Merry Christmas from BW Science Labs

Merry Christmas everyone. It sounds like a lot of people have gotten the Vivus the Robot kit for Christmas and are enjoying it.

I'm working on redoing the BW Science Labs website, and will be moving from Blogger to the Wordpress platform to integrate the store and blog. Unfortunately this also involves the less fun search for a good web host, artist, and so on. However, once the site is done it'll be really cool.

Thinking in Multiple Dimensions

I've survived the first day of final exams, 2 down and 4 more to go!

Here's an interesting project called The Lumen, a 3D display that adds depth to 2D images. The neatest part is how they get each little pixel up and down; they use a wires made of "shape memory allow" that expand when heated and shrink when cooled.


[or watch this video here]


Good look to everyone taking final exams!

Coming soon: T-Shirts to be Envied

Writing after a break is always tough, I take the "slowly get back into the swing" method.

For the last few weeks I've been exchanging emails with an out of country graphic design firm. I had hired them to make the new BW Science Labs logo. It's been a frustrating last few weeks.

That's what I get for outsourcing, I guess. In the end I gave up trying to get the designer to do what I had asked, after about 5 or so attempts. I'm still happy with the final product, though I was shooting for something more like MIT's logo.

Once I get the high-res image sent to me I'll begin ordering T-Shirts, its about time we are able to wear our pride.

Control a Car With an iPhone

I've been following Waterloo Labs for a while now (they even commented on the lecture I gave on passion and science last year), and now it seems they're doing pretty darn well for themselves. They were recently on BBC radio and a variety of blogs (now this one). Their most recent project is a car that's controlled by an iPhone, which is probably the coolest youtube video of the year (yes, even better than the llama song).

Sunday Status: Cyber Warfare and Some Less Interesting Updates

Global

In some earlier posts several months ago I discussed cyber warfare, something that just made big headlines. In tonight's 60 minutes, some interesting news has arisen. Apparently, Brazil has been attacked multiple times by cyber terrorists, and specialists say that America is a risk.

I have a hard time going without power for 3 hours, imagine what would happen if the entire west or east coast lost power for lord knows how long at a time. Fortunately, Obama is allocating more funds for cyber security, I hope that that's enough.


Micro

I've spent the week looking for a good web developer to help me redo the BW Science Labs website, but I haven't found anyone yet. In the meantime I've made some progress on Unity development, and I'm now comfortable with the scripting language. As always though, most of my time goes to school, which reminds me of a t shirt I saw labeled "Homework kills trees, stop the madness!". It would be fun to see the carbon footprint of one year of homework. I'll have to look into that.

UV LED Flashlight Kit- Now Deployed

I finally managed to get the UV LED Flashlight kit up on the BW Science Labs Store website. I've already talked about this kit, so I won't overdo promotion. However, it really is nice to see more products being added to the Store.

Monday Status: Sparkfun vs. SPARC and New BW Science Labs Development

Yesterday I was rushed to say the least, so I didn't manage to get out a Sunday Status, however today I do have a Monday Status.

Global

I order my electronics components from all over, but one place in particular that I could not be without is Sparkfun. Also, having met some of the Sparkfun employees at the Maker Fair '09 its nice ordering from a small, friendly company with a face. Unfortunately, starting early this week, Sparkfun is being sued by SPARC International, a large company owned by Sun Microsystems that sells servers. Apparently, SPARC's legal department decided that Sparkfun sounded too much like SPARC, so legal warfare has begun. If Sun (SPARC) spent more of its time and money developing new technologies and less of it bullying smaller businesses, they would probably not be dying such a slow and painful death.

Micro

As I said its been a busy week. I've had a little time to look into Unity, but not much. So far so good.

Unity 3D is now free!

It really pays to read tech news. Today, I stumbled upon an article that claimed that Unity 3D, the powerful 3D game engine, was free at last. I thought it was too good to be true, so I investigated further.

For those of you who don't know, Unity 3D is a really powerful enviornment that allows developers to create interactive 3D content. It can be embedded in a web page like Flash, or made as a download for Mac or PC.

Unity 3D originally has been $199 for the Indie (independent developer, kind of like Lite), and the pro version has been $1499. There's also an iPhone and Wii tool available for an elevated cost. Now there's a few reasons why I did not buy this earlier:

1) cost

2) I already own Flash CS4

3) I'm really bad at art, so I'd need a 3D artist, preferably someone I could get away with paying really little (least I'm honest)

However, now that it's free, I might as well download it.



I haven't had more than a few minutes to play with it, but so far it seems pretty awesome. It seems like it has a pretty big learning curve, and I'm inept with 3D art by nature. I'll also need to be careful about investing my time in Unity, as I need to keep up with all my other favorite programming languages and projects.


I really do feel bad for the guy who downloaded this the day before it became free.

Download Unity 3D

Dual Power UV LED kit Ready for Sale!

Many LEDs and resistors selflessly gave their lives in the development of the BW Science Labs Store's newest kit, the Dual Power UV LED Flashlight kit. Their sacrifice has not been in vain...



While developing this kit I uncovered my true love for Ultra-violet LEDs. There just plain awesome! You can use them to detect counterfeit money, kill germs (now that's pretty impressive for a LED), authenticate drivers licenses (and passports?), and stun an assailant (*cough* *cough* shine it in their eyes). Not to mention Ultra-violet light produces a really neat effect on its environment, like making white objects eerily glow (there you go, another idea for Halloween).

I have some kits already neatly put together in packages, ready for sale. However, it may take a day or two for me to put it on the Store site as most of my time is wasted away studying for an endless barrage of Spanish tests, also known as "¡examines!". Interestingly enough, the exclamation points don't make me feel any better.

I'm really happy with how I balanced cost with awesomeness, as this little guy in relatively inexpensive (I intend to price the kit for around $11.99), and as you can see, it packs a pretty powerful punch.

UV LED kit- coming soon to the Store

I spent most of my day packaging Vivus the Robot kits, which involves unpacking lots of boxes, taking out the microcontroller, plugging them into my PC, and programming them one at a time. However, I did manage to find the time to continue working on BW Science Labs's next kit, a mini UV LED kit that can be used to sterilize your hands (and your prized action figure collection in the basement of your mom's house), detect counterfeit money (now hey, that's pretty darn cool), make your teeth glow white (the most useful of all) and a bunch of other really cool stuff.

I have a working prototype and I've got the right PCBs, resistors (that one took awhile, darn resistance calculator lies!), etc. However, I'm working on finding a better power source. The prototype currently uses a 9v via battery clip, which really stinks seeing that I'm trying to make things as small as possible. However, once that problem is solved the mini UV LED kit will be ready for purchase on the BW Science Labs Store.

Sunday Status: MIT's New Toy and BW Science Labs Goes Global

Global

Those of you who know me, know how much I love MIT. Hey, who doesn't? The first Rapid Prototyping machines came from them, along with the first robots to learn like a human child, and having an on-campus nuclear reactor is pretty darn cool too. MIT unveiled their newest toy this week, a robot that can autonomously navigate through and map 3D terrain using lasers. Now this is the kind of work I want to be doing when I'm in college.


[or watch this video on MIT Tech TV]

Micro

This has been a fantastic week for BW Science Labs. The BW Science Labs Store visitor increase is up 1,884% this month, and BW Science Labs is up 99%. I've spent the weekend managing the flood of orders for the Vivus the Robot kit, and while I don't particularly enjoy being on the "service" end of "customer service" things are going pretty well.

This week, BW Science Labs was featured on Boing Boing Media and MAKE Magazine's blog.

I managed to make an LED explode (it was actually pretty cool) while prototyping the BWSL Store's next kit. I'll be sure to write more on it when I have something working.

Woot! Woot! I Won the Digital Open Competition!

This is usually the time where I'd post a Theoretical Thursday on my thoughts and ideas, however today something awesome happened that merits overwriting theories.

I won Sun Microsystems's and IFTF's international youth competition, the Digital Open. I won a laptop, a video camera, and a bunch of other cool things. The Boing Boing Media team came to my house and interviewed me about the win, and made a pretty cool video.


[or watch this video on YouTube]

Here's what they quoted me on in their post on my win:

"The BW Science Labs Store is an idea I've had for a while now, but it has taken a lot of work to get it up and running. There is currently 1 kit available, the Vivus the Robot kit. I"ve seen a lot of those really low-quality $20 robots where you clap your hands and they twitch, and I've seen $400 robots with a great deal of functionality. I wanted to make something in between, and that's exactly what Vivus is. During prototyping I wanted to make a "real robot", one that was autonomous and could truly act on its own, while trying to keep the cost down as well. "

A very special thanks to the folks at Sun Microsystems, Institute for the Future, and Digital Open for making this possible.

Sunday Status: Steve Jobs's Fiesta and Building the Uber Laser

Global

I'm not completely sure if this really counts for global, but this week Apple announced that their 2 billionth iPhone app had been downloaded. Wow, 2 BILLION iphone app downloads, that's a lot of Fart Applications...

I can picture Steve Jobs right now with a little party hat on, toasting his victory.


Don't even try getting into my party without muffins.

Micro

I spent all day today building what I lovingly call the Uber Laser*. I managed to reconfigure 5 mw green laser diode to output nearly 100 milliwatts, while that's not enough to do anything really cool, its still an impressive feat. I'll be sure to give it the full post it deserves** later this week.




Footnotes:

*: I know, I know, I'm pretty bad at naming things. "BW Science Labs", not my most creative name. Seriously though, if you have a better name for it then let me know.
**: We all know what happens when a science project feels like it doesn't get what it deserves... It becomes aware.

Robotic Cars: Taking over the world (right after they can move 20 ft without crashing)

Today, while driving home from school, I saw a car with some sort of spinning sensor on the top. I recognized the design from a NOVA episode I saw in 2007 about the yearly robot car races. From what I remember, the rotating block on top most likely uses sonar to rapidly send out sonar pings as the module rotates. The sonar waves bounce off of objects and return to the sensor. The elapsed time since the ping was sent out is calculated and determines the distance of the object. And of course, there is an on-board computer that gets the car from point A to point B.

The NOVA episode was quite entertaining as most cars had extreme difficulty moving around stacks of hay, much less driving on the open road. Kudos to the engineers who finally got one of these things to work.

I assume this isn't just a Halloween prank because it appeared that no one was touching a steering wheel (cruise control?). The sensor on top is pretty high-end. There were two extremely nerdy looking guys* in the front seats and only Target advertises for Halloween this early in the month.

And of course I was able to snap a couple pics of it before we passed them.**


It's only a matter of time before it becomes self-aware... and enslaves us all.


This is one of the big pluses to living in the Bay Area. Only in San Francisco will you see a robot driving people home.




Footnotes:



*: I mean this in the kindest of regards, meaning they're Not Even Remotely Dorky.
*: The robots may take our freedom, but they'll never take our highway!

Flash development for the iPhone?!

Today is one of days I am overjoyed that I read the MAKE Blog, as I found an incredible bit of news today. As I scrolled down MAKE's page I found an article that nearly made me explode with excitement (Not literally... that'd be pretty weird). Adobe recently announced that Flash and ActionScript 3 developers (like me) will soon be able to deploy their applications on the iPhone. Yes, the iPhone. You may now take a moment to wear a black turtleneck and hold your hands up in the air like Steve Jobs and declare "All this.... coming to the iPhone!" and get roars of approval from fans who have no idea what you're saying and will later dig through your trash to find a half-eaten banana with your precious DNA on it.


Worship me!!!

Is this too good to be true? Will Flash developers finally stretch beyond the limits of your PC's (or Mac's, make Steve Jobs proud) browser? Can I go right now and code for the iPhone to my heart's desire? Yes, yes, and NO.

As far as I know this isn't too good to be true, because there's a catch. Though yes, Flash developers will be able to bust their way out of your monitor's confines and leap onto your iPhone, it ain't gonna happen any time soon. Of course, typical Adobe, we have to wait and buy the Flash CS5 upgrade to build iPhone Apps, until then only the special developers will be able to build iPhone apps with Flash.


[or watch this video on youtube]

The beta test will be released this year (hopefully sooner than later), and will be (promptly?) followed by the actual release of CS5. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll be a Beta Tester, as there are about 5 million* other developers slobbering over their keyboards trying to become one of the first to use it. Not to mention I haven't really made a name for myself in the Flash community other than my one sub-par game.

I personally think that to make things truly fair Adobe should put all 5 million of us Flash developers into one giant pit and have us fight for a single Beta copy of Flash CS5.



Footnotes:

*: I made up this number all by myself.

The Marshmallow Test

Today I stumbled upon this fantastic video of a psychology experiment called The Marshmallow Test, where kids had to decide if they would eat a marshmallow immediately or wait for a few minutes. In return for waiting, the kids would get a second marshmallow along with the first.

This experiment has several applications to the real world like the stock market and religion, but rather than go into it now let's just enjoy the video.



[or watch the Marshmallow Test on Youtube]

I found it interesting how kids would deviously pick off small pieces of the marshmallow after being told not to, and then lying about it to the woman afterwards. A book was published a little while ago (can't remember the title now unfortunately) where the author asked kids under age 10 questions like "what is marriage?" and "What is love?". The author's rational was that kids under age 10 could not lie. Apparently the author never thought to temp the all-knowing toddlers with a marshmallow.

Sunday Status: Water on the moon? and ActionScript Development Continues

Today marks the first ever Sunday Status post on BW Science Labs, with many to hopefully follow. In a Sunday Status I'll talk about science news on a global scale, and then a micro* scale at BW Science Labs.

Global

The other day I got an email from NASA that boasted new discoveries on water on the moon. I figured that it was probably another "on August 27th Mars will be as big as the moon!" hoax**, so I disregarded the message. However, sure enough word of water on the moon spread and turned out to actually have merit. The Apollo mission 40 years ago brought moon rocks back to earth for study, and though trace amounts of water were found researchers assumed that it was from contamination in the cargo crate.

One way water is detected on other planets or moons is by looking at the light that reflects off of one's surface. By looking at the wavelengths of the reflected light there were indications that hydrogen and oxygen had bonded, meaning either water or hydroxyl.

In actuality the craft that picked up the traces of water, Deep Impact, was the 3rd craft to have detected water/hydroxyl, the first being Chandrayaan-1 and later Cassini. Now that 3 separate crafts have detected water on the moon NASA scientists were sure that there was water.***


Micro

I've begun development of a new game that's being programmed in ActionScript 3.0 (a programming language similar to Java) featuring a little robot that has to save its base from armies of other robots. This may not be an award winning concept, but its proving to be a great learning experience. As of now I've only had a chance to work on it 20 minutes here and there, so I've only written a bit over 500 lines of code for it.



Above is some of the code I wrote for the built in store where the player can buy upgrades, health, and other fun stuff using the currency earned after defeating robots.

As of now the world is not yet ready for my terrible drawing skills, so I'm trying to convince someone else to do the game art, until then the place holder images look like they've been drawn by a three year old.



Footnotes:


*: and I do mean "micro". All of the BW Science Labs employee(s?) can attest to that.
**: I was so excited. Such as shame as I stood freezing outside on August 27th hopefully staring up at the empty night sky.
***: Apparently the first two times they detected it they forgot to email me. Oh yeah, and tell the rest of the country too.

Math and "Mathemagic"

Arthur Benjamin has been a long time hero of mine, ever since I first saw his TED Lecture on how he does mental math. Today, I managed to convince my science teacher to let me skip some class and see Benjamin speak on campus at the High School. Much of his talk was extremely similar to his lecture at TED, sometimes even word for word, but this time he had some very cool never-before-seen tricks.

For his first trick (if you can really call it that), Benjamin had a student come on stage where he produced an imaginary deck of cards. He asked the student to pick an "invisible" card from anywhere in the deck. This seemed strange, as there were really no cards at all, however the student pretended to take a card, and then to flip it up-side down and place it back in the imaginary deck. Benjamin proceeded to pretend to place the cards in his pocket, then withdrew a real deck of cards. Benjamin fanned them out and pointed out that one of the cards was facing backwards, as if the student had placed it there. He then asked the boy what card he imagined he was holding when he took the pretend card. "A seven of hearts" was the student's response.

We were all skeptical as to what was going to happen next, but it really was remarkable what he was able to do. He pulled out the card and showed it to the crowd, a seven of hearts.

I was blown away to say the least. Arthur Benjamin seemed to know ahead of time what card would be in the student's mind, as the real cards he took out of his pocket were arranged neatly inside a box. One theory is that Benjamin used simple probability to accurately guess what card the student was going to imagine. Seven is often times what one thinks of when asked to choose a number between one and ten. Perhaps with cards, people had the tendency to usually pick a seven of hearts. However, this would leave a large margin of error as the volunteer could be thinking of a different card just as easily, making it only probable that Benjamin would be correct.
However, he is a mathematician, so there may be some way to calculate what card the person would be thinking of when pulling a card out of a certain part of the imaginary deck. For instance, if the student had pretended to pull out a lower card, then he may subconsciously be thinking that the card he is choosing is a King or Queen. However, this too leaves a large margin of error, as the volunteer could be thinking of an ace of clubs while imagining to pull a card from the top half of the deck.

To be honest, this one really stumped me. There are a number of theories, most of them are possible, but not necessarily probable.

I was amazed by Arthur Benjamin's math abilities, so much so that hours later I bought his book, Secrets of Mental Math. I don't think his card trick will be in there, but I will hopefully have a more interesting concept of math when I finish reading it. And hey, maybe I'll finally be able to square three digit numbers in my head...

Astrobiology Interview

Yesterday I interviewed Dr. Darlene Lim, a NASA Ames scientist who heads a project called PLRP, or the Pavilion Lake Research Project. PLRP studies organisms called microbialites that are believed to be the only living things on early Earth, about 2.5 billion years ago.

PLRP's data also will have a huge effect on future Mars and Lunar missions, and also will provide the perfect way to train astronauts.

All this, and more, in the upcoming Edition of Science Quarterly.

From Passion to Action Science Lecture

Today I gave a lecture on how I went from my passion to action. I discuss both BW Science Labs and Science Quarterly in a two part series.

And no, my voice does not sound like this in real life.




You can also watch this video here.




You can also watch this video here.

This lecture was given in front of about 200 or 300 people, and hopefully many more online.

Here are the slides (click to enlarge):













A very special thanks to Nancy Fortman for her support for the past three years, and to David Mugglebee for making this presentation possible.