Electrónica, teleco y todo eso...

Ultrasound images are an important tool for medical diagnosis, and while units used by doctors can be very expensive, getting a basic image doesn’t have to be. Inspired by this attempt at a $500 ultrasound machine seen here, maker “stoppi71” decided to create his own using a 5 MHz ultrasound transducer via a paint-thickness gauge.

An Arduino Due provides computing power to turn sound pulses into images, while a 3.5-inch TFT display shows what it’s examining. Short pulses in the 100-200 nanosecond range are generated with the help of a monoflop and MOSFET, returning an echo corresponding to what it’s “looking” at. 

Although the results are not nearly what you’d expect at the doctor’s office, rudimentary readings of skin and bone are definitely visible. 

I’ve examined different objects from aluminum-cylinders over water-filled balloons to my body. To see body-echos the amplification of the signals must be very high. For the aluminum-cylinders a lower amplification is needed. When you look at the pictures you can clearly see the echoes from the skin and my bone.

So what can I say about the success or failure of this project. It is possible to look inside the body with such simple methods and using parts, which aren’t commonly intended for that purpose. But these factors are limiting the results too. You don’t get such clear and well structured pictures compared with commercial solutions.

[QUANTUM COMPUTERS FOR COMMERCIAL USE IBM’s Q System]

Just 24 hours prior, IBM unveiled its first ever quantum computer designed for commercial use, the sleek-looking IBM Q System One.

Quantum computers offer the promise to vastly outperform regular machines by exploiting the properties of quantum physics. The Q System One has 20 quantum bits, or qubits, while most researchers expect that the first devices to achieve so-called “quantum supremacy” over ordinary computers will require at least 50 qubits.

IBM has spent the past few years making increasingly powerful quantum hardware available to the outside world. In 2016, it put a five-qubit machine online, free for anyone to experiment with, but this is the first system designed with the purpose of allowing customers to perform quantum calculations over the internet. The company however, has no plans of selling the product.

IBM is not the first company to offer a quantum computer for commercial use. In 2011, D-Wave Systems announced a partnership with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin to use its 128-qubit processor. Although small, this is certainly a step towards widespread development of quantum computers in the future.

Credit:

Katwala, A. (2019, January 09). IBM’s quantum computer is important, but it’s far from ready. Retrieved from https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ibm-quantum-computer

Tweet

The field of radio control has benefited much from the onward march of technology. Where a basic 2-channel setup would once have cost hundreds of dollars, it’s now possible to get a high-end 2.4GHz 9-channel rig for well under $100, shipped to your door. However, the vast majority of these systems are closed-source and built for purpose. Sometimes, there are benefits to doing things your own way, and that’s precisely what this project does.

At its heart, it’s a simple combination. An Arduino Pro Mini talks to a NRF24L01 which handles the wireless communication. At that point, it’s up to you – throw in as few or as many controls as you like. For this build, [HowToMechatronics] has gone with a twin-stick setup, with a pair of potentiometers and twin toggle switches to round out the options.

The build comes in handy, as it’s possible to program in whatever features you may need for a given project. [HowToMechatronics] has used it to control a hexapod robot, among other projects. It’s a build that shows that with cheap and readily available parts, it’s possible to whip up a custom solution to suit your needs.

If this topic interests you.it’s worth saying that even those closed source radio control products can sometimes be hacked.

[Thanks to Baldpower for the tip!]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

$$('div.d').each( function(e) { e.visualEffect('slide_up',{duration:0.5}) });

If you want to create your own custom PCBs, you could design it and wait for a fab house to send it back, dealing with any errors, or you could do it yourself. Hacker Andras Kabai decided to go for the second option, and made his own UV exposure tool to help him with the process using an old flatbed scanner as the base.

Rather than line the entire underside of the bed with LEDs, he cleverly repurposed the single-axis gantry that would normally hold the scanning unit to instead contain a row of LEDs to expose the PCB on top.

The project was prototyped with an Arduino Pro Mini, but was eventually supplanted by a Mega when the smaller board’s limits were reached.

Plenty of DIY PCB UV exposure tool building posts are available on the internet with total different approaches. I also designed my own, to fulfill my needs: it should be relative small and portable and the hacking/modding should be fun. ? Flat bed scanners were found as possibly good target. Compared to most of the other scanner mods, which use LED arrays or fluorescent tubes across the whole scanner bed area, my plan was to use the scanner carriage with only few LEDs and control its movement (and brightness) under the given PCB.

You can check out its development in the videos below, which show off the device’s interface and the gantry in motion.

¿Blockchain? 🤔

¿Sabías que…

¿Por qué el Bluetooth se llama blue-tooth? ¿Y por qué el logo tan raro?

Por alguna razón, mucha gente tiende a pensar que los móviles e incluso todo internet va por satélite (lo cual sería absurdamente caro e inasumible).

Desde hace muchos años, hay una red de cables suboceánicos que comunican distintas partes del mundo con fibra óptica.

Esta gente ha seguido el proceso de fabricación y cómo se instalan estos cables que pueden llevar 100 terabits por segundo (no tengo claro si cada fibra o el conjunto).

Como se puede ver en el vídeo, realmente la información va por las fibras (que tienen el ancho de un pelo humano maomeno), todo el resto son protecciones y aislantes.