Fear not, OQO and Toshiba Libretto fans. There's a downsized computer for the 21st century. It's called Raspberry Pi, and if you haven't heard of it, you have to turn in your tenured engineers' pass.
The diff this time is that Raspberry Pi isn't a Wintel PC jammed beneath a Chiclet-sized keyboard. It's a tech teaching tool, propelled by the Raspberrypi.org Foundation, whose mantra is "to see cheap, accessible, programmable computers everywhere."
The Pi will set you back $35. Think you can afford it?
Rich, I also was nostalgic when I saw the Lafayette catalog. If they come back maybe I can get that Quadraphonic 8-track with the headphones that had two channels in each earpiece I dreamt of getting in my youth.
I liked the inclusion of "The Beauty of Fractals" (I have a few other similar book's sitting next to it, including "The Fractal Geometry of Nature").
As an Engineer, I don't believe in the superiority of vacuum tubes (any more than low oxygen copper speaker wires). But I do have a collection of old tubes I'm thinking of mounting as art (some are quite beautiful).
Finally, why include superglue and duct tape? Every good Engineer worth his or her salt already has these in their tool box. Should've been something that many Engineer's don't already have at home, like that nice small mixed signal scope (hint hint Santa).
These are some unique choices. The only one I should have put on my list, the Terrafugia Transition. It would make for fun weekend trips. Though I am sure people would vandalize it out of jealousy. The burden of being ostentatiously wealthy... A burden I have to carry, woe is me.
I already have the Raspberry Pi. Finding a use for it escapes me at the moment. Suggestions welcome.
Wow, this is an emotional piece. Three of your items really resonate with me. First, the Lafayette catalog, although I was more of a Heathkit guy. Second, I'm a HUGE fan of duct tape. It can solve most of the world's problems. Finally, The Big Bang Theory is a must have.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
The push to achieving more intelligent, integrated manufacturing is putting a strong focus on networking and connectivity as key enabling technologies.
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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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