Posts tagged not-just-software
Designing a Lego card shuffler
A problem with mechanical card shufflers is that they do things like riffles with mechanical precision, and mechanical precision tends to produce predictable outcomes (at least in theory). Thinking about this gave me the idea that I could do my own but with deliberate and controlled use of robust random numbers in order to produce a true shuffle.
Getting even light from long LED strips
Something you may notice for very long runs of LED strip is that they can be bright at one end and dim at the other. That’s because the strips are two long power rails with a bit of internal resistance and current through the LEDs at the far end have more of that resistance to travel through.
Spinach
Yesterday I was reminded of the occasion on which I first learned about spinach having not as much iron as commonly believed, and that the idea came down to a transcription error. I wasn’t really confident in my recollection so I went and looked it up and fell into reading about “Academic urban legends”.
Light field aperture synthesis from drone flight path
For a low-rate-of-change scene like a construction site, I think it should be possible to use a drone with a camera on it to repeatedly fly through the same grid pattern in the sky, where that grid represents a large aperture, collecting compound images as if it were a light-field camera.
A pick-resistant lock design
There are a fair few attempts at “unpickable” locks out there, and overall I don’t think I have a great deal to add to the range of pre-existing methods. But a couple of years ago I thought I might have a go at my own design anyway.