Arcade/SpaceInvaders – Computer Acheology

Wow, this brings back memories! From the Z80 assembly language to the hardware specs. Those were the days.

09A5: 23              INC     HL                  ; Load ...
09A6: 7E              LD      A,(HL)              ; ... the ...
09A7: 23              INC     HL                  ; ... screen ...
09A8: 66              LD      H,(HL)              ; ... coordinates ...
09A9: 6F              LD      L,A                 ; ... to HL
09AA: C3 AD 09        JP      $09AD               ; ** Usually a good idea, but wasted here

;##-Print4Digits
; Print 4 digits in DE
09AD: 7A              LD      A,D                 ; Get first 2 digits of BCD or hex
09AE: CD B2 09        CALL    $09B2               ; Print them
09B1: 7B              LD      A,E                 ; Get second 2 digits of BCD or hex (fall into print)

;##-DrawHexByte
; Display 2 digits in A to screen at HL
09B2: D5              PUSH    DE                  ; Preserve
09B3: F5              PUSH    AF                  ; Save for later

More info at: Arcade/SpaceInvaders – Computer Acheology

Everyone should have the opportunity to code. Join in here: http://code.org/learn

Blokify 3D Modeling Software | MAKE

Electronics Workshop Craft Science Home Art & Design Maker Pro SUBSCRIBE Projects Blog Magazine Videos Skill Builders Reviews Events Shop Forums Education Blokify 3D Modeling Software By Goli Mohammadi Posted 10/10/2013 @ 5:40 pm Category 3D Printing, General, Kids & Family Comments 0

Last month, at World Maker Faire New York‘s 3D Printer Village, I had the pleasure of meeting two enthusiastic, bright makers, Jenny Kortina and Brett Cupta, who were sharing their brand new creation with the community: Blokify. Their custom block-based 3D modeling software makes it easy for folks, especially kids, to build object models, which they can then send directly to a home 3D printer or get printed through Blokify’s service. Giving kids easy access to designing and printing their own toys has great impact on creative potential. I was impressed with their clean, slick, approachable interface, and they had a steady stream of engaged Fairegoers interacting with their displays all weekend long

More info at: Blokify 3D Modeling Software | MAKE

This is what a Filled-up Maker’s Notebook Looks Like

A two year journey of one editor's battered Maker's Notebook.

Read more on MAKE

More info at: This is what a Filled-up Maker’s Notebook Looks Like

Every spaceship ever

Every spaceship ever. To size. Compiled by Dirk Loechel.

More info at: Every spaceship ever

EE Bookshelf: The International System of Units, 8th Edition

Have you ever wondered what the official SI unit for magnetic field strength is (hint: ampere per metre), or maybe kinematic viscosity (square metre per second), or perhaps the correct abbreviations or symbols for some specific SI unit or value?  The Bible of SI Units, The International System of Units, 8th Edition, has all the (very official) answers and can be downloaded in PDF format in English or French from the website of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures.  It’s actually just kind of find reading through one of the most important changes in recent scientific history, but it’s particularly useful in a world where there is still a lot of confusion over which units and scale are appropriate to use and when, and how to properly cite them!

More info at: EE Bookshelf: The International System of Units, 8th Edition

The Simpsons' secret formula: it's written by maths geeks | Television & radio | The Observer

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News US World Sports Comment Culture Business Money Environment Science Travel Tech Media Life & style Data Culture Television & radio The Simpsons The Simpsons' secret formula: it's written by maths geeks When one of Britain's best-known science writers went to Los Angeles to meet the show's writers for a new book, he found a team dedicated to inserting gags about complex maths problems. And you thought it was just a cartoon… Share 462

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Simon Singh The Observer, Saturday 21 September 2013 Jump to comments (309)

The Simpsons: TV's secret mathematicians. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/20th Century Fox Without doubt, the most mathematically sophisticated television show in the history of primetime broadcasting is The Simpsons. This is not a figment of my deranged mind, which admittedly is obsessed with both The Simpsons and mathematics, but rather it is a conc

More info at: The Simpsons' secret formula: it's written by maths geeks | Television & radio | The Observer

Teach kids programming — Medium

Updated September 15, 2013

2 min read Teach kids programming A collection of resources

I’ve been gathering the best resources to teach children & teens programming — books, environments, apps, courseware and games.

These resources are meant for teachers and parents who want to have their children fall in love with computers and see the magic of programming.

I’m staying away from philosophical debates of whether kids should learn to program, when they should start and other such topics. I know this — I fell in love with computers in 3rd grade (a beautiful ZX Spectrum), and I want to share the joy of programming with others.

I’ve chosen in this list to be quite comprehensive in listing all resources — but also choosy to restricting this to things I found useful & of high quality.

I’ve also started this list with my own opinionated picks on what kind of material from the larg

More info at: Teach kids programming — Medium

Easy 6502 ebook (with a built-in emulator)

Easy 6502

Why 6502? Why not a useful assembly language, like x86? Well, I don’t think learning x86 is useful. I don’t think you’ll ever have to write assembly language in your day job – this is purely an academic exercise, something to expand your mind and your thinking. 6502 was originally written in a different age, a time when the majority of developers were writing assembly directly, rather than in these new-fangled high-level programming languages. So, it was designed to be written by humans. More modern assembly languages are meant to written by compilers, so let’s leave it to them. Plus, 6502 is fun. Nobody ever called x86 fun.

via \@radar

More info at: Easy 6502 ebook (with a built-in emulator)

MAKE | Smartphone Servo

Electronics Workshop Craft Science Home Art & Design Maker Pro SUBSCRIBE Projects Blog Magazine Videos Skill Builders Reviews Events Shop Forums Education MAKE: PROJECTS Smartphone Servo By Kazuhisa “Kazu” Terasaki Category: Computers & Mobile, Electronics, Robotics Time Required: 30 minutesDifficulty: Easy Comments 2

Smartphones have become our primary interface to the network world, and increasingly, to the real world as well. I call this project GlueMotor, because it works like “glue” for putting gadgets together under smartphone control, providing a very easy way to build simple servo-controlled machines.

To use it for making simple gadgets or prototyping your projects, attach any convenient on-hand materials — PVC pipe, chopsticks, Legos, duct tape — to a GlueMotor, then plug it into your smartphone’s headphone jack. The GlueMotor app lets you control it with a finger swipe.

How It Works Controlling a hobby servomotor is relatively easy. It requires a single digital pulse

More info at: MAKE | Smartphone Servo

Beautifully rendered electromagnetic radiation chart from 1944

Electromagnetic radiation infographic from 1944 is beautiful, informative

At some point in the last few decades, someone took a poster and stuffed it in an unused office at Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL). The poster was made by the W.M Welch Scientific Company in 1944, and it depicts in excruciatingly awesome detail how electromagnetic waves work.

Each section of the spectrum corresponds to a color-coded section in the bottom area. You can learn all about the properties, uses, and effects of each type of electromagnetic wave. It covers everything from simple diffraction to the effects of cosmic rays.

You can check it out on the LLNL Flickr page and zoom way in – its resolution is 10,000 x 6958 pixels and it’s a 107MB jpeg file.

More info at: Beautifully rendered electromagnetic radiation chart from 1944

Cereal Box Robot

Think outside the cereal box to create an upcycled robot! Anyone who’s a fan of MAKE must, at a minimum, appreciate a good robot when they see it. So when there’s an easy way to create a robot from materials you have in your kitchen, it’s a great, budget-friendly way to have fun with your kids on a summer’s day—or anytime.

Read more on MAKE

More info at: Cereal Box Robot

Retro Wooden Robot Nut Crackers

Matthias Zschaler designed two retro-styled wooden Nut Crackers for SUCK UK that look like robots. To operate them, the nut goes in the robot’s tummy and the key is turned to crack open the shell. They are available to purchase at SUCK UK.

…Robot Nut Crackers are easy to use and will break into any nut, from the smallest hazelnut to the toughest walnut. Your new best friend is made from solid beech wood and finished with a gleaming retro paint-job.

More info at: Retro Wooden Robot Nut Crackers

Eleven iPad-centric schools to open in the Netherlands

Eleven schools in The Netherlands plan to replace blackboards, schedules and more with iPads. In fact, each student's entire educational career will hinge on Apple's revolutionary tablet device.

Scheduled to open this August, the so-called "Steve Jobs Schools" will host about 1,000 children, aged four to 12. According to Spiegel Online, the curriculum will be largely student-directed. Gone will be typical education tools like lesson plans, schedules, grades and parent-teacher meetings.

The school day will be atypical as well. While each participating school will be open from 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM each workday, students will only be required to attend between 10:30 AM and 3:00 PM. Also, parents will be encouraged to take vacations as it suits their own schedules.

Gertjan Kleinpaste, the principal of a participating school in Rotterdam, understands that the program will be envied by some and reviled by others. It's certainly a bold educational experiment. I'm quite interested to see how this pans out.

Eleven iPad-centric schools to open in the Netherlands originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 02 Jul 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More info at: Eleven iPad-centric schools to open in the Netherlands

Robotic Machine Vision Software

RoboRealm® is an application for use in computer vision, image analysis, and robotic vision systems. Using an easy point and click interface RoboRealm simplifies vision programming! With an inexpensive USB webcam and the PC you already have you can now add machine vision to your robotic projects! Image and/or video processing can be technically difficult. Home robots are continuously moving towards PC based systems (laptop, netbook, embedded, etc.) that have the power to support complex image processing functions. RoboRealm provides the software needed to get such a system up and running. We've compiled many image processing functions into an easy to use windows based application that you can use with a webcam, TV Tuner, IP Camera, etc. Use RoboRealm to see your robot's environment, process the acquired image, analyze what needs to be done and send the needed signals to your robot's motors, servos, etc.

For example, you can use RoboRealm to track colored objects, navigate with obstacle avoidance, identify fiducials that let your robot know where it is, and much more!

More info at: Robotic Machine Vision Software

How-To: A Quick and Sturdy Wood Box

At some point we're all going to need to build a box. Whether it's to keep a tool safe, or build a project enclosure, knowing how to make a box that's a custom size really comes in handy.

Read the full article on MAKE

More info at: How-To: A Quick and Sturdy Wood Box

Arduino Robot

\$275 from the MakerShed.

With the Arduino Robot, you can learn about electronics, mechanics, and software. It is a tiny computer on wheels. It comes with a number of of project examples you can easily replicate, and it is a powerful robotics platform that you can hack to perform all sorts of tasks. The robot comes with a large number of inputs; two potentiometers, five buttons, a digital compass, five floor sensors, and an SD card reader. It also has a speaker, two motors, and a color screen as outputs. You can control all these sensors and actuators through the Robot library. There are two different boards on the Robot: the Control Board (top) and the Motor Board (bottom). If you're just getting started with electronics and programming, you should work with the Control Board. As you become more experienced, you may want to tinker with the Motor Board.

More info at: Arduino Robot

Arduino - Robot

The Arduino Robot is the first official Arduino on wheels. The robot has two processors, one on each of its two boards. The Motor Board controls the motors, and the Control Board reads sensors and decides how to operate. Each of the boards is a full Arduino board programmable using the Arduino IDE. Both Motor and Control boards are microcontroller boards based on the ATmega32u4 (datasheet). The Robot has many of its pins mapped to on-board sensors and actuators. Programming the robot is similar to the process with the Arduino Leonardo. Both processors have built-in USB communication, eliminating the need for a secondary processor. This allows the Robot to appear to a connected computer as a virtual (CDC) serial / COM port. As always with Arduino, every element of the platform – hardware, software and documentation – is freely available and open-source. This means you can learn exactly how it's made and use its design as the starting point for your own robots. The Arduino Robot is the result of the collective effort from an international team looking at how science can be made fun to learn. Arduino is now on wheels, come ride with us!

More info at: Arduino - Robot

MAKE | Introducing New Column from Arduino’s Massimo Banzi

Ask any maker what the hottest subjects are in DIY electronics these days, and odds are the first answer will be Arduino. Since the earliest boards were built in 2005 to enable students to run interactive design projects with open-source tools, the platform has become a world-wide phenomenon, igniting the imaginations of makers, hackers, and artists all over. Simply speaking, Arduino is huge in the maker and MAKE communities. Here’s a great interview Dale Dougherty conducted with Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi from MAKE Vol. 32.

Today we are thrilled to announce Massimo will be writing a monthly column for MAKE, which we’re calling “MAKE the Future with Arduino.” On the first Tuesday of each month, Massimo will share his unique perspective on the Arduino platform, including insight on the development of the boards, new products, and exciting projects for Arduino fans to share and adapt. Indeed, today’s first column is a preview of an exciting new Arduino product that will be unveiled to the world at Maker Faire Bay Area this week—the Arduino Robot.

So, please join us in welcoming Massimo to MAKE!

More info at: MAKE | Introducing New Column from Arduino’s Massimo Banzi

Sparki - The Easy Robot for Everyone! by ArcBotics — Kickstarter

Easy, affordable, feature packed Arduino robot. Comes w/ sensors motors and more. Great intro to programming/electronics/robots

New: Drag-and-Drop

We're partnering with MiniBloq to bring Drag-and-Drop programming to Sparki! Easy robot programming, bringing the age range down to elementary, and opens robotics to whole new group of future roboticists.

More info at: Sparki - The Easy Robot for Everyone! by ArcBotics — Kickstarter

RoboBrrd : Your DIY Educational Robotic Pet!

Another cool robot from RobotGrrl.

Buddy 4000 Your Fun Robot!

A classy robot chassis designed to express robot emotions with an artistic flair

More info at: RoboBrrd : Your DIY Educational Robotic Pet!

Site of J. Edgar Park

A cool video of some awesome robots by Jack Conte.

More info at: Site of J. Edgar Park

#adafruit6secs - The Adafruit 6 second electronics film festival

The Adafruit 6 second electronics film festival! #adafruit6secs

Call For Entries: Announcing The Adafruit 6 second electronics film festival! Share your cool project in 6 seconds of video and win up to \$600 at the Adafruit store, with six runners up winning \$60 store credit each. In a 6 second video, we want you to share the best project you've made.  Be sure not to use any copyrighted music, video, etc.  This should be all your project, all by you. The Adafruit team will be looking on Twitter, G+/youtube and beyond for Vines, 6 second videos and more tagged with #adafruit6secs. The deadline is 6pm ET, 5/6/13. The Adafruit team of judges will pick their favorites and announce the winner on May, 12th at 6pm ET.

tl;dr - Post a 6 second video of your electronic project(s) using Vine on Twitter and tag it #adafruit6secs !

Keep reading for all the details!

More info at: #adafruit6secs - The Adafruit 6 second electronics film festival

Lego's Mindstorms EV3 programmable robots have character - YouTube

The next generation of Lego's programmable robotics kit is teaches kids how to program, but also offers something for adult enthusiasts.

More info at: Lego's Mindstorms EV3 programmable robots have character - YouTube

HowStuffWorks "How Robots Work"

On the most basic level, human beings are made up of five major components:

A body structure
A muscle system to move the body structure 
A sensory system that receives information about the body and the surrounding environment
A power source to activate the muscles and sensors
A brain system that processes sensory information and tells the muscles what to do