Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: i8.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to i8.com.

Comments · 18

  1. cool stuff built by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on What's the Coolest Thing You've Ever Built?

    he hardest part of it was probably getting the 170 volt switch mode power supply to work correctly (mainly getting it to regulate) and not put so much noise back into the 5 volt supply to cause latches and registers to lose their values. Some help from the NEONIXIE-L group on Yahoo was invaluable here, and I now have a decent 170 volt supply. couldn't you just rectify line voltage for that? 120Vrms will give you ~170V DC using a bridge rectifier and suitable filter capacitor, though you might want to put an isolation transformer in somewhere as well. That's what I'm using for my nixie tube clock I'm building right now... found a design on the web that uses 4x 74LS90 decade counters, 4x 74LS92 divide-by-6/divide-by-12 counters, a 74LS10 triple 3-input NAND gate, and a 74LS00 quad 2-input NAND gate, plus enough 7441s and nixies to display everything.

    As for cool things I'm building/built... one was a 6 by 4 foot topographic US Map painted to look like a satellite photo, with 200 LEDs on it - 100 in what we considered the most interesting national forests, parks, etc, 50 in the state capitals, and 50 in interesting places we found. The project took me and the rest of my family several months of summer vacation, and was donated to the local public library after we finished. I'm currently working on an upgrade to the control system - the original was a set of rotary switches that wasn't very easy to understand and broke down after people abused one of the switches. The new system uses an ASCII capable vacuum fluorescent display, a 4x4 matrix keypad, and a small embedded x86 based single board computer running Linux and a few hundred lines of C++ I wrote to manage it, though to reduce cost I may be changing that to a 286 SBC running a replacement BIOS written in assembly language to do the entire thing. The only pictures I have of it are on the horrible hosting I had access to when I did the project... excuse the ads and other crap. http://www.ch-portfolio.i8.com/USMap.html/

    Projects I'm working on right now: rebuilding the control unit for the map mentioned above, and a microcoded brainfuck processor built entirely from 74xx series SSI and LSI logic and 27xx series EPROMs. I decided to start that project because the only brainfuck processors I've seen so far are either basically interpreters running in dedicated hardware (the PIC based one) or FPGA based, which somehow seems like cheating.. (the VHDL one). Plus, I was bored.

    (would be posting as kastein, but my registration is taking forever to go through)
  2. Re:NERDS! by Blondie-Wan · · Score: 5, Interesting · on Watching All Six Star Wars Movies Simultaneously
    You must have missed the story about Klingon programming languages.

    And here's my all-time personal favorite nerdy accomplishment, a functioning LEGO robot that solves a Rubik's Cube - really.

  3. Re:Plain-Jane Lego, of course! by Japong · · Score: 4, Informative · on Classic Toys For Christmas?

    And not just for kids either... this has been seen on slashdot before, but the things people can do with Lego Mindstorms is simply amazing. An expensive set to be sure, but it's a toy that will scale up as the child grows older, and it's probably the most user friendly robotics set ever created. Of course, for $179.99 US (MSRP) you might want to just get one for yourself and ignore the kids altogether.

  4. Re:I'm too late! by FrenZon · · Score: 1 · on Automated Sentry Robots

    How about doing all that .. in Lego!.

  5. Re:Overreaction. by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 2, Interesting · on Automated Sentry Robots

    Check this out. It uses a camera to track its targets. http://jpbrown.i8.com/aegis.html

  6. That's neat! by targo · · Score: -1, Redundant · on Rubik's Famous Magic Cube in Lego Form

    Now, if we could also make a Lego Solver for it, it would be a geek nirvana.

  7. Now solve it! by Ford+Prefect · · Score: -1, Redundant · on Rubik's Famous Magic Cube in Lego Form

    Just need to put it in this for a completely Lego-based Rubik's cube solution!

  8. create your own. by michaelbuddy · · Score: 1, Informative · on Starting A Digital Art Program With Open Source

    First off, if you are wanting to teach, set aside time when you've learned the program to create some multimedia tutorials. Get camtasia studio and record tutorials, export them to flash. It's better and fast than writing a book with screenshots.

    If you are wanting some linux movies, check out xvidcap.

    It's a great idea to promote and use open source software. Some might say that those skills will have no marketability because the apps are open source and not industry standard. However, when teaching an art class and including computers, all you have to do is emphasize "Now this is free so you can use it at home. Photoshop is what most people in business use, but the same principles apply." Kids will remember that and they will pick up the right app if they are really interested in that field.

    Save the money by using OSS and buy some really nice digital cameras for everyone to use. Have the kids go out and capture the world. They'll love it. Then bring the pictures into gimp, try different things from contrasts to layermasking, and painting. Create meaningful collages. If they learn the gimp, they'll pick up photoshop, and then freehand, etc. They'll be fine. I'd recommend gimp over photoshop elements any day.

    Here are learning links I've found on blender. This is really a cool program to teach, but I know it will be difficult for some people to pick up. Teach them how to create a text object, write their name and render it with different light setups. Future filmmakers will really appreciate it I think.

    http://www.bl3nder.com/tutorials/ http://www.ctr.co.at/swf/3ds_max_1_zb1_num_calc.ht m http://www.blenderama.com/index.php?id=276 http://www.vrotvrot.com/xoom/tutorials.html http://blendedmind.i8.com/tutorials.html#tutorials http://www.blender.org/modules/documentation/htmlI / http://www.tutorialguide.net/software/blender/ http://www.blender3d.com/cms/Tutorials.243.0.html http://www.tltsu.ru/archive/blender/BlenderTutoria lPart3_.pdf http://project-blender.onlinehome.de/ http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~mein/blender/ http://www.ingiebee.com/Blendermania/tutorial_list .html http://renderosity.com/ http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/0 4/30/217225 http://www.geocities.com/paulthepuzzles/aardvarks. html http://blender.excellentwhale.com/ http://www.selleri.org/Blender/ http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/index.html http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=11202 6#112026 http://vrotvrot.com/xoom/tutorials.html http://www.linuxgraphic.org/section3d/blender/page

  9. Rubik's Cube by markfive · · Score: 2, Interesting · on LEGO Mindstorms Will Survive

    Awhile ago I was looking around for methods to solve the Rubik's Cube. I came upon this guy who created a cube solver entirely out of mindsorms. Complete with color recognotion camera. Pretty nifty if you ask me..

  10. New York is swell, but... by teamhasnoi · · Score: 5, Interesting · on New York City, LEGO Style
    does it run Linux?

    Seriously, I've always been more fascinated by things that aren't 'just' lego sculpture. Try this, or this

    As for buildings and 'industrial stuff, This site is pretty nifty, this is rather impressive as buildings go, as well as (w0w) this. And what the hell am I still doing up?

  11. Obligitory Lego URL by Kris_J · · Score: 3, Interesting · on Rubik's Cube Record Broken

    http://jpbrown.i8.com/cubesolver.html

  12. Re:Another similar project using Lego blocks by theTerribleRobbo · · Score: 1 · on Do It Yourself CD Changer

    Clickable:

    http://jpbrown.i8.com/cubesolver.html

  13. Re:Robotics by magullo · · Score: 2, Informative · on AIBO Via E-mail

    What's wrong with Lego Mindstorms (plus perhaps a miniITX to hook the Lego cam to)?

    Here's an impressive machine: Eric Sophie's Jamocklaquat

    And here is a fairly smart one: J.P. Brown's Rubik Cube Solver

    Too time consuming? You mean as compared to reading/posting about robotic toy robots on the internet? 8?)

  14. Re:wow by Istealmymusic · · Score: 1 · on Portable.NET Now 100% Free Software

    Way to prove your three original replies wrong. I commend you good sir. ducks

  15. You can work a Rubik's Cube with Legos by Amizell · · Score: 3, Interesting · on Lego Addictions

    Here are instructions on how to build a robot out of Legos that can solve all of those stupid Rubik's Cubes you have laying around your house. Fighting toys with toys: now that's elegant.

  16. Re:Sounds like the same mistakes as lisp... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Crush/BRiX: An Experimental Language/OS Pair
    I beg to differ. Personally, I have zero experience with Lisp but in my limited intercourse with Squeak, I was not only shocked at Schemes apparent elegance, but misconstrued by its promisciousity. How does one expect to get anything done when upon every reboot, eth0 loudly and wantonly proclaims it is in heat and needs Squeaky cheesecurds badly? Anyways who cares, I just suppose its best to return to Wisconsin where cheese makers and fudge packers are real cheese makers and fudge packers, instead of here in California where Kraft Foods markets its own cheese food alongside EasyMac in the Post foods aisle. Is that why they call duck butter a duckbutter workalike? Accept no imitations.

    Oh sorry, I almost lost my train of thought. As I was saying, I completely agree with your thoughts and opinions on tight-woven spandex on Natalie Portman. Glad we settled our differences.

  17. Re:Sounds like the same mistakes as lisp... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Crush/BRiX: An Experimental Language/OS Pair
    I beg to differ. Personally, I have zero experience with Lisp but in my limited intercourse with Squeak, I was not only shocked at Schemes apparent elegance, but misconstrued by its promisciousity. How does one expect to get anything done when upon every reboot, eth0 loudly and wantonly proclaims it is in heat and needs Squeaky cheesecurds badly? Anyways who cares, I just suppose its best to return to Wisconsin where cheese makers and fudge packers are real cheese makers and fudge packers, instead of here in California where Kraft Foods markets its own cheese food alongside EasyMac in the Post foods aisle. Is that why they call duck butter a duckbutter workalike? Accept no imitations.

    Oh sorry, I almost lost my train of thought. As I was saying, I completely agree with your thoughts and opinions on tight-woven spandex on Natalie Portman. Glad we settled our differences.

  18. Ah, but the best RCX creation of all time is ... by J.D.+Hogg · · Score: 5, Interesting · on The Amazing Lego DAT Tape Changer

    ... the lego Rubik's cube solver : that thing was so cool !