Sep 25 2009

Segway x2

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Sep 25 2009

2009 Honda U3-X Personal Mobility Concept

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2009 Honda U3-X Personal Mobility Concept.


Sep 25 2009

ASIMO Serves First FCX Clarity Customers

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Watch multiple ASIMOs serving the very first FCX Clarity customers at Honda’s Head Office in Aoyama, Tokyo.

American Honda Motor Co., Inc., recently announced five of the first customers for its advanced new FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle and also provided details of the world’s first fuel cell vehicle dealership network in the United States. The announcements were made during a ceremony for the start of FCX Clarity production at the world’s first dedicated fuel cell vehicle manufacturing facility in Japan on June 16, 2008.

Film producer Ron Yerxa will take delivery of the first FCX Clarity in July. The remaining four early adopters for Honda’s next-generation fuel cell vehicle are author and actress Jamie Lee Curtis and her filmmaker husband Christopher Guest; business owner and car enthusiast Jim Salomon; actress Laura Harris; and Jon Spallino, already the world’s first retail fuel cell vehicle customer, who has been leasing the current generation FCX since 2005. Yerxa, Harris and Spallino attended the event in Japan.

More about ASIMO at: http://www.asimo.honda.com


Sep 1 2009

Review: X10 Home Automation with Arduino

This is a re-post of  this blog posting since it appears to be a 404.
—-
My current project revolves around using the Arduino and the X10 home automation protocol and hardware. The gist of what I am doing with this project is using the Parallax RFID (found here) tag to identify me and then use X10 protocol/hardware (Part# 1134B from SmartHomes via Amazon) to automate my home. Below is the wiring diagram.
X10_wire

In this example, I control 1 device (on X10 circuit A, device 1). I initally turn the device off. When the RFID tag I am looking for is read, I turn the lights on. Next time that tag is read, I turn the lights off. I acknowledge various changes by providing feedback to the user via blinking LEDs and serial comms to the PC. I use the free SSH/telnet client PuTTY, found here.

Now, for the code…

——————————————–
#include x10.h
#include x10constants.h

// RFID reader variables
#define TAG_LEN 12
char tag[12] = {‘0′, ‘F’, ‘0′, ‘3′, ‘0′, ‘3′, ‘7′, ‘1′, ‘8′, ‘5′};
char code[12];
int bytesread = 0;
int ledPin = 13; // Connect LED to pin 13
int rfidPin = 2; // RFID enable pin connected to digital pin 2
int val=0;

// X10 Control unit variables
int zcPin = 9;
int dataPin = 8;
int repeat = 1;
boolean LightsOn = false;

// Declare and instance of an X10 control module
x10 myHouse = x10(zcPin, dataPin); // 9 is 0xing pin; 8 is data pin

void setup()
{

// Begin serial comms with the PC
Serial.begin(2400); // RFID reader SOUT pin connected to Serial RX pin at 2400bps

// X10 Module
myHouse.write(A, ALL_UNITS_OFF, repeat);
pinMode(zcPin,INPUT);
pinMode(dataPin,OUTPUT);

// RFID
pinMode(rfidPin,OUTPUT); // Set digital pin 2 as OUTPUT to connect it to the RFID /ENABLE pin
pinMode(ledPin,OUTPUT); // Set ledPin to output
digitalWrite(rfidPin, LOW); // Activate the RFID reader

blink(); // All variables are set, notify user ready to operate
Serial.println(“Setup complete, all lights OFF.”);
}

void loop()
{

if(Serial.available() > 0)
{ // if data available from reader

if((val = Serial.read()) == 10)
{ // check for header
bytesread = 0;

while(bytesread<10)
{ // read 10 digit code

if( Serial.available() > 0)
{
val = Serial.read();

if((val == 10)||(val == 13))
{ // if header or stop bytes before the 10 digit reading
break; // stop reading
}

code[bytesread] = val; // add the digit

bytesread++; // ready to read next digit
}
}

if(bytesread >= 10)
{ // if 10 digit read is complete
Serial.flush(); // clear “ghost” readings of the same RFID

if(strcmp(code, tag) == 0) // Does the tag read match the one we are looking for
{
Serial.print(“Tag matches: “); // Yes
Serial.println(code);

if (LightsOn == false) // If lights are off, turn them on.
{
blink();
myHouse.write(A, UNIT_1, repeat);
myHouse.write(A, ON, repeat);
LightsOn = true;
Serial.println(“Lights ON.”);
}

else // Lights are on, so turn them off
{
blink();
myHouse.write(A, UNIT_1, repeat);
myHouse.write(A, OFF, repeat);
LightsOn = false;
Serial.println(“Lights OFF.”);
}

digitalWrite(rfidPin, HIGH); // Pause the reader after a read cycle to reduce multiple
delay(3000); // readings from the same tag.
Serial.flush();
digitalWrite(rfidPin, LOW);
}

else // Tag read is not the one we’re looking for.
{
Serial.print(code);
Serial.println(” does not match”);
digitalWrite(rfidPin, HIGH); // Flush accidental multiple readings
delay(3000);
Serial.flush();
digitalWrite(rfidPin, LOW);
}
}

bytesread = 0; // clear system and prepare for next cycle
delay(500); // wait for a second
}
}
}

/***************************
* Function: blink
* Blink the LED to ack actions
****************************/
void blink()

{
digitalWrite(13,HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(13,LOW);
}


Aug 23 2009

The Closest Habitable Solar System: Gliese 581

PP-xx template

Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star with spectral type M3V, located 20.3 light years away from Earth. Its mass is estimated to be approximately a third of that of the Sun, and it is the 87th closest known star system to the Sun. Observations suggest that the star has at least four planets: Gliese 581 bcde.[9]

The star system gained attention after Gliese 581 c, the first low mass extrasolar planet found to be near its star’shabitable zone, was discovered in April 2007. It has since been shown that under known terrestrial planet climate models, Gliese 581 c is likely to have a runaway greenhouse effect, and hence is probably not habitable. However, the subsequently discovered outermost planet Gliese 581 d is firmly within the habitable zone. In April 2009, the discovery of exoplanet Gliese 581 e[9] at that time the closest-known in mass to Earth, was announced.


Aug 16 2009

First neutrino observation

clipped from en.wikipedia.org
File:First neutrino observation.jpg
The world’s first neutrino observation in a hydrogen bubble chamber was found Nov. 13, 1970, on this historical photograph from the Zero Gradient Synchrotron’s 12-foot bubble chamber. The invisible neutrino strikes a proton where three particle tracks originate (right). The neutrino turns into a muon, the long center track. The short track is the proton. The third track is a pi-meson created by the collision.

Jul 25 2009

The Rod of Asclepius and The Caduceus

The Rod of Asclepius has traditionally been the symbol for healing and medicine. However, over time the Caduceus has been confused with the Rod of Asclepius and mistakenly used to represent medicine.

“A 1992 survey of American health organizations found that 62% of professional associations used the rod of Asclepius, whereas in commercial organizations, 76% used the caduceus.”Graphically, the Caduceus makes is a more elaborate symbol and would be more fun to use in a logo, however, it’s origins are not related to medicine or healing.

The caduceus is sometimes used as a symbol for medicine or physicians (instead of the rod of Asclepius) even though the symbol has no connection with Hippocrates and any association with healing arts is something of a stretch. Its singularly inappropriate connotations of theft, commerce, deception and death have provided fodder for academic humor.

The rod of Asclepius (sometimes also spelled Asklepios or Aesculapius), also known as the asklepian,[1] is an ancient symbol associated with astrology, the Greek god Asclepius and with healing. It consists of a serpent entwined around a staff. The name of the symbol derives from its early and widespread association with Asclepius, the son of Apollo, who was a practitioner of medicine in ancient Greek mythology. His attributes, the snake and the staff, sometimes depicted separately in antiquity, are combined in this symbol.[2] The Rod of Asclepius also represents the constellation Ophiuchus (or Ophiuchus Serpentarius), the thirteenth sign of the sidereal zodiac.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

The caduceus is typically depicted as a short herald’s staff entwined by two serpents in the form of a double helix, and sometimes is surmounted by wings. This staff first was borne by Iris, the messenger of Hera. It also was called the wand of Hermes when he superseded Iris in much later myths.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

Examples

medical_symbols

Guess which one our National Government is using?

“Everyone’s searching for Barack Obama’s health care logo online right now after Rush Limbaugh mentioned how a right-wing blog thinks it looks like something from Nazi Germany.” - From buzzfeed.com via jameskurtz

obama_caduceus


Jul 24 2009

Schrödinger’s cat

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

Schrödinger’s Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not a mixture of alive and dead.

Jul 12 2009

High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace

clipped from www.wired.com

Latitude 48° 14 North. Longitude 174° 26 West.
Almost midnight on the North Pacific, about 230 miles south of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. A heavy fog blankets the sea. There’s nothing but the wind spinning eddies through the mist.

Out of the darkness, a rumble grows. The water begins to vibrate. Suddenly, the prow of a massive ship splits the fog. Its steel hull rises seven stories above the water and stretches two football fields back into the night. A 15,683-horsepower engine roars through the holds, pushing 55,328 tons of steel. Crisp white capital letters — COUGAR ACE — spell the ship’s name above the ocean froth. A deep-sea car transport, its 14 decks are packed with 4,703 new Mazdas bound for North America. Estimated cargo value: $103 million.


Jun 18 2009

Uncanny valley

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

The uncanny valley hypothesis holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.

It was introduced by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970, and has been linked to Ernst Jentsch’s concept of “the uncanny” identified in a 1906 essay, “On the Psychology of the Uncanny”.[1] Jentsch’s conception is famously elaborated upon by Sigmund Freud in a 1919 essay titled “The Uncanny” (“Das Unheimliche“).[2] A similar problem exists in realistic 3D computer animation, such as with the films Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,[3] The Polar Express,[3] and Beowulf.[4]