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Open Source

Video MetaMorph Helps non-Engineers Design Circuits (Video) 21

Posted by Roblimo from the another-step-on-the-road-toward-unskilled-labor-replacing-skilled-engineers dept.
MetaMorph grew out of Vanderbilt University’s Institute for Software Integrated Systems. The introduction video you see here explains and steps you through its basic operation. The second "bonus" video goes a little deeper into the software's function. And the transcript covers everything in both videos, so if you prefer reading to watching you aren't left out -- except for the visual design process walk-through, of course. It's all open source, and their site has free demos available, so if you want to try your hand at designing circuitry with MetaMorph, go right ahead.
Biotech

Video Help Save Endangered Rhinos by Making Artificial Horns (Video) 202

Posted by Roblimo from the replace-the-veldt-with-a-factory dept.
Black Rhinoceros horn material sells for $65,000 per kilo. The rhinos are rare, which helps up the price, but the horn is also prized "as a fever-reducer, a cosmetic, an aphrodisiac, a hangover care. And so people highly value it in the Vietnamese and Chinese cultures. So we are trying to reduce that value by increasing the supply," says Jennifer Kaehms of Pembient, a company that's working to make artificial rhino horns that are not only chemically indistinguishable from the natural variety, but are 3-D printed to look the same. The idea is that if they can flood the market with human-made rhino horns, it will cut poaching -- which is a big deal because there are only about 5,000 black rhinos left in the whole world.

They have a crowdfunding appeal on experiment.com looking for help in sequencing the black rhino genome. At this writing, it has two days to run and has only raised $12,831 of its $16,500 goal. The results will be open sourced, and once the black rhino is on its way to salvation, they plan to work on the white rhino, then move on to killing the black market for ivory and tiger pelts, which don't sell for as much as rhino horns but are valuable enough to keep an international horde of poachers in business.
Robotics

Video Learning Simple Robot Programming With a 'Non-Threatening' Robot Ball (Video) 29

Posted by Roblimo from the rolling-on-down-the-line dept.
Gobot, it says here, "is a framework for robotics, physical computing, and the Internet of Things, written in the Go programming language." And in today's video, interviewee Adrian Zankich (AKA "Serious Programming Guy at The Hybrid Group") says that an unadorned robot ball -- in this case the Sphero -- is about the least threatening robot you can possibly use to teach entry-level robot programming. Start with Go language? Cylon.js? Use whichever you prefer, Adrian says. Mix and match. It's all fun, and they're both great ways to get into programming for robotics and Internet of Things applications. Open source? You bet. Here's the Hybrid Group's gobot GitHub repository for your perusing pleasure. This (and more) is all in the video, which Tim Lord shot at the recent Solid Conference, where there was a rather high background noise level (but thankfully not high enough to make Adrian hard to understand). And besides the video, there's even more material in the transcript.

Comment Re:I'm confused... (Score 4, Insightful) 53

"Slashvertisement - a fiction spawned in the brains of basement-dwellers who think that anyone who says anything nice about anything or anyone is getting paid to be positive."

Nope. All ads or "sponsored content" pieces on Slashdot are clearly identified. This piece is legit, and I clearly stated that this is just one of many companies in the energy-saving businesses. Clouden's company is close to me and I first heard about it from a satisfied customer, but at no point did I (or he) say his company was better than others in the same business. In fact, let me repeat: If you're going to buy any kind of energy-saving services, you'd better shop around -- just like Smokey Robinson's momma told him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
 
The Almighty Buck

Video Leased LEDs and Energy Service Contracts can Cut Electric Bills (Video) 53

Posted by Roblimo from the my-momma-told-me-you'd-better-shop-around dept.
I first heard of Consumer Energy Solutions from a non-profit's IT guy who was boasting about how he got them to lease him LED bulbs for their parking lot and the security lights at their equipment lot -- pretty much all their outdoor lighting -- for a lot less than their monthly savings on electricity from replacing most of their Halogen, fluorescent, and other less-efficient lights with LEDs. What made this a big deal to my friend was that no front money was required. It's one thing to tell a town council or non-profit board, "If we spend $180,000 on LEDs we'll save it all back in five years" (or whatever). It's another thing to say, "We can lease LEDs for all our outdoor lighting for $4,000 per month and save $8,000 on electricity right away." That gets officials to prick up their ears in a hurry.Then there are energy service contracts, essentially buying electricity one, two or three years in advance. This business got a bad name from Enron and their energy wholesaling business, but despite that single big blast of negative publicity, it grows a little each year. And the LED lease business? In many areas, governments and utility companies actually subsidize purchases of anything that cuts electricity use. Totally worth checking out.

But why, you might ask, is this on Slashdot? Because some of our readers own stacks of servers (or work for companies that own stacks of servers) and need to know they don't have to pay whatever their local electric utility demands, but can shop for better electricity prices in today's deregulated electricity market. And while this conversation was with one person in this business, we are not pushing his company. As interviewee Patrick Clouden says at the end of the interview, it's a competitive business. So if you want the best deal, you'd better shop around. One more thing: the deregulated utility market, with its multitude of suppliers, peak and off-peak pricing, and (often) minute-by-minute price changes, takes excellent software (possibly written by someone like you) to negotiate, so this business niche might be one an entrepreneurial software developer should explore.

Comment Re:So how much are they paying? (Score 1) 25

by Roblimo (#50030309) Attached to: Meet the Makers of an Exotic (Partially) 3-D Printed Car (2 Videos)

You submitted those stories, right? Anyway, looking through your comment history, you love to be negative. You should thank us for giving you something else to complain about. Also, if I was in a bad mood I might point out that 1 article + 1 article = 2, and "fawning" is a bit over the top. But hey! You're the one who knows more than the rest of us, so I won't question anything you say.

You are probablyright about the "10,000" cars thing being unrealistic, but let's look at it in context:

"The initial plan is for DM to scale up to an annual production of 10,000 of these limited supercars, making them available to potential customers. This isn’t all though, as DM doesn’t merely plan on just being satisfied by manufacturing cars via this method. They plan on making the technology available to others as well."

That 3DPrint.com article wasn't nearly as good as it would have been if you had written it, but you might want to be a little kinder to your inferiors. Czinger and Balzer have consistently talked about cars being just one type of manufacturing for which their process can be used. And it's not all about 3-D printing. Really.

Okay - time to go upload some howto videos.

Good night. Sleep tight. Don't let the 3-D printers bite!

- R

   

Comment Re:So how much are they paying? (Score 2) 25

by Roblimo (#50029069) Attached to: Meet the Makers of an Exotic (Partially) 3-D Printed Car (2 Videos)

Why do you insult us by insisting that we get paid for running stories about things that interest at least one Slashdot editor? If a story is a paid ad, it will say something like "AD" or "Sponsored Content."

Also, what is not newsworthy to you may be newsworthy to someone else. You also seem to be missing the point of 3-D printing in this context: that the Blade is just a proof of concept. The idea is that other items can be made with similar manufacturing techniques; not purely 3-D printing but 3-D printing combined with other fab methods.

Thank you for your input!

- Rob
Transportation

Video Meet the Makers of an Exotic (Partially) 3-D Printed Car (2 Videos) 25

Posted by Roblimo from the a-gasoline-car-more-efficient-than-an-electric dept.
Last month, in a story headlined 3D Printed Supercar Chassis Unveiled, we promised video interviews with builders Kevin and Brad "in the near future." Here they are. First, we have Kevin Czinger, Founder & CEO of Divergent Microfactories. He says the way we build cars is more important from an environmental standpoint than how we fuel them, and that the way we make cars now is a lot less efficient and a lot more expensive than it needs to be. Divergent's first demo vehicle, the Blade, is a tandem-seating 700 HP supercar its makers say does 0 - 60 in 2.5 seconds. Price? No word yet, but it's safe to assume "plenty" might be an accurate guess.

In the second video, Blade project lead Brad Balzer goes into detail about how, why, and where they use 3-D printing, and explains the modular nature of their car chassis design. He says they don't need to change many parts to go from ultra-sports car to pickup truck. He also says that while Divergent Microfactories is working on cars right now, their manufacturing system can be applied to many different industries. Indeed, their long-range goal is to help people build microfactories making many different kinds of products faster, more flexibly, and for less money than it takes to make similar manufactured items today.

Note: The transcript covers both videos and has a little 'bonus' material in it, too.

Comment Re:Why two videos? For the love of dog, why?! (Score 4, Informative) 48

by Roblimo (#50022387) Attached to: Cory Doctorow Talks About Fighting the DMCA (2 Videos)

Tim just put the "let's have the ability to attach two or more HTML5 video to one text block" on the developers' work request list. It'll happen. When? Um.... "Soon." This is yet another case where the people who actually work on the site agree with readers -- which we do 90% of the time. Believe it or not, our management is gradually learning that the people who work on the site know a thing or two. The Beta debacle was great training for them. Gawd, that thing was awful...

As for video length restrictions: A spreadsheet manager looks at video costs and sees that a majority of people jump off of a video within 3 minutes. So, asks the spreadsheet manager, why would we ever want to have longer videos? Reality = people not interested in that video or topic watch 3 minutes, while people interested in the topic or interviewee stick around for 10, 15, 30, even 60 minutes. What Tim and I want is 3-minute (or so) summary videos for the uninterested, followed by full-length ones for those who are interested. At least, when the topic is interesting to at least some readers, we now can (and generally do) provide a transcript that covers the full, uncut video interview for you.

Believe me, we appreciate questions and criticism. We read what you have to say. Like about the cartoon-balloon m,ain page comment counts. I can't say that I personally care much about them one way or another, but I think Tim or one of the other guys brought them up in a meeting to which I was not invited -- because I rarely am since I'm retired and I just work part-time editing /. videos for hourly pay to supplement my Social Security. Thinking of which, I have some howto videos to edit for another site, so I'd better break off here and go do that.

 

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