An anonymous reader writes: Build quality is a characteristic many people value in laptop design, but one that often goes unrepresented on a spec sheet. Over at Make, Kurt Mottweiler took build quality to the next level with his laptop enclosure design, which replaces the typical plastic clamshell with a wood veneer filled with e-glass cloth and cork composite. The article shows his build process in detail. Quoting: "The LCD panel and main enclosure components are assembled using vacuum bag clamping techniques. After assembling the layers of the panels at the glue station, the assembly is transferred to the molding station where it is put into a seamed bag and sealed up with a roller rod and clamps. Then a special vacuum pump is used to evacuate the bag and allow atmospheric pressure to clamp the layers together while the epoxy binder cures. ... To increase the strength, improve heat dissipation, and enhance the aesthetic properties of the Heirloom's main enclosure, I chose to use an undulating shape across the width of the bottom panel. The slight wave provides a semi-monocoque structure that stiffens the otherwise flat section of the case while providing for a measure of air flow across the bottom of the case."

Zothecula writes: If one is going to get into the asteroid mining business, one needs to prove that you can do something with what's brought back. That seems to be the thinking behind Planetary Resources' recent presentation at CES in Las Vegas, where the asteroid mining company unveiled the first object 3D printed using extraterrestrial materials. Made in collaboration with 3D Systems, the nickel-iron sculpture represents a stylized, geometric spacecraft, such as might be used for asteroid mining or prospecting. Planetary Resources says it is representative of what could be printed in a weightless environment.

An anonymous reader writes: A few years back I discovered that even a person of limited soldering skills can create a nifty surround-sound system with the magic of a passive matrix decoder system; the results pleased me and continue to, It's certainly not a big and fancy surround system, but I recommend it highly as a project with a high ratio of satisfaction to effort. (Here's one of the many, many tutorials out there on doing it yourself; it's not the long-forgotten one I actually used, but I like this one better.) I like listening to recorded music sometimes just to hear how a particular playback system sounds, not just to hear the music "as intended." I'd like to find some more audio hacks and tricks like this that are cheap, easy, and fun. Bonus points if they can be done with the assistance of a couple of smart children, without boring them too much. I have access to Goodwill and other thrift stores that are usually overflowing with cheap-and-cheerful gear, to match my toy budget. What mods or fixes would be fun to implement? Are there brands or models of turntable I should look for as the easiest with which to tinker? Are there cool easy-entry projects akin to that surround sound system that I could use to improve my radio reception? I'm not sure what's out there, but I'd like to get some cool use out of the closet-and-a-half I've got filled with speakers and other gear that I can't quite bear to toss, since "it still works."

New submitter mmiscool writes: ESP8266 Basic is a project less than 6 moths old. It is open source and designed specifically for the internet of things. The ESP8266 microcontroller costs less than $3, and once the basic firmware is loaded to the device a user can connect to it using Wi-Fi and start programming right inside their web browser. No wires, no software or plugins to install. Just a simple text editor. There is now a community, primarily older folks who fell in love with Basic on the Commodore, who are using it for controlling a variety of projects. The code is amazingly simple and includes commands for interfacing with neo pixels, OLED displays, Temperature sensors, hobby servo motors and of course the blinky LED. It also provides commands for browser widgets that can be used to construct interfaces for the device like textboxes, buttons, sliders and dropdowns. The bottom line is that Basic is not dead, and has finally made its way into the internet of things. Make last year ran a three-part series on the chip (here's part one), but things have advanced quite a bit since then, when people were first noticing that the ESP8266 is more powerful than the tasks for which it was first marketed.

prisoninmate writes: An SBC called Chirimen was designed from the outset to use web browser technologies in various science projects by extending the I2C and GPIO WebAPIs to control devices powered by Mozilla's Firefox OS 2.0 and higher operating system. As such, Web developers can easily use browser technologies to develop awesome things. The board is developed by MozillaFactory.org in Japan.

An anonymous reader writes: Since now you're going to either register your drone or have to be flying your [small drone] indoors anyway in the USA, you might as well celebrate the one freedom you still have: the freedom to re-flash the firmware with open source! The Eachine H8 is a typical-looking mini-quadcopter of the kind that sell for under $20. Inside, the whole show is powered by an ARM Cortex-M3 processor, with the programming pins easily visible. Who could resist? Garagedrone takes you through a step-by-step guide to re-flashing the device with a custom firmware to enable acrobatic mode, or simply to tweak the throttle-to-gyro mapping for the quad. The firmware author silverxxx from RCGroups.com even got the code up on GitHub if you're interested in taking a peek. Next step, Skynet!

Press2ToContinue writes: A German carpenter has invented a valve which he claims will revolutionize contraception, by allowing a man to turn the flow of sperm from his testicles on and off at the flick of a switch. It (the switch, of course) is nearly an inch long and weighs less than a tenth of an ounce. It is surgically implanted on the vas deferens, the tube that carries sperm from the testicles, in a half-hour operation, and controlled by a switch beneath the skin of the scrotum.

So far Bimek is the only man who has the switches implanted, one for each testicle. I wonder what other switches we will see implanted into humans in the future? I think I'd like a valve for adrenaline control.

szczys writes: It's that time of year again, the Consumer Electronics Show leaks out of every media crevice. Although we've passed peak 3D Printing hype for the general public, the 3D Printer offerings being shown are notable in one way or another. Makerbot continues to flounder with questionable extruders, Lulzbot continues to excel with dual extrusion and by supporting a wide range of print materials, 3D Systems has an uber-expensive direct metal printer, but the entry level printer price floor keeps falling.

szczys writes: You take tape for granted, but it's truly an engineering wonder. For instance, Scotch Magic tape exhibits triboluminescence; it will generate a bit of bluish light when coming off the roll in a darkened room. It emits X-Rays if unrolled in a vacuum. But this common tape is just the tip of the iceberg. Nava Whiteford looks at lab uses of many different types of tape. Kapton tape is thermally stable and non-conductive. Carbon tape is conductive but resistive. That moves into the non-resistive and more niche tape types. There's a tape for every function. This instant and non-messy way to connect two things together has a lot of science behind it, as well as ahead of it in experimentation, manufacturing, and of course household use.

szczys writes: Arduino has driven a tidal wave of embedded development over the last decade. But last year a rift formed in the shape of two companies — Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL — who are suing each other over trademark. While that is ongoing, each company is trying to outdo the other in terms of new hardware. Arduino SRL is now focusing on producing connected boards and will soon have several new offerings available. The Uno WiFi is a traditional Arduino with an ESP8266 WiFi chip on board. The Tian has a MIPS processor with 2.4 & 5 GHz WiFi making it a Linux single board computer with support for low level pin driving. And the Lei is somewhere in between the other two and only for the Chinese market (it would need FCC certification to be sold in the US). From the user side the trademark dispute looks like a waste of energy, but if it drives the companies to produce more boards and fight for followers on price and quality that may be the silver lining.

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers have used a 3-D printer to make specialized ceramic parts that have overcome one of the biggest problems with ceramic objects: their tendency to crack. This new method is 100 to 1,000 times faster than previous 3D-ceramic-printing techniques, the researchers said. Furthermore, electron microscopy of the end products detected none of the porosity or surface cracks that normally weaken ceramics; indeed, these silicon carbide materials were 10 times stronger than commercially available ceramic foams of similar density, the scientists noted. "If you go very fast, about 10 times speed of sound within the atmosphere, then any vehicle will heat up tremendously because of air friction," said Tobias Schaedler, senior scientist at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, Calif. "People want to build hypersonic vehicles and you need ceramics for the whole shell of the vehicle."

An anonymous reader writes: This year, we've seen some incredible price/performance breakthroughs in low-cost single board computers. LinuxGizmos has put together a compilation of 64 low-cost, hacker friendly SBCs that are all available in models that cost less than $200, with many well below $100, including Shenzhen Xunlong's $15 quad-core Orange Pi PC, Next Thing's $9 to $24 Chip, and the $5-and-up Raspberry Pi Zero. Processors range from low-end 32-bit single core ARM chips, to 64-bit ARM, x86, and MIPS parts, and with clock rates from 300MHz to 2GHz. This year even saw the arrival of low-cost SBCs based on octa-core processors, such as the $88 Banana Pi M3.

szczys writes: We have reached a turning point in personal CNC Tools like mills and laser cutters. Up until now, your options were to drop some serious cash (businesses) or spend time to build them yourself (individuals) at moderate expense. But over the last year the number of companies making CNC tools and the software available for them has matured. Anyone looking for an entry level machine in the coming year will find that purchasing equipment has a better time/price value than building yourself. The best part is, these entry level tools have the precision you need if you still want to build your own high-end or extreme-spec machines.

An anonymous reader writes with this update about Derby who was born with a congenital deformity that deprived him of front paws and was outfitted with a pair of 3-D-printed prosthetics. According to Gizmag: "You might remember Derby, a dog who was born with a congenital deformity but last year received a 3D-printed prostheses that enabled him to run for the first time. Well, it's onward and upward for Derby and his carers, who have now crafted an upgraded set of custom prostheses allowing him to walk proudly with a straight back and even sit like a healthy dog."

An anonymous reader writes: I have a shelf full of books and other book-like things ranging from old to very old that I would like to turn into PDFs (or other similarly portable format), and have been on a slow-burn quest for the right hardware and method to do so on a budget. These are mostly sentimental — things handed down over generations, and they include family bibles, notebooks, and photo albums, as well as some conventional — published, bound — books from the late 19th and early 20th Century. None of them are especially valuable as antiques, as far as I know; my goals in preserving them are a) to make them available to other people in my family who are into genealogy or just nostalgia, and b) so I can read some of those old, interesting books (et cetera) without endangering them any more than it takes to scan them once. I was intrigued by the (funded, but not yet available) scanner mentioned earlier this year on Slashdot; it seems to do a lot of things right, but like any crowdfunded project, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding hasn't yet arrived. It's also cheap, and that fits my household budget. What methods and hardware are you using to scan old documents? Any tips you have from a similar project, with regard to hardware, treatment of the materials being scanned, light sources, file formats, clean-up and editing tools, file-size-vs-resolution tradeoffs? In the end, I'm likely to err toward high-resolution scans, since they can be knocked down to size later if need be, but I'd be interested in hearing about what tradeoffs you've found to work for you.

One big question that I'd like to have answered: Is there stand-alone Free / Open Source software, or even just cheap software (I am mostly on Linux, by choice, but won't leap onto a sword to keep my Free Software purity) that makes for easy correction of the distortion introduced by camera-based imaging? If I could easily uncurl and keystone-correct pages, then a lot of input methods (even my phone) are suddenly much more attractive. My old Casio camera could do this 10 years ago, but I haven't found a free software desktop utility that lets me turn photos into nicely squared-up pages.

New submitter writes: I just replaced my dishwasher with a basic, inexpensive Sears model. It works fine, but only has 3 different wash cycles. I'm betting that the code to manage more cycles (as in more-expensive models) is already in the microcontroller and just needs inputs to select it. Is there any information available on this? Beyond dishwashers, have you done any useful hacks to household appliances more generally? I'd probably support a Kickstarter project that adds nice wireless notifications to my oven, clothes washer, and dishwasher.

theodp writes: More than 50 years ago, lucky kids found an Automatic Conveyor Erector Set under the Xmas tree. And while President Obama lamented last year that kids — including his own — were done a disservice by an educational system that failed to introduce computer science concepts 'with the ABCs and the colors', Radio Shack advised 'Parents Who Care' to put a TRS-80 under the tree for their kids to program way back in 1978. So, to bring things up-to-date, what are the hot tech/science gifts that Santa brought children today?

Evidently even Forrest Mimms isn't famous enough to fly without hassle when carrying a briefcase full of electronics; he writes at Make about his experiences, both before and after 2001. A relevant slice: After police were called when I was going through security at the San Antonio International Airport and after major problems going through security in Kona, Hawaii, I finally realized the obvious: Most people who don’t make things have no idea how to evaluate homemade equipment. Some are terrified by exposed wires and circuit boards, maybe because of bomb scenes in movies. So I gave up. Now my carryon bag is only half stuffed with electronics; the rest is shipped ahead via FedEx.

JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Peter "brokep" Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, has built a machine that makes 100 copies per second of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," storing them in /dev/null (which is of course, deleting them even as they're created). The machine, called a "Kopimashin," is cobbled together out of a Raspberry Pi, some hacky python that he doesn't want to show anyone, and an LCD screen that calculates a running tally of the damages he's inflicted upon the record industry through its use. The 8,000,000 copies it makes every day costs the record industry $10m/day in losses. At that rate, they'll be bankrupt in a few weeks at most.

An anonymous reader writes: For over a decade, Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights have been a festive online holiday tradition for millions of Internet users world-wide, so it was sadly the end of an era last year, when the Griswold wanna-be hung up his Santa Hat in 2014. But with the "Internet of Things" being the rage these days, it didn't take long for another Griswold to emerge from the North Pole, or at least pretty darn close to it. Ken Woods from Fairbanks, Alaska has his house online 24 hours a day with a dozen ON/OFF buttons that Internet users can use to toggle his lights with a click of a mouse. Here's a video of it in action and he uses Amazon EC2 to power it online. (While that all looks real, low-UID /.'ers will remember that Alek did a simulation from 2002-2004 using Perl code to switch between a series of images. Looks like the prankster dusted off that code for the Control Christmas Lights.com website.) I, for one, welcome our new Griswold Overlords with a big HO-HO-HO.