General

The prototype push charger is now complete. Starting where I left off on the disassembled remote-control car, I added a diode bridge between the wires coming from the gearhead motor and the battery compartment. The diode bridge ensures that the battery always receives the same polarity of current. Even if the push charger is being […]

The XBee time clock is back up and running on the ITP floor. It has been changed from a broadcast to a responder model. This is both more efficient generally, and faster in practice. The new PIC code for the clock is matched with new sample Arduino code that any project can incorporate to pick

Got my very first Instructable online this morning. I’m teaching the world how to perfectly cook a sealed can and create dulce de leche, a delicious caramel desert.

I started the power generation monorail project by trying out a quick LEGO prototype. First I created a conveyor system using their instructions: It worked:

For the kinetic energy project, I’m prototyping a human powered battery charging system. ITP has very long hallways, so I’d like to take harness the traffic up and down the halls to power projects. The end product is envisioned as a monorail tramway type of system. A handle dangles from the overhead tramway, and tugging

Most students and faculty at ITP have a blog of one sort or another. There’s way too many to keep track of. I’ve always thought it would be great to see them all at once. And not only great–also weird. Some people rant neurotically while others document dilligently. There’s explanations of code fragments, manifestos, photo

At ITP on Thursday evenings, students teach students in hour-long sessions that we call DriveBys. My second one was about doing research at NYU, our affiliated libraries and myriad of online services. The presentation was primarily for second-year students embarking on their Masters Thesis. I got help from Matt Burton who pointed out a lot

BBC Newshour covered the Botanicalls project today. Julian Marshall interviewed us and about an hour later news of Botanicalls reached the far corners of the British Empire. Thanks are due to the uncredited voice of Andrew Schneider as the Scotch moss plant. We’ll see that he gets the soaking he deserves. The BBC originally learned

Rocketboom featured Botanicalls today as part of their overview of the ITP Winter Show. We were also pleased to hear from the ITP faculty that Botanicalls could continue to be installed at ITP for the next six months so the system can be developed further. It was a terrific show with a large and appreciative

The Botanicalls project made its debut at the ITP Winter Show on December 17th. Botanicalls allows thirsty plants to place phone calls for human help. Rather than driving a wedge between people and nature, the project uses technology to bring people into closer relationships with their natural environment. Humans can also phone the plants to