UPDATED 6/25: Jerald Cogswell has created a gadget designed to find the sun for solar applications. He put light sensors in baffles, and his device takes 30 samples vertically and 30 samples horizontally to determine the brightest intersection. The process identifies the optimal spot to point solar collectors.
Using the same multiplexing gadget, Cogswell can find the inventory for each item in a vending machine, find and sort the heaviest macadamia nuts on a factory line, or sense the position of a magnetic or inductive source.
Jerald Cogswell's sun finder multiplexes 64 light samples to one microcontroller pin.
This multiplexing project can be modified by adding output routines to the program to drive motors or other devices.
The editors of Design News have handpicked your favorite Gadget Freak cases from over the years, bringing them together in a dynamic digital edition, complete with videos, which you can view here.
I could have used Jerald's gadget a couple of weeks back when we were experimenting with solar lighting in a couple of gardens in the back yard. Took a few days (perhaps more since we did it in a good stretch of rain) before we got the small main panel situated properly. Jerald's invention could have saved us some serious time!
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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