2.2004 (406 kB)

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:

Flickr user numist had a typerwriter that he wasn't using anymore, so he converted it into a teleprinter. What's that? It turns out that teleprinters are basically a printer and a keyboard put together in a single device, but not directly connected. Instead, both are connected to a remote computer using a serial connection. When you type on the keyboard, it gets interpreted by the computer, which then prints a response on the printer. They probably don't make much sense anymore, but before electronic displays were readily available, these were one of the main ways of programming mainframe computers.

To make his version, numist took an old electronic typewriter, and added some electronics between the keyboard and printer board. He used an Arduino microcontroller to read in each key press and relay it back over a serial port to his PC. When it receives characters back from the PC, the microcontroller emulates the keyboard to feed them into the original typewriter circuitry, causing the typewriter to print. Now, I'm not entirely sure what one could do with such a modernized typewriter, but I'll bet there are lots of potential projects there. Got any ideas?

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!

Tom Igoe got his hands on a Peppermill circuit board, and took it out for a spin:

Nicolas Villar sent me a sample of the PepperMill, a new sensor board he and Steve Hodges designed at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. It's a nifty little board. You attach a DC motor and the board can an output voltage when the motor is turned, and analog signals telling you the direction and speed of the motor. It turns a DC motor into a rotary encoder, of sorts.

Wiring is very simple. The motor connects to the two spring connectors at the top of the board. Direction and Speed pins connect to two analog inputs on your microcontroller. Ground connects to your microcontroller's ground. The motor generates voltage when you spin it.

Check out Tom's article for circuit diagrams, source code, and information on obtaining a Peppermill board to experiment with. Using PepperMill to turn a motor into a sensor

(Tom is a member of the Arduino team and the author of Making Things Talk).

Making Things Talk
Our Price: $29.99
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!