GeekwithEnvy

Technology

Draw Circuits With a Pen

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Creating basic circuits by hand is the best way to learn about how electronics work and using a breadboard has traditionally been the best way to do this, at least until now. Circuit Scribe is a kickstarter project that features a cool new ball point pen that uses a conductive silver ink which is perfect for drawing simple circuits. Utilizing just a Circuit Scribe pen, piece of paper, and a few electronic components like a LED light or a small motor, you can create just about any small project that you can imagine. This catchy idea has already pulled in $260,000, which is far beyond the set goal of $85,000.

This pen would make a great tool for children to use in the classroom to learn about simple circuits and there’s even a Classroom kit that includes 10 basic kits and a activity book. You can also buy just one basic kit for yourself to see what you can come up with. You can also get two larger kits, the Maker Kit and Developer Kit.

Each kit includes the Circuit Scribe pen which can be purchased separately for $20.

Here’s what’s in the Basic Kit (Cost $30):

  • 2 LED Boards each with two (2) LED lights attached
  • 2 Coin Batteries
  • 9V Battery Connector
  • 2 PIN which you can add Resistors, Capacitors, and Switches to
  • Slide Switch
  • Jumper Stickers
  • BJT NPN Transistor

Maker Kit ( Cost $50):

  • Includes Basic Components
  • Maker Notebook
  • RGB LED
  • Photo Sensor
  • Sound Buzzer
  • Potentiometer
  • 8 PIN ( NAND Logic Gate, 555 Timer, OP AMP)
  • Stencil
  • 9V Battery

Developer Kit ( Cost $100):

  • 2 Basic Component Kits
  • Maker Notebook
  • 2 Sets of Maker Components and Developer Components
  • 10 Magnetic Connection Cords
  • USB Micro B Power Adapter
  • Motor
  • 2 DPDT Switches
  • 10 DIY Solder Boards

CircuitScribe

Apple is Ready To Build it’s Spaceship

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AppleCampus2Draw
Proposed Design for Apple’s “Spaceship” Campus 2

Apple has long since wanted to build a second campus to the east of it’s current headquarters and it has taken years just to get everything together and approved. It was back in 2006 when Steve Jobs had announced that he wanted to build another campus and now, many years later, it looks like it’s finally going to happen.

With a final agreement to pay more taxes to the city of Cupertino, Apple has now received it’s final approval to begin building the massive 2.8-million-square-foot ring shaped “spaceship” campus that will house 13,000 under some of the most cutting edge architecture imaginable today. Steve Jobs had a goal in mind when he planned to build the new campus and part of that goal included making sure that the campus had the same “fit and finish” that goes into designing Apple’s products.

The project will take years to finish as Apple hopes to complete the building in 2016.

LeVar Burton Explains NASA’s Martian MAVEN Mission

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In this cool NASA Public Service Announcement, LeVar Burton tells us all about MAVEN’s mission and explains why it’s important.  On November 18th, NASA has had a successful launch of MAVEN, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission. The Atlas V rocket lifted off at approximately 1:30 P.M EST and is now on it’s way towards Mars to hopefully allow us to better understand why Mars has become so inhospitable and to possibly help us better understand our climate here on Earth.

We’re currently about 14,000 miles away from Earth and heading out to the Red Planet right now,” – MAVEN Project Manager David Mitchell-

NASA is trying to understand why most of the Martian atmosphere has disappeared and just how it lost all of it’s liquid water. Perhaps we can even answer the question we have all been really wanting to know, was there ever life on Mars? The only way to find out is to keep on studying our neighboring planet and to continue to dig deeper into the past of the great red planet.

Apple’s Special Event October 2013 – iPad Air Revealed

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October 22, 2013 Apple hosted a live streaming event to announce new updates and products. Here are some of the highlights of this event:

Mavericks:

Added iBooks, and available to download today for FREE regardless of which Mac OS you currently have installed. For more details on OSX Mavericks head to our earlier post.

MacBooks

 

Macbook Pro 13 inch:

    • Retina display
    • 2.4 GHz dual-core i5
    • 4GB DRAM
    • Iris Graphics
    • 128GB SSD

Starting at $1299 (ships today)

Macbook Pro 15 inch:

  • Retina display
  • 2.0 GHz quad-core i7
  • 8GB DRAM
  • Iris Pro graphics
  • 256GB SSD

Starting at $1999 (ships today)

Mac Pro:

Less power consumption and very quiet with a completely new design. Available in December 2013

(click images to enlarge)
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iPad Air and iPad Mini:

An all new designed iPad was announced, and they are calling it the iPad Air. Along with the Air they added a retina display option and the new A7 chip to the iPad mini which will cost $399. iPad Air will be available November 1, 2013.

 ipad with mini

ipad thickness
iPad Air thickness compared to the latest generation iPad
ipad bezel
iPad Air bezel compared to the latest generation iPad

 

The biggest day ever for apps – Eddy Cue

Today they talked about major app updates and how they will now be useable on both Mac and iOS, free to download today.

iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, and iWork all with new features and updates to work with the new Mavericks and iOS 7.

To watch the whole key note head here, Apple.com 

Nvidia Eliminates Screen Tearing with G-Sync

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Nvidia gsync-module

Screen tearing, stutter and input lag have plagued gamers for  years, but now Nvidia claims that they have found a solution to this issue. Nvidia has created what they call G-Sync to completely eliminate all of the aforementioned issues. G-Sync is a module that forces your monitor to have the exact same refresh rate as your GPU, which is the opposite of what happens in current systems.

The biggest problem is that GPU’s don’t render at a fixed speed and by having the monitor keep up with the GPU all of your screen tearing issues will go away instead of making the graphics card compensate for a fixed refresh rate. There have been many attempts over the years to correct these issues including the introduction of VSync, which did help, but it’s not perfect as VSync often stutters and fails to make gameplay as smooth as it should be and it can also be pretty taxing you your system.

By the time PCs came to market in the early 1980s, CRT TV technology was well established and was the easiest and most cost effective technology for utilize for the creation of dedicated computer monitors. 60Hz and fixed refresh rates became standard, and system builders learned how to make the most of a less than perfect situation. Over the past three decades, even as display technology has evolved from CRTs to LCD and LEDs, no major company has challenged this thinking, and so syncing GPUs to monitor refresh rates remains the standard practice across the industry to this day.”

For complete details on this new module head over to Nvidia’s official blog. I’m surprised that its taken us this long to fix this problem, especially since monitors have evolved so much over the last decade.