Mar 03
This python fought a fresh water crocodile for five hours before eating it whole. Is this picture not gross enough for you? No problem. Here’s video:
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May 15
Yes, there’s a fleet of camera-equipped, remote-controlled blimps live-streaming a bird’s-eye view of Google I/O on YouTube, right now. It’s called Google AirShow and it’s taken over the airspace within Moscone Center. We briefly chatted with Chris Miller, a software engineer with AKQA (the company that put the dirigibles together for Google), about the technology used in each aircraft. It all begins with an off-the-shelf model airship that’s flown manually via standard a 2.4GHz radio. Each blimp is outfitted with a servo-controlled USB camera and 5GHz USB WiFi dongle which are both connected to a Raspberry Pi board running Debian, VLC and Python. A custom-designed Li-polymer battery system powers the on-board electronics. The webcam encodes video as motion-JPEG (720p, 30fps) and VLC generates a YouTube-compatible RTSP stream that’s broadcast over WiFi. Python’s used to pan the servo-controlled camera via the Raspberry Pi’s PWM output. The result is pretty awesome. But don’t just take our word for it — check out the gallery and source link below, then watch our hands-on video after the break.
Gallery: Google AirShow at I/O 2013
Filed under: Cameras, Misc, Transportation, Internet, Alt, Google
Source: I/O AirShow 2013
Jan 14
Nearly 800 snake hunters are signed up for the 2013 Python Challenge in Florida. For the next month, the hunters will be scouring the Everglades for the invasive Burmese pythons that are destroying the fragile ecosystem. This is a real thing. More »
Jan 11
This 9.8-foot (3 meters) python flew from Cairns, Australia, to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, attached to the wing of a Qantas’ passenger airplane. Sadly, the poor snake didn’t survive the trip, which lasted about 90 minutes. Warning: the video is hard to watch. Viewer discretion is advised. More »
Oct 17
It’s not a real birthday party without a present, so Google has just pulled the wraps off the first stable version of the Dart structured programming language, one year after it was launched. Along with “thousands” of bug fixes, the rejuvenated version will have a faster virtual machine, new JavaScript translator, HTML, server-side I/O and interoperable JavaScript libraries, the Pub package manager and Dartium, a Chromium build with native Dart support. Mountain view promised to keep the improvements coming “while maintaining backward compatibility” for the language, so if you feel frisky enough to jump JavaScript’s ship, check the source below (or video after the break) to see how to grab it.
Continue reading Google toasts Dart’s one-year anniversary with first stable SDK (video)
Filed under: Internet, Software, Google
Google toasts Dart’s one-year anniversary with first stable SDK (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Oct 2012 10:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Oct 05
Adafruit releases WebIDE alpha for Raspberry Pi, eases beginners into coding
Posted in: Today's Chili 
If you’ve been intrigued by the Raspberry Pi but were hesitant to get one because you’re new to Linux, Adafruit has a solution for you. The team that brought us the Raspberry Pi Education Linux Distro has come up with a special WebIDE (Web Integrated Development Environment) designed to run on the affordable barebones computer. It’s entirely web-based so there’s no need to install any software — just launch a browser, hook up your Pi, and you’re ready to go. To make life easier for coders, the platform has a terminal built in, plus there’s an automatic updater included to keep folks running only the freshest version of WebIDE. It’s currently at the alpha stage, so only experienced users should install it for now, but Adafruit’s hoping to roll out a stable release suitable for programmers of all levels sometime soon.
Adafruit releases WebIDE alpha for Raspberry Pi, eases beginners into coding originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Aug 26
Personal Energy Orb Arduino project knows you haven’t been exercising, cripples your computer
Posted in: Today's Chili
Spending too much time indoors? You need a Personal Energy Orb, a glowing Arduino powered ball that allows you to trade physical exertion for a tolerable mouse speed. Developed by two students at the University of Munich for a physical computing course, the PEO connects to a bike-mounted revolution counter to note how far a user rides, counting the total distance toward usable time on a computer. A fully “charged” green orb will allow a user to use their PC unhindered — but a spent red orb will drag Windows’ cursor sensitivity settings to its lowest. The idea, the project’s creators say, is to annoy the user off of the computer and back on to their bike. It sure sounds aggravating to us. Check out the full homework assignment at the source link below, complete with goals, follies and Python scripts.
Filed under: Misc
Personal Energy Orb Arduino project knows you haven’t been exercising, cripples your computer originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Aug 2012 02:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Aug 13
Adafruit builds Raspberry Pi-powered light painting rig, takes trippy photos
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Taking long exposure photographs at night and painting within them using an iPad may be old hat, but building your own light painting rig? That could earn you some serious geek cred, and according to Adafruit, it isn’t even all that hard. In a new walkthrough, the team fashioned such a contraption using a Raspberry Pi, a python script with under 60 lines of code, some open source software and a handful of electronic components. Not satisfied with the typical light wand, they decided to spice things up with a circular fixture built from PVC pipes and a hula hoop to hold the ribbon of LEDs. After being attached to a bike and paraded around at night, it created the 3D effect in the masterpiece above. If you’re itching to make your own works of art, check out Adafruit’s tutorial at the source link below.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Adafruit builds Raspberry Pi-powered light painting rig, takes trippy photos originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 03:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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