Mind provokations.
The
ideas and concepts in these pages are collected for the purpose of stimulating
your imagination and creativity.They are not intended as real projects, and
are best suited for educational purposes, as they show how to look at everyday
technologies from a different perspective. Tought-provoking concepts that
come from e-mail I receive, my professional experiences, what I read, or simply
what I like most.
The Internet gives everyone the unprecedented experience of effectively sharing
ideas, thus removing the redundancy of reinventing the wheel, and increasing
the information content of your own work through a world-wide brainstorming.
Alternative
uses for your sound card:
1) Check you power bills with an AC power meter
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Are you energy hungry? Want to monitor your power
consumption? A cheap but effective way to monitor your kilowatt/hour appetite
is using a couple of transformers in conjunction with your PC. The sound
card here works as a dual channel RMS analog acquisition board.
click here to know more
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Alternative
uses for your sound card:
2) Internet Heartcare - a remote ECG tracer
Is a sound card capable to record
biologic signals, as ECG signals? Sound card are now cheap,but they often
bring a respectable 16 bit A/D and D/A converters!
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click here to know more
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These days, most of the interest derives
from the capacity of computers of being connected to the internet. With
the appropriate choice of software tools, an expert thousand of miles
away can monitor the experiment almost real time
.
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Alternative
uses for your sound card:
3) Computer GYM: "net surfing = real surfing" finally true
In some sense,
this idea is the reverse of the ECG one. Instead of picking electric signals
from the moving muscles, passive gym stimulators inject electric potentials
to the muscle to make it move. The ads on TV say these "stationary
gym exercises" are as effective as the real ones. Commercial's hype apart,
at least the basic concept must work, as professional stimulators based on
the very same concept are in use in so many hospitals.
I have seen once a design of one of these TV-shopping stimulators. It was
very simple: a microcontroller based waveform generator, a power amplifier,
and a voltage elevator (ferrite transformer). Sounds familiar? Your PC can
do the same, the only missing part is the transformer... and obviously the
software.
DISCLAIMER:
This information is provided as an idea only. Use it at your own risk. Components
involved can damage your equipements, cause injury to people and even be lethal.
Always keep safety first.
From the
X-files: the mystery relative position encoder
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click
here for more details on the x-y encoder
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X-Sensors has recently
released a new extra-low cost cartesian incremental
encoder. It is capable to precisely measure two axis movements (X and
Ydisplacements) with good repeatability and a resolution of up to 300
counts per inch. The sensor is based upon a well-proven contact roller
technology. Despite of its low price (models starting as low
as $ 3.99 are available), it comes fully cased and features
a 1200 baud standard serial interface and cable. The encoder doesn't
require any external power and, for your convenience, provides an extra
two switches that can be sampled using the same serial protocol.
Last minute: A wireless version of the encoder is now available.
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A CD-ROM
based complex signal generator
Some 7 years ago
I started building my first Meteosat receiver. The biggest problem was how
to get a stable, repeatable signal source. I ended up recording a real weather
satellite signal (noise included) on a .WAV file, playing it again and again
according to our needs. Now that CD-recorders are cheap and widespread, you
can get a much more compact, portable signal generator recording test files
on a CD-R and playing it back on any (audio) CD player.
Selecting the desired waveform is as simple as selecting a track number. Operation
is easy and convenient, and quality is usually high.
Battery powered CD players are most convenient as they are small and portable.
You can get pulses, complex signal as the weather satellite ones, sine or
arbitrary waves, comparable and repeatable noise bursts, and even low
speed serial packets. As a bonus, you can record the test signal on one channel
and a sync signal on another, an useful feature for sweep signals.
Homebrew
telemetry
What is the simplest,
quickest way to play with telemetry? My answer is: take an FM radio. Build
one of those 007 bugs (a simple single transistor Colpitts oscillator) and,
instead of driving it with a microphone, connect a simple 555-based VCO (voltage
controlled oscillator) whose frequency is changed by means of an NTC (temperature
dependent resistor). You can ear the tone on your FM radio, right? OK, connect
it to the computer and measure the frequency of the incoming signal to complete
your temperature telemetry system. You can check the greenhouse temperature
from home. Great toy.
Another easy, more modern way to do the same experiment is
to use a wireless headphone or microphone. The mic is easier to connect to
the PC, while phones are easier to drive with the oscillator signal. This
solution requires less knowledge of electronics and is more in the whitebox-component
style. The choice is up to you.
Choose
four: what's your pick of technologies for the near future?
Nobody can tell you what technology will be successful
or not in the future. And even if you have access to such a prediction,
it is almost useless to get rich. Bill Gates made a fortune on operating
systems, while other industry giants lost billion of dollars trying to
do the same. And then came Linux...
Personally speaking, l make my choice according to how stimulating, interesting,
elegant, open minded and fun (yes, fun) a technology is. In the worst
case, I won't be bored. |
click on technology compass
to know more
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Add your
provokations.
I will be happy
to see your provoations. If you have a nice idea, a tought provoking concept,
a way to reinvent everyday objects, don't hesitate to write me. The best ideas
will be added here.
An IDE logger, provokation
from Alexander Nickolsky: Novadays it is possible to buy a cheap used
notebook IDE HDD that needs only 5v and consumes not so much energy. It is
possible to make the simple IDE interface with the ability to write sectors
on HDD. Add ADC to it and here is a simple battery powered recorder for you.
You can pre-create one large file on the HDD and then write data there without
complexity of the file system. You can place this thing in some remote location
to constantly record temperature, humidity or whatever you like at specified
time intervals. Then you'll disconnect HDD, connect it to your PC and read
the data.
Great idea! As regards as the PC implementation, the most difficult part is
avoiding that Windows take control of the sound card when it is used for muscle
stimulation. Some time ago I used a Sound Blaster for generating 500Vac for
testing purpose. Everything worked fine until Windows decide to "bleep" a
sound for itself, that blowed up immediately any attached device !