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  Nybble - World's Cutest Open Source Robotic Kitten    This IndieGoGo crowd funded project looks like fun, although made from laser cut puzzle pieces, it has some charm. seems to have Arduino motor controller that works with an optonal? Raspberry Pi,  looks like the kit is $225 + shipping, it uses 12 servos, Estimated delivery June 2019 Intel RealSense tracking camera $200 using proprietary visual inertial odometry, stereo cameras. Does 6-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) inside-out tracking by gathering inputs from two onboard fish-eye cameras, each with an approximate 170-degree range of view. The V-SLAM systems construct and continually update maps of unknown environments. 55 grams, 108 x 25 x 13 mm https://hackaday.com/2019/02/10/new-part-day-mapping-with-realsense-cameras-for-200/

page in process...  Hobbyist - Experimenter Oriented Store Sites Direct Voltage Store Interesting Variety Electronics Supplier (US)  https://directvoltage.com/  3D Printers, RC Cars, Lasers, Ebike parts, CNC, Motors, Drones, LED Lighting, Arduino, Ras Pi, Raw Carbon fiber 7μm filament: (10 meters $4.99) America Science Surplus  (Not just electronics)   https://www.sciplus.com/ https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/     Arizona Surplus Electronic Components $10 min.   http://M5stack.com Compact ESP32 computers with display and enclosure.                                  (Better shipping from Aliexpress buys) Chinese Component Sources Banggood.com   some of the guys like it best, (prices may not be the best) AliExpress.com   Retail oriented offshoot ...

Donkey Car An opensource DIY self driving platform for small scale cars.  RC CAR  +  Raspberry Pi + Python (tornado, keras, tensorflow, opencv, ....) Select an RC car, getting started DIY Robocar stages races of autonomous cars    The San Francisco Bay Area is the mecca of DIY Robocars groups with 8 The closest to O.C. is Los Angeles: LA DIY Robocars    (no races yet...) 1/10th scale:  6 foot wide course with borders in 25mm – 53mm (1-2 inch) wide white tape. ----  Components ---     Jevois Smart Camera $49.99     A USC Professor created the Jevois.  Combining video camera and Linux based processor/gpu with Raspberry Pi class of power combined in one tiny package, it's an easy way to add image recognition to a project.   Software support is pretty good, standard system image is loaded with lots of code, runs OpenCV, Darknet YOLO, TensorFlow, Mobi...

The New Raspberry Pi 3 A+ 65mm x 56mm x 12mm This is the first time in a couple generations that a stripped down 'A' variation is being offered. It saves you $10 and provides a smaller package,compared to the B+    (introduced Nov.2019). You lose the 5 connector block on the end, making the board the same size as a Hat. Simplification:  1 USB connector, no Ethernet, 512 meg ram (instead of 1gig the 3 B+ sports), also missing the little, rarely used reset button header, uses 200ma less power (under 500ma in all tests) You can really look it as a Pi Zero W with header connector, a faster 1.4GHz 4 core ARMv8 processor, a normal size HDMI connector, AV connector and not requiring an on the go adapter. Currently (Feb 2019) on sale for $19.99 at Microcenter

With people skills better than a typical guy, it makes sense for women to opt for work in fields  less solitary than nerdtology, there are exceptions. An inspiring Commercial  An accidental success that people experimenting with microprocessors are typically familiar with.  Lady Ada of Adafruit.com  After making Wearable Eectronics at MIT, she started buying and bagging up components as kits, selling them, as described in an interview with the for-sight of a lemonade stand operator.  She luckily has ended up with a $30 Million business. AdaFruit is presumable named after Ada Lovelace, a 17th century mathematician and writer best known for her contribution to Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine, she envisioned algorithm a computing machine could execute.  A young learner, getting a head start, describing her work in an Adafruit show-n-tell session (excerpt).  A 25 minu...

 Calliope Mini  A very German open source design, adds functionality and replaces the uncommon edge connector with smaller connectors.     Main Site        Github Files Has a superior (Bosch BMX055) with Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Magnetometer  Piezo speaker, MEMS microphone, 1 RGB LED, DC Motor Driver (TI DRV8837)   Available on Amazon for $44.99  (Original Microbit design is more like $15 in local stores) Sino:bit The Sino:bit is a variation Calliope Mini (simpler open source path?), conceived of by the controversial Chinese maker and open source advocate, Naomi Wu (SexyCyborg). The main difference is the 12x12 144 LED display (instead of the 5x5, 25 LEDs on  the Micro:bit) to enable it to display Chinese and other non-Roman languages. It adds a HT1632C LED driver, offloading the processor, you may loose some of the exotic LED applications that direct cpu connection gave, like indi...

 I have made a couple of simple demo/experiments, Not requiring an online service subscription, as Alexa, Siri, etc. require. Two experiments were carried out: Direction of arrival used to point a servo to the speaker of a Wake Word .  Real time text to speech detection, with a 16,000 Word vocabulary. While it is an evolutionary step back in technology relying on your own processor, instead of the optimized supercomputer systems that MAKE Alexa seem so real.   I have been working with the S eeedSt udio Respeaker 4 Mic Linear Array Hat for the Raspberry Pi, they currently offer about 6 different  models, including 2 standalone arrays using different software. Direction of Arrival Speaker Location Tracking I setup the Seeed offered solution for Alexa, less the actual Alexa interface, to see where I could go from there, this has set up a chain of functions connected by Python pipeline code from the Voice-Engine Python code library that links various f...

Reading Digital Calipers With an Arduino / USB Potential applications:  • Log measurements during production QC, alarm for low supply material stack height.  • Large display or audible reading for visually impaired (go/no-go measurement tones)  • NC Mill style machine position reading on a jig doing repetitive operation. Links:   Reading Digital Calipers With an Arduino USB      (http://www.instructables.com/id/Reading-Digital-Callipers-with-an-Arduino-USB/) Great reference on reading digital calipers     arduinotronics.blogspot.com   harbor-freight-pittsburgh-calipes " Little Machine Shop " in Pasadena might be a useful source of desktop machinery. They have a connector (make for a scale) that plugs into the calipers. ————————————————————————————————————   SMD Hot Air Rework Station and Soldering Iron   $69.99     An example an inexpensive surface mount circuit board repair ...

 I just recently finished watching the 6 part series " Valley of the Boom " on National Geographic, it was surprisingly entertaining, I expected something a bit more dry and purely factual.  There's a mix of short interviews of the actual key players in early SiliconValley company births (I only recognized Mark Cuban and Arianna Huffington), with more 'over the top' energetic actors portraying them in recreated scenes, there are even a couple of musical numbers.  The emphasis is on the business side, it reminds me how Netscape Navigator acted as the fuse that set the internet on fire (before Microsoft's trickery started)  While a pair of founders are meeting with venture capitalists, an 8 year old site down at the conference table with her bag lunch and starts explaining how the founders are screwed, locked into the IPO price, while the bankers and early investor friends might make as much as 10x that amount after pumping up the stock.   The most ...

  The Snips Platform : " powering (no web) Private-by-Design voice assistants ." is major project with user generated,  ready to use application examples: Their project announcement  " Snips runs on a variety of platforms, including Raspbian, Android, iOS, macOS, and most Linux flavours."   (but for a change it looks like Windows may be the one left behind, for now?) They have partnered with SeedStudio to provide hardware kits for making embedded voice controlled devices, (you add a Raspberry Pi 3B+) Here's a Curated List of applications.  github.com/snipsco/awesome-snips/  One example, " overhead " reports the commercial flight passing by when you ask "What's Overhead", it accesses flightradar24.com for live air traffic info. github.com/hcooper/overhead Click Images If You Want to Count Planes... With $13M Series A financing, one wonders what sort of toll one may have to pay to access it, apparently...

I picked up a submersible RGB LED module at the local 99 Cent Only store for $2.99 These stores sell discontinued, market failures or otherwise distressed items, funny, the only problem with this item is the package is in English but instructions and product markings are in Spanish. You can also find them on Amazon, for less of a bargain:    https://tinyurl.com/submersibleRGB     2 for $11.88    https://tinyurl.com/submersibleRGB2    2 for $8.59     https://tinyurl.com/submersibleRGB4    4 pack $14.99 They suggest using these lights in glass flower pots, as cloudy drink coasters or in fish tanks. Powered by 3 AAA batteries, the lights behave like a typical RGB string, with Fade giving a 30 second, smooth rainbow cycle. For a more permanent waterproof installation one could replace the batteries with an inductive charger coil circuit.  (some fish are very sensitive to magnetic fields...