Category Archives: Products

Remote-Controlled Submarines

Remote-Controlled Omnidirectional Submarines:

These remote-controlled submarines fit into the palm of your hand and have dual propeller propulsion systems that allow omnidirectional movement underwater in a bathtub, swimming pool, or in shallow ponds. The submarines dive and surface like an actual naval submarine, and the three high-powered motors ensure rapid movement forward, backward, left, right, and while performing 360 progressive rolls. The submarines have dual LED headlights and each unit operates on a unique radio frequency, allowing underwater races with multiple submarines. Includes rechargeable batteries that run for three minutes after a three minute charge.

Fun looking toy. Via: Remote-Controlled Submarines. Related: Science and Engineering Gadgets and Gifts – Lego Autopilot Project Update – Underwater Robots Collaborate

Design for the Unwealthiest 90 Percent

Design for the unwealthiest 90 percent by Alice Rawsthorn:

Many humanitarian designers focus on helping the needy to enhance their earning potential by setting up new businesses, or running existing ones more efficiently. The Bamboo Treadle Pump enables poor farmers in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia and India to pump up groundwater during the dry season. The Big Boda Load-Carrying Bicycle provides cheap transport in Kenya and Uganda to carry hundreds of pounds of cargo or two passengers using pedal-power. And thanks to the KickStart MoneyMaker Block Press, eight workers can produce up to 800 building blocks a day from soil and a small quantity of cement.

Innovative Alarm Clocks

I heard about clocky last year on NPR and again last week. Gauri Nanda, designed clocky while a student at MIT – an alarm clock that runs and hides so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. She has since manufactured them and now you can buy your very own mobile clock.

There is also the April Fools joke, SnÅ«zNLÅ«z – Wifi Donation Alarm Clock, but I think people would really buy it. “Connects via WiFi to your online bank account, and donates YOUR real money to an organization you HATE when you decide to snooze!”

Two Screens Are Better Than One

3072x769 monitor

Two Screens Are Better Than One:

Microsoft researchers haven’t perfected the genie, but they’ve found a tool that can increase your productivity by 9 to 50 percent and make your work day easier. And you can begin using it right away. The researchers conducted user studies that proved the effectiveness of adding a second or even third monitor to your workstation, creating a wide-screen effect. In addition, they found out how the operating system needs to change to accommodate a larger screen area.

I must say when moving to two screens I was surprised how much of a difference it made. I look forward to my huge screen.

In the photo (from Photo from: Women Go With the (Optical) Flow – pdf) three projectors, show screens on a curved Plexiglas panel, resulting in a 3072 x768 resolution display. The display was curved to avoid distortion at the farthest fields of vision. Gary Starkweather, who also invented the laser printer, is the designer behind this effort.

Lego Autopilot Project Update

An update to, The sub-$1,000 UAV Project from Chris Anderson – Lego Autopilot is Working!:

Our summer project is to create a sub-$1,000 UAV as a proof-of-concept for a drone competition for kids. This weekend we passed a major milestone with a successful ground test of the key elements. The video below shows the prototype working.

We’d initially intended to do all the autopilot functions in Lego, but the gyro programming turned out to be beyond our abilities. So we switched to a commercial stabilization unit to keep the plane level and just use the Lego Mindstorms for waypoint navigation.

Very cool.

Micro-Wind Turbines for Home Use

Hong Kong Inventors Unveil New Micro-Wind Turbines Suitable for City Dwellers

“Let’s say if you have good conditions, five, six meters [of wind] per second, if you are a family with one kid you need most probably three, four square meters of that then you can most probably cover at least 60, 70 percent of your [energy] needs.” The technology can also help power bigger buildings. Administrators at Hong Kong’s Sea School, a secondary school offering basic seaman training, will install the new micro wind-turbines on its roof in April.

Gambarota says his biggest dream is to see his invention being used in developing countries. He says energy generated by micro wind turbines can be used to pump water, for example, saving women and girls from having to walk for miles to rivers and lakes to fetch it.

Information from Motorwave. Very cool idea though still early (they are meant only to provide electricity for immediate use at this time – no way to sell excess power to the grid or battery backup yet).

Engineering Students Design Innovative Hand Dryer

Engineering students design innovative hand dryer:

Two engineering students at the University of Iceland have designed an innovative hand dryer, which is powered by hot water and uses only ten percent of the energy that conventional hand dryers need.
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The students’ instructor, Thorsteinn Ingi SigfÃºsson, a professor in physics, got the idea for the hand dryer. The students received a grant from The Icelandic Student Innovation Fund to develop his idea.
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The water goes through a process of metabolism when it comes in touch with a special heating element inside the hand dryer and changes into air, which is blown out of the hand dryer with a fan, as described by one of the designers, Hildigunnur JÃ³nsdÃ³ttir.

The sub-$1,000 UAV Project

The sub-$1,000 UAV project by Chris Anderson:

This summer my project will be to come up with a set of resources and instructions that will allow regular non-engineer people (and kids) to put together a drone for less than $1,000 that has most if not all of the functionality of this $10,000 beauty. The DraganFlyer autonomous helicopter platform shown above starts at just $2,400, and these guys seem to have made good progress on the essentials of a $500 helicopter UAV

Very cool. Hopefully we can post an update on the progress.

Albatross is an open source unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs) project (March 21st, 2007: “unfortunately this project has to be put on hold… We are seeking opportunities to combine our work to date with other ongoing UAV research and projects, before it becomes hopelessly obsolete”). Paparazzi is an open source project for an autopilot system.

Â£25 Gadget Saves Energy

Â£25 fridge gadget that could slash greenhouse emissions by David Adam:

Invented by British engineers, the Â£25 gadget significantly reduces the amount of energy used by fridges and freezers, which are estimated to consume about a fifth of all domestic electricity in the UK. If one was fitted to each of the 87 million refrigeration units in Britain, carbon dioxide emissions would fall by more than 2 million tonnes a year.
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Because air heats up much more quickly than yoghurt, milk or whatever else is stored inside, this makes the fridge work harder than necessary. With the cube fitted, the fridge responds only to the temperature of the food, which means it clicks on and off less often as the door is open and closed. Trials are under way with supermarkets, breweries and hotels. One of the largest, the Riverbank Park Plaza hotel in London, fitted the device to each of the hotel’s 140 major fridges and freezers. David Bell, chief engineer, says energy use decreased by about 30% on average – enough to slash the hotel’s annual electricity bill by Â£17,000. The Park Plaza group plans to fit them throughout its UK hotels, and to recommend them overseas.
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Mr Freedman said the devices would have the biggest impact in the large freezers and open chill cabinets used in the catering and supermarket industries. They do reduce the energy consumption of domestic fridges, but the saving is not so great because the door is not opened very often.

Open Source 3-D Printing

3-D Fabrication Goes Open Source

Hod Lipson and Evan Malone of Cornell University have cooked-up a cheap DIY 3-D printer – the Fab@Home – that they believe could lead to the widespread use of fabrication machines by hobbyists and experimenters. Fabrication machines, or fabbers, operate on the same principle as inkjet printers, but instead of squirting out ink onto paper, they squirt plastic or other materials into three-dimensional shapes. Commercial systems average around $100,000, but you can build Cornell’s Fab@Home for about US$2,300 worth of off-the-shelf parts.