Hasta La Gadget!

The internet of things is growing, friends, and Intel knows it. From WiFi lightbulbs to smart thermostats and door locks, it seems that most everything in our homes will have some sort of connectivity in the not-so-distant future. That’s why chipzilla’s research arm has been working on a way to program all of those devices and make it easy enough so that any do-it-yourselfer can get her home working the way she wants it to. The key is getting all of these future devices to work together, and Intel’s plan is to build a platform that’ll talk to most any PCB (Arduino, Beagle Boards, etc.) over any wireless protocol (WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, et al.).

A layer of middleware lets the bits of hardware talk to each other on an ad-hoc basis, so that say, when a baby monitor hears a crying child, it can tell a nearby stereo to tee up some soothing tunes to put him back to sleep automagically. The system actions are crafted using an easy-to-use HTML 5 programming environment, and will be deposited in a software library of modules that can be accessed by end users. Then, home automators can utilize a simple GUI editor to tailor their system to their wishes. We got to see a proof-of-concept system in person today, so head on past the break for a full video explanation and a demo of it in action.

Nicole Lee contributed to this report.

Filed under: Household, Intel

Comments

When I was 14, my stereo broke. Opening it up, I found a small piece of metal had been disconnected from the circuit board at the base. I grabbed a lighter, and melted the piece back in place. I plugged the stereo back in, and turned it on. It worked. It was the first time I actually got something I tried to fix working.

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Now that New York has finally joined the rest of the world with a city-wide bike rental program, users are finding great ways to further improve the service. Including Adafruit’s Becky Stern who retrofitted a run-of-the-mill bike helmet with a wicked LED light show and a handy indicator that lets riders find the nearest Citi Bike station—ensuring they always get their ride back on time.

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This is the Grounded Experimental Delta 3D printer, aka the Simpson, a project built by computer science teacher Nicholas Seward that does away with the excess frames, pulleys, and hardware associated with earlier models. Seward wanted a machine that could print itself and used “less vitamins,” namely metal parts that the machine couldn’t create from scratch. There are still motors and controllers, but there are fewer in this model than in any other I’ve seen.

Does it work? In the video below we see the Simpson in action. Seward named his bot after George Gaylord Simpson, the creator of the theory of quantum evolution, and I’d say this bot is an interesting leap forward.

The motion of the arms, in this case, is far more organic than the traditional linear gantry style devices I’ve seen. Because it uses fewer parts it’s far cheaper to make and because it can build itself it is a true RepRap or “self replicating machine.” Seward writes: “I want a machine that can walk or crawl and hopefully scribble its name. Maybe later the machine will run or skydive and make works of art. This is new territory for me and if I am not messing up then I am not working hard enough.”

The absolute best thing, however, is how open the RepRap community has been to Seward’s work. In less than a month, Seward went from idea to actual finished project and he is currently able to build smaller “baby” Simpson arms and hopes to print larger arms over the next few weeks. Rather than tear him down, the commenters are quite kind (“Congrats on getting it going. Such a magical moment when you see your creation actually starting to do what it was made to do, and it actually works!” wrote one with no apparent trace of sarcasm). It is the best of 3D printing, the maker movement, and the Internet rolled into one.

via 3DPrintingIndustry

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