Commodore Amiga lives again, in Mini PC form

One to provoke nostalgia, maybe, among Gadget Masters of a certain age... Commodore USA has breathed life into another old brand with the release of the Commodore Amiga Mini PC.

Taking a leaf of out Apple's Mac Mini book, it's a small form factor device with a bring-your own monitor and keyboard approach...

According to the company:

The new Commodore AMIGA mini case is ultra small and is made of 100% all aluminium housing, finished by sandblasting and anodic oxidation. It also includes a slot load Blu-Ray drive and internal space for two 2.5" hard drives. It measures 7.5 inches square, with a height of only 3 inches. There is no end to its placement possibilities.

The spec? Commodore USA says it features:

    * 16 Gigs of fast DD3 memory.
    * Integrated nVidia Geforce GT 430 Graphics with 1 Gig of DD3 memory.
    * The ability to drive 3 monitors displays.
    * HDMI, 2-Dual DVI and DisplayPort output. (includes VGA adaptor)
    * 7.1 channel high definition sound.
    * 6 Gb/s SATA HD
    * 4 USB 3.0 and 4 USB 2.0 ports for external data access.
    * A slot loading Blu-ray drive that can also write DVDs.
    * 2 WiFi antennae for outstanding signal reception.
    * A 1 Tb Hard Disk to store video and personal data.
    * Optional 300 or 600 Gb SSD drive

Thanks to Sue P for flagging this one. She says it is going to make her dig out the old Amiga buried at home, gathering dust...

[Via geeky-gadgets.com]

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DIY Geiger counter smartphone app helps measure radiation

Out of awful events sometimes the better side of human nature emerges... We previously highlighted - see How to build your own Geiger Counter - the work of some engineers at Libelium, a wireless sensor network company, to help the people of Japan, around Fukushima, determine levels of radiation for themselves.

Well, our sister site New Scientist's One Per Cent blog has recently reported on a Smarphone-based intitative to help people track the critically important levels of radiation around them.

Kat Austen, CultureLab editor, writes:

In the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster, amidst a climate of  general mistrust of government radiation data, a number of crowdsourced initiatives for mapping radiation levels sprang up, such as Japan Geigermap, in which radiation readings from citizens are aggregated and displayed online using a web service called pachube.

But most Geiger counters for personal use cost around $200, prohibiting many from measuring radiation for themselves. That's where non-profit organisation radiation-watch.org has stepped in.

They have devised a way for people to construct their own smartphone-compatible Geiger counter at home. Pocket Geiger uses 8 photodiodes to detect the radiation, aluminium foil to screen alpha and beta particles, and a plastic "Frisk" sweet box for the housing. The total cost is just $46.

Ishigaki started the project in June last year, and with the help of supporting scientists and a team of hackers he has developed the self-assembly Geiger counter and app to allow anyone to measure radiation levels in their home or neighbourhood and upload them to a central server, where they can be visualised on a map.

The project has now grown to over 10,000 users, but due to privacy issues the maps can only be viewed within the radiation-watch.org community.

Continuing to develop the technology, the team have recently launched the Pokega Type2. The first Geiger counter without an internal battery, the Pokega Type2 uses the same technology as its predecessor, except that it uses the smartphone as a source of power.

Costing just $65, the Pokega Type2 was developed with the help of a variety of external organisations, such as Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization and the Dutch Metrology Institute.

Read the full blog post >>

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National pie week ends on a Pi high

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Complete with build instructions for the design engineer who likes the silly side of inventing things and enjoys building stuff in his and her spare time, these gadgets range from highly silly and impractical to extraordinarily inspirational for your own engineering design work.

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Video: Get to grips with the BeagleBone

We're all for BeagleBoards here on Gadget Master and this is one I meant to flag before - Texas Instrument's system has a little brother: the BeagleBone, powered by the company's Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 processor.

"It builds in the most loved features of the BeagleBoard but has shrunk the size and price while adding more I/O connections," boasts TI in the video below. The RRP is $89.

To get started, simply plug it into your PC (Windows MacOs or Linux) and you can begin development... It will appear as a Flash drive and you will be able to extract the files to get you going.

Features of the hardware spec highlighted by BeagleBoard.org include:
    * Board size: 3.4" x 2.1"
    * Shipped with 2GB microSD card with the Angstrom Distribution with node.js and Cloud9 IDE
    * Single cable development environment with built-in FTDI-based serial/JTAG and on-board hub to give the same cable simultaneous access to a USB device port on the target processor
    * Industry standard 3.3V I/Os on the expansion headers with easy-to-use 0.1" spacing
    * On-chip Ethernet, not off of USB
    * Easier to clone thanks to larger pitch on BGA devices (0.8mm vs. 0.4mm), no package-on-package memories, standard DDR2 vs. LPDDR, integrated USB PHYs and more.

What is the BeagleBone capable of doing? They are glad you asked...

At over 1.5 billion Dhrystone operations per second and vector floating point arithmetic operations, the BeagleBone is capable of not just interfacing to all of your robotics motor drivers, location or pressure sensors and 2D or 3D cameras, but also running OpenCV, OpenNI and other image collection and analysis software to recognize the objects around your robot and the gestures you might make to control it. Through HDMI, VGA or LCD expansion boards, it is capable of decoding and displaying multiple video formats utilizing a completely open source software stack and synchronizing playback over Ethernet or USB with other BeagleBoards to create massive video walls. If what you are into is building 3D printers, then the BeagleBone has the extensive PWM capabilities, the on-chip Ethernet and the 3D rendering and manipulation capabilities all help you eliminate both your underpowered microcontroller-based controller board as well as that PC from your basement.

Read more details >>

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FTDI adds touch capability to its open source platform

Future Technology Devices International (FTDI) has added a touch control input/output application boards for its Vinco development module, writes Richard Wilson.

The Vinco Touch Key applications board, which the supplier calls a shield mates with the Vinco motherboard, and incorporates a STMicroelectronics STMPE821 8-channel general purpose input/output (GPIO) capacitive touch key controller IC.

The shield has 8 touch keys which employ a capacitive sensing technology, responding to physical input stimulus from the user. It also has a set of 4 push buttons and 5 GPIO-controlled LED indicators.

The touch keys are capable of passing input data to the Vinculum-II (VNC2) dual port USB host/device controller IC on the Vinco module via an I2C bus, where it can be processed by the IC's integrated 16-bit microcontroller core.

Access to the Vinco pulse width modulation (PWM) interface is also available on the header pins. The shield requires a 5V supply, which can be drawn from an external supply or through the Vinco motherboard connections.
 
"The new Touch Key shield demonstrates the Vinco platform's ability to utilise the Android Open Accessory initiative, so that devices using the Android operating system, such as tablet PCs, can control items of external hardware through a human machine interface (HMI), over USB," said Dave Sroka, global product director at FTDI.

The shield is supplied in a 55.4 mm x 68.6 mm  form-factor, the established format of the Arduino Duemilanove and Uno boards.

There are free software libraries, drivers and source code. An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) includes a code editor, 'C' compiler, assembler and debugger.

The FTDI Vinco Touch Key shield is available at a cost of $33.75 for single units.
 
More information is available for download at:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Documents/DataSheets/Modules/DS_Vinco.pdf

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I can't believe someone makes... a "Shut-up" device

When the person next to you on the train or the bus insists on talking loudly into a phone about what's for dinner or who was drunkest last night, or you're on an early train home and it coincides with chucking out time for the local sixth form college and dozens of boisterous teenagers have to talk across each other at 90db, wouldn't you just love one of these...

 

Japanese researchers Kazutaka Kurihara (National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology) and Koji Tsukada (Ochanomizu University) have invented a "SpeechJammer".

 

It looks a bit like a speed-gun, but when you point it at a person's mouth peace and quiet dewscends.  It records the speaker's voice through a directional microphone, adds a 0.2 second delay and fires it straight back at the speaker.

Human brains need instant feedback and the continuous "echo" of their voice disrupts the thought process and brings "target" to a stop.

It may be hard to believe that someone makes these, but as a commuter I think I want one!

Source: Gizmag

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When you can't find the camera you want

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Gadget Master features cool, homemade electronic gadgets proudly brought to us--by you!

Complete with build instructions for the design engineer who likes the silly side of inventing things and enjoys building stuff in his and her spare time, these gadgets range from highly silly and impractical to extraordinarily inspirational for your own engineering design work.

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Robot helicopters perform James Bond tune

Sponsored by Digi-Key
Gadget Master features cool, homemade electronic gadgets proudly brought to us--by you!

Complete with build instructions for the design engineer who likes the silly side of inventing things and enjoys building stuff in his and her spare time, these gadgets range from highly silly and impractical to extraordinarily inspirational for your own engineering design work.

Why not submit your own pride and joy for publication in Gadget Master? Send us your project details here.

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