Blog Title: Whackywhizzers

MY Contest Entry

I Recently participated in a design contest in which i had to make a unique design contest and now i am in one of the finalists.

This is my design:



My widget design no is: 26

Now winner will be selected on a voting basis so please vote for me:

I made a simple black one which would merge in the site easily

i had taken part in a contest on making widgets templates in photoshop

i have been selected in the contest :

visit this site to see my widget


To vote to my design
mail to:info@scratchback.com

subject:ScratchbackDesign#26

Sony Headphones review

I love gadgets solely because they make our life simple and they also give us pleasure. I recently viewed a review site wize having reviews on all types of gadgets. It is a review site where each product is ranked based on expert and user reviews. This website had reviews about various gadgets headphones, mobiles, camcorders, cameras etc.

I surfed this site and I came across these cool sony headphones. These headphones have good sound quality and features, after all they are sony headphones and they got to have class and features.

I would like to share review about a sony headphones I liked.

Sony MDRNC22 Consumer Headphones

These headphones come with a volume control and have got good sound quality.

It has a very small size due to its earbud design. Small power consumption,stereo sound and sensitivity of 102 dB are some of its prominent features.

It has a wizerank of 89 and lists among the top headphones.

There is one problem is its noise cancelling which is not so good. It adds a slight hiss to the sound which is a very disturbing feature and but it doesn't matter much cause the hiss is usually not noticable

It is priced between 67$ -100$ which according to me might not meet everyone's pocket but it is worth every penny spent on it.

Everyone Needs Better Caring

Better caring leads to better well being and a good quality life. Better Caring a website working for the sole cause of providing better care available in the fastest time and without any problems. It provides care tips and discussion boards where we can discuss on various topics related to health care. Articles related to health problems, diseases, and health related issues are posted on the website so that you get upto date to latest technologies available to cure you from the problem.

Care Information – In care information a person can get information relevant to choices made like care at home, residential care, health and finance. There are many archives related to topics like dementia and bed sores and may others…

Care Search - It is a good feature in this website where one can search for nursing homes in UK which are at least 5 miles in radius and can specify the counties. These nursing homes can be either nursing or residential according to search any nursing home in UK.

Care Discussion - It is the discussion forum where users can interact with each other , discuss among themselves and share their views and experiences .They can ask their queries and problems and get them solved.

Care about yourself and reclaim your life.

Make your own online store-Hassle Free

Making an online store cannot be easier than this.AShopCommerce is a shopping cart software which helps create an online store with no coding required.It has quite unique features which hardly found in other ecommerce software.It was the winner of My Business Awards 2006.

It has features like - It is quite secure and uses 128 bit SSL security and fraud alerts. The SSL feature is useful when credit cards are used because it provides utmost safety. The best feature is Search optimization - It keeps track of your ranking in searches and helps promoting your rank in searches and hence increase in sales are tremendous(After all Increase in popularity leads to increase in proportional sale). This software comes with a 10 days trial and after that you can own a customized Shopping Cart with only a small monthly fee. All these stores are hosted on their fast servers with 24x7 monitoring and constantly backs up all the data to prevent any data loss.

They also offer tech support listening to every query you ask.

All in all a good package deal.

LG Prada Review

In the midst of the Apple iPhone fanfare, the other device received a fair amount of attention, LG's speculated KE850 Prada phone, has been officially announced by LG.

The KE850 Prada claims to to be the world’s 'first completely touch screen mobile phone', which is actually incorrect on two counts. First up, it has dedicated 'hard' Call and End buttons below the touch screen; and consequently, the second reason is that we've been seeing similar devices for years (O2 XDAs, i-mate JAMs and even Motorola's A1200 MING). Anyway, let's see what else the device has and how it stacks up with Apple's iPhone.

The KE850 is a tri-band GSM handset with EDGE support, unlike the quad-band iPhone. The device is smaller, though, and has smaller 3-inch screen, compared to the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen, with the resolution being fixed at 240x400 (vs. 320x480 on the iPhone). The user interface is Flash-based. There's no word on any revolutionary form of input (like the iPhone’s multi-touch).

It packs in a 2 megapixel camera like the iPhone (but with a Schneider-Kreuznach lens), but the Prada has an LED flash to spice up the night shots a bit. The internal storage doesn't go into gigabytes, but it does have a microSD card slot so you can add in upto 2 GB, I would presume.

The Prada has only Bluetooth 2.0, not WiFi like the iPhone. Also present is USB 2.0 with Mass Storage support so you can just drag and drop files without requiring any iTunes-like software! It comes with an audio/video player that supports MP3, AAC, WMA, and RealAudio, MPEG-4 and H.264/H.263. The document viewer supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, PDFs and text files too.

ROBOT CHASSIS

Chassis according to Wikipedia is a chassis consists of a framework that supports an inanimate object, analogous to an animal's skeleton, for example in a motor vehicle or a firearm. According to me it is the skeleton of the robot. The first part of a robot is its chassis. The shape and size of the chassis depends upon the shape of the robot or vehicle to be made. The shape can be circular,rectangular,triangular. Circular and rectangular shapes are most widely used but you can make chassis of any desired shape,it can even be irregular depending upon the application of the robot.
Now it is important to select the material of the chassis. The selection criteria depends upon following factors:
(1) The size of the robot
(2) Budget

The larger the size of the robot the larger the weight bearing power is needed therefore for small robots wood or plastic materials are used for making the chassis.
For larger robots cast iron is used because it is cheaper and weldable(Can be easily welded other metal parts) but only problem is that it gets corroded easily,therefore it is usually painted on all sides. Another option for heavy robots is use Galvanized Iron sheets it is rust free but doesn’t weld. For light weight robots aluminum or brass sheets are used.

Selection of chassis is very important task because it acts as a housing for all other parts such as batteries,motors,sensors,wires and also gives the robot a specific shape.

Monetization of your site

You can monetize your website or blog by publishing advertisements these are usually text links or flash based ads and you get money per click (pay per click) or monthly payment for displaying the ads.
The ads shown are based upon the content of your site. Google adsense uses crawlers to crawl your content and ads are displayed according to the content your blog site.
This is just an introduction i'll will ellaborate each monetization technique afterwards


The links to various money making sites like adsense and widgetbucks are given on the left sidebar

for more info go to: www.monetizeurwebsite.blogspot.com

HAPPY DIWALI

How To make a Micromouse

A Micromouse is a maze solving autonomous vehicle which completes the maze within minimum time possible.
A micromouse has to cross the maze in minimum time therefore to achieve that it should rotate very fast.

A micromouse has the following parts :

1.Body i.e a micromouse's mechanical structure

Chassis:

The MicroMouse chassis is the main piece that holds together all the other parts.
It must provide enough space for the microprocessor, batteries, motors and sensors. The
chassis will be built with an easy to work material like plastic or aluminum. The
advantage of using aluminum would be to draw heat away from the motors, functioning
as a built-in heat sink, but plastic may be easier and cheaper.
The chassis need to be small enough so that is able to make a full turn inside a
maze block without touching the walls.

1.Micromouse should have a Robust and compact chassis.
2. Adequate to allow easy movement inside the maze.

The size constraints imposed by the dimensions play an important role in determining the shape and orientation of finished micromouse.

2. battery or power supply

The power supply can be vary from 5-24 volts and can be of normal lead acid,dry cell or others like mercury cell and lithium ion batteries.


3. Sensors

In the final MicroMouse, two types of sensors will be used. A row of proximity
sensors overhanging the top of the maze on both sides of the MicroMouse will be used to
keep the MicroMouse centered within the cell and for environment mapping in adjacent
cells.

Distance sensors will be used to detect the length of the path in
front, and possibly to the sides of the MicroMouse. These infrared sensors are relatively
low cost, have been used effectively in several MicroMouse designs, and transmit an
output related to the distance to the nearest object within a range of 10 to 80 cm. The
sensors will have to be calibrated to function predictably for varying maze and ambient
conditions

Link to IR Sensors

4.Microcontroller

The microcontroller is both the brain and the heart of the MicroMouse. Because
the device is autonomous, the microcontroller must control everything the MicroMouse
does while in the maze. Based on the inputs it receives from the sensors it must calculate
a path for the mouse to navigate the maze. It must also control the drive motors to move
the mouse and after reaching the goal reduce the path back to the starting square to an
optimal path. The microcontroller board must be low power and the entire board must be
smaller than 25 x 25cm.

The work on the microcontroller can be broken down into different functions:
path finding, movement, sensing, and crash recovery. The path finding algorithm will
receive inputs from the sensors, calculate the best move, then output commands to the
movement functions. Movement control and sensor data gathering functions will be
established early to ensure their proper function and allow ample time for debugging. In
order to combat unforeseen skids and collisions, a variety of crash recovery methods will
have to be developed. As with any large program, the functions can be worked on
simultaneously as long as strict variable passing rules are established before work begins


5. Locomotion


A Steering type drive is used in micromouse just like in cars.
For turns Stepper motors are used,the steeper motor controls the front wheels and for forward movement DC motors are used which controls the rear wheels.

Link TO Stepper Motor:


Related: Ahish Bhatt's Micromouse,Maze Solving Micromouse

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Dhananjay.v.gadre sir's great battery less dice

Here is the video of a battery less dice made by one of our faculty Dhananjay.V.Gadre sir.
This circuit employs an AVR microcontroller and uses a faraday generator for generating the emf.
First the device is shaken many times and then the charge is stored in a very large capacitor.This capacitor provides the required potential to light the L.E.D's that make up the dice.
A random function generator generates a random number between 1 and 6.

See the demonstrative video:

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Line follower

What is a line follower?

A line follower is an autonomous vehicle which follows a line path(straight or curved) that maybe of any colour.

what this statement means is that the line follower will move on its own by following the line.


I have always been fascinated by autonomous vehicles like micromouse, line follower the best thing about them is that they move without any external control.

So a line follower has the following requirements:

1. It requires a Sensory Device which would help detect the line.

2. It requires a Brain to control its motion helping to follow the line.

3. It requires Locomotion which would help it ro move along the line.

4. It requires a Mechanical Structure which would support all these devices.


SENSORY DEVICE:

The most important part of the line follower is its sensory part which detects the line.
It senses the line and produces an output in the form of potential drop.
For example, an LDR(Light Dependant Resistor) has different resistances for different intensities of light,low resistance for higher intensity and vice versa.

An IR sensor is also a good option as a sensory device it also produces a potential drop across it.

for more info on IR sensor:Link to IR Sensors

or u can also use an LED

For details for how to use LED as a sensor visit this site.

Though it is important to note that more the number of sensors employed the better the line follower becomes.But programming becomes more and more complex with increasing number of sensors

U can also use a web camera to detect the line and follow it using image processing for interpretation.
But it would increase the cost of the line follower by two folds.

BRAIN:

Now the signal produced by the sensors of the line follower is to be interpreted by a logic circuit.
This logic circuit can be purely electronic(if u are good at hardware) or using Microcontrollers like AVR or 8051 which u can program using C. Through a suitable program u can control the motion of the line follower. Suppose if u get a signal logic 1 as an input and if you're following a black line then u would move right or left accordingly.

for example if u have two sensors on both sides of the line and if detect logic 1 one and logic 0 on the other sensor(then u have moved on the left of the line) so to counter u will have to move to the right side.

This way u will follow the line.

Locomotion:

Now for locomotion of the line follower we require motors.We require lightweight motors which can have low torque and medium(now for controlling high rpm motors we require an H-bridge see article for fast change of change of direction)
The motors should be d.c. motors(it is preferable not use stepper motors instead use differential mechanism for the line follower).

Mechanical Structure:

We should use a lightweight chassis as the torque of the motors is low and so they cannot support large amount of weight. The chassis can be made of lightweight plastic or wood.
And we also need a large amounts of nuts,bolts and screws to fix the motors and the electronic parts of the line follower.

Watch this great video:

It is the video of a very fast Line follower and completes three laps in very less time.
It inspires a lot.
The name of the line follower is Jet.

Amazing Video

Amazing Video - Watch today’s top amazing videos here

can anybody tell me how is the person able to do this thing

Fridge magnet from hard drive

Earlier i had posted a video of obtaining a magnet from an old hard drive.
Link to the older post: 5 minute projects from Popsci


So i had a old damaged hard drive so i gave it a try:

This how my hard drive looks from outside







The problem was that i had a screw driver but the screws on the hard disk were hexagonal in shape
So i had to buy a TORX SET costing about 150-200 Rs




I unscrewed all the screws the result was i could see the inside of the hard disk

and ......
in the end i managed to remove a magnet for putting stuff on my fridge from the hard disk

Excellence

This is Excellence !!!!
This is a video of a match between South Africa and Pakistan
The great thing about the match is the unmatched field effort by Jhonty Rhodes.
This is the Best RUN OUT I've seen

A real visual treat:

NSIT-IEEE

NSIT has developed exponentially over the past few years and specially the NSIT branch of IEEE has grown so widely that now its no more a minority society in the college. In fact the membership just doubled in a span of 3 months. This was indeed a great achievement for the society.the official website can be viewed here

UBUNTU 7.10 released

I am a relatively new user of linux, but i like Ubuntu because it requires less rsources(less use of RAM). It is very user friendly and easy to understand. And yes u can order your copy of Ubuntu online and it will shipped to your address for free.

The new 7.10 release has many new features:

1. A new GUI environment: The new Gnome 2.20
2. New 3D desktop effects
3. A new Desktop Search
4. Fast user switching
5. New extensions for Firefox browser
6. Dynamic Screen configuration
7. Fully Automatic Printer Configuration

and many other features like energy effecient mode

for more visit http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/710rc

If you want to try the trial version
download here: http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/7.10

The HURRIQUAKE NAIL

Who might have thought so much innovation can be done on a simple nail then see this article on
Hurriquake Nail which is develop to resist natural disasters.

See this article:

Hurricane winds rip apart nailed-together walls, and earthquakes shake houses so violently that a nailhead can pull straight through a piece of plywood. Since we can’t stop natural disasters, Bostitch engineer Ed Sutt has dedicated his career to designing a better nail. The result is the HurriQuake, and it has the perfect combination of features to withstand nature’s darker moods. The bottom section is circled with angled barbs that resist pulling out in wind gusts up to 170 mph. This “ring shank” stops halfway up to leave the middle of the nail, which endures the most punishment during an earthquake, at its maximum thickness and strength. The blade-like facets of the nail’s twisted top—the spiral shank—keep planks from wobbling, which weakens a joint. And the HurriQuake’s head is 25 percent larger than average to better resist counter-sinking and pulling through. The best part: It costs only about $15 more to build a house using HurriQuakes. $45 per 4,000;

Innovision 2007

This Innovision was a lot better than the previous one.
This innovision had more technical events.
The participation was at a high.
People from different colleges participated in events like Line Following Robot,Micromouse,Robowars and Carnage.

The new attractions were the auto show,the robotics display(by techtronics).

The event that attracted the most number of people was Nexus (organized by TRI)
The participants had to make a robot thathad to lift 4 blocks one at a time from the ground and place it on a height.

The link to the site : innovision07.com


Here are some pics and videos :

Maze Solving (Micromouse)

The main objective of the maze-solving algorithm is to quickly determine from the current position of the mouse, where it has to go next in order to get to the center of the maze and back. It uses wall information stored during the exploration of the maze to determine the quickest route from the start-square to the center of the maze and back.

Bellman Flooding Algorithm

The Bellman flooding algorithm is a popular maze solver with micromouse contestants and has been used by several world championship-winning mice. The standard Bellman algorithm solves the maze for the shortest route, but this is not always the quickest. To find the quickest route to the centre of the maze it is necessary to use an advanced form of the Bellman flooding algorithm, which floods with time instead of distance. The advanced Bellman flooding algorithm is based upon the following:

1. No internal maze walls exist except those specified in the competition rules; normally just the outside perimeter.

2. The target square(s) is/are numbered 0. The squares joining the target square(s), with no separating walls, are numbered by the time taken to travel there from the target square(s).

3. The squares joining the above squares, with no separating walls, are also numbered by the time taken to travel there from the target square(s).

4. The flooding stops when the square being renumbered is the current mouse position.

5. The mouse makes the best move from the current mouse position by selecting the lowest flooding number.

6. If the mouse encounters a situation where there are two possible routes, with the same Bellman number, then the mouse will select the route with the following priority: straight ahead, east, west, north or south.

Examples of the Bellman flooding and direction arrays are given below in Figures 1 and 2. Pseudo code for the iterative Bellman flooding algorithm is shown in Figure 3 outlining the key stages in the process.

Figure 1 - Bellman Flooding Array

Figure 2 - Bellman Direction Array

Figure 3 - Block Diagram for the Iterative Flooding Process

Bellman Flooding Program Structure

The block diagram for the top level of the Bellman flooding algorithm (see Figure 4) outlines the five key steps in the iterative process of navigating the maze.

Step 1: determines the next position of the mouse from its current position. It primarily uses information from the Bellman flooding array, along with the mouse's current direction. It only starts this step when the mouse is nearing its required destination.

Step 2: is the task of driving the micromouse to the new position determined in the last step. Although this is not strictly the task of the maze-solving algorithm, it must inform the Motor Control sub-system where to go.

Step 3: is to update the wall information on the move, which is automatically done by the Sensors and Sensor sub-system. The Sensor sub-system sets a flag if any new wall information is obtained.

Step 4: is only executed if the wall information has changed during the movement of the micromouse to its required destination. This cuts down the time to process the next position.

Step 5: is the last step in the process and checks whether the micromouse has reached its ultimate destination. The easiest way to achieve this is to check the current Bellman number for the current mouse's position. If this value is zero, then the flooding direction must be switched.

Figure 4 - Block Diagram for the Bellman Flooding Algorithm

Related post : Ashish bhatt's Micromouse

How to make a micromouse

STEPPER MOTOR

The most common problem we face when we use normal DC motors is that we don’t have precise control over how much it rotates. To rotate DC motors through a particular number of degrees what we can do is either calibrate it for a delay based operation i.e. if I switch it on for n seconds it moves 360 degrees; or what we can do is attach n encoder to the shaft which gives us a feedback on how much the motor shaft has rotated so that we can stop it when it rotates through the desired angle. Home made encoders give good results but don’t have such a high resolution and high resolution encoders are costly.
In such cases where we need to control the rotary position of the motor we can use stepper motors. Stepper motors have a tendency to make beginners feel uncomfortable about using them. But lets hope this air of discomfort about using stepper motors disappears once we are done through this article.
Stepper motors are motors available in round, square, rectangular shapes with 4 or more wires coming out of them.

In the permanent magnet stepper motor the rotor is a permanent magnet and the stator is a set of coils which are energized one after another. In the unipolar motors the direction of current in the coil doesn’t reverse (so UNI) while in the bipolar the current through the coil flows in both the directions (so BI).In both types of stepper motors there are two coils wound on the stator poles, which gives us 4 wires.

The difference is that in unipolar motors there is a center tap from each of the coil winding. These center taps are either brought out individually (which will give us 4+2 = 6 wires) or are shorted together and brought out (which gives us 4+1 = 5 wires)

Properties:

1) Digitaly controlled brushless motor that rotate a specific number of degrees (a step).
2) Number of degrees (resolution) can be between .72 to 90 degrees. General purpose steppers have a resolution of 15 or 30 degrees a step.
3) High precision, low torque.

The following figure shows a stepper motor deflected by 90 degrees

This occurs only when one coil is excited and other's are not.

The following figure shows half step where two adjacent coils are excited and therefore the rotor moves in between the coils .

By this we can move by 45 degrees.

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IR Sensors

AMPLIFIED SENSOR CIRCUIT

R3 is to prevent the emitter (clear) LED from melting itself. Look at the emitter spec sheet to find maximum power. Make sure you choose an R1 value so that Vcc^2/R1

R2 should be larger then the maximum resistance of the detector. Measure the resistance of the detector (black) when it is pointing into a dark area and then choose the next larger resister. This means Vout is close to zero when there is no signal.

THINGS TO NOTE:

• The LED and detector have very narrow emission and detection angles, so it matters a LOT how you place them. Place the LED and detector an 1/8 to a 1/4 inch apart maximum, basically parallel and almost contacting.

• Many objects are opaque to visible light (that means light doesn't pass through it, like wood, black plastic, metal), but are transparent to IR light. Black plastic is a good example. Many forms of black plastic are transparent to IR light, and therefore doesn't make a good shielding material. Aluminum foil covered with electrical tape works as a great shielding material.

• Most consumer video cameras can see IR light. This is really useful, since you can aim your video camera at the robot, and see the emitted IR light. Many emitters are strong enough that if you aim the robot at a white wall, and turn off all other lights in the room, you can see how the IR light is projected from your robot. Good debugging aid.
  Another debugging aid is an IR detection card that is available from Radio Shack, and other places. This little card has a material that changes the wavelength of IR light into something you can see. When IR strikes this card, it causes the card to light up and sparkle.

• Output your IR values on your computer screen real time to optimize positioning and Pot calibration (depends on if you want range detection or white line detection).

• Often people cannot remember whether the black or the clear LED is the emitter or detector. This is the mnemonic I use to remember, dark colors absorb more light than clear, so the dark LED is the detector.

• If you plan your robot to work outside, make sure sunlight does not interfere with your sensor readings. The general rule of thumb with sunlight shielding is if you cannot see any data reading difference inside or outside, your sheilding is effective enough to work. Film canisters or electrical tape works very well. A modulated signal (such as in remote controls) also reduces external interference.

• Depending on resistor values, your IR circuit can be tweaked to better detect color instead of distance.

6 sixes in T-20

Yes this the video of six sixes hit by the mighty Yuvraj Singh in an over in Twenty-20

It was a great match,hitting six sixes in a row is a very difficult task.
But the task was performed with ease.

Yeh cheers to yuvraj
great innings scoring the fastest fifty of only 12 balls

See the video

Micromouse

In our college we do not have a real micromouse event it is a joke
It is only a programmed device lacking senses.
In a micromouse the car has senses i.e. it has to traverse the maze in the minimum time possible by using sensory devices.

It requires a lot of brainstorming in making an efficient micromouse.
By an efficient micromouse i mean a micromouse which can to cover the maximum distance in the minimum possible time.

This is a video of the best micromouse made by a student of IIT Mumbai, ashish bhatt
It is a real visual treat

Click To Play

Innovision 06 videos

These are videos of innovision 06
This was last event where expert stuntmen displayed their great art

Smoke Sculptures

See these beautiful sculptures made from smoke