Imaging, Microscopy and More
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Bureaucracy vs. Harm – is science suffocated?
A new website observes that today’s scientific research is hindered by excessive regulation and oversight. On a spectrum of two possibilities, total anarchy in research vs. total control, where do we stand? I’d guess it depends on what part of science you work in, and where you work and live…
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Airpooler is the Uber of the Air
Ever since using services like AirBnB and Uber, I’ve been thinking of a system which would provide ride shares for pilots. Almost every certified airplane has 4 seats, but most flights are single pilot operations. Meanwhile, there are always people who need to get somewhere fast, or who simply would enjoy to fly. Why not…
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Low Pass Filter for PWM to DC
I’ve been working on a project where I needed a consistent DAC signal to be sent from a control device to a sensor. The sensor wanted a voltage input which was steady, but arduino boards don’t have true DAC output, rather they use PWM to approximate a voltage over a given time. For many devices…
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Reading Rotary Encoders with an Arduino
The Arduino IDE for ARM microcontrollers is just plain awesome. I’ve been using both an Uno and a Mega board for quite a while now, and continue to be impressed with how flexible these inexpensive boards are. Recently, I wanted to read the output of a pair of rotary encoders, like these: Encoders can be…
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10 Actual Mad Scientists
I’ve heard of a few of these, but this is a great list!
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Tethering an SLR to Micro-Manager
Just a heads up if you plan on using the NK Remote tethering solution for Micro-Manager. It appears as of now this solution only works in 32 bit installations of windows. I believe a great alternative would be to figure out a driver connection to the open source program DigiCamControl…but as I’m not that great…
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Open Cellular Protocols Pave Way for Development
I was just thinking about this issue on my morning walk. So my wife and I travel to Mendocino, and there’s no cell coverage. On one hand, it’s kind of nice to be disconnected, but on the other hand, I’m thinking, if some entrepreneurial person could figure out the hardware/software setup, they could make a…
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Will this Entanglement Experiment solve the Ultimate Question?
This is an interesting proposal to deal with the “watchers causing a change” phenomenon in quantum mechanics. Of course, answering this would answer the question of “free will”. Crazy! There’s a funny, and interesting youtube video on this called “Dr. Quantum”.
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Will Pelican Imaging change photography forever?
I think this type of hyper-focal imaging tech will bring as yet unimagined possibilities into photography. Remember when the idea of a Digital SLR was ridiculous, because CCD’s didn’t have the dynamic range or resolution to compete with film? Next, consider how over time, each problem was addressed in a novel way: High Dynamic Range…
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Growing up in a Maker World
Reading this article about Brook Drumm, fellow Lincolnite and 3-D printing champion, brought to mind my journey of building, and breaking, everything I could get my hands on. I remember many years back when I was 10 years old, I had a friend at my house, along with some family. I was proudly showing off…