Projects involving Conway’s Game of Life and utilizing a Nokia 3310 screen are quite popular with electronics hobbyists. [Droky] put these two together and went one step further by adding capacitive sensors to control the Game of Life. His work is a great example of how to use the Atmel QTouch capacitive sensor (QT100a datasheet). This chip does the heavy lifting that we’ve seen in other touch sensitive solutions. It operates from 2V-5.5V, requires only three capacitors and a resistor, has a one pin active high output, and sells for around $1 in low quantities. One thing [Droky] overlooked…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

It was an interface that launched a thousand hacks. Near trivial to program, enough I/O lines for useful work, and sufficiently fast for a multitude of applications: homebrew logic analyzers, chip programmers, LCD interfaces and LED light shows, to name a few.
Today the parallel printer port is on the brink of extinction (and good riddance, some would say). Largely rendered obsolete by USB, few (if any) new peripherals even include a parallel connector, and today’s shrinking computers — nettops, netbooks, media center PCs — wouldn’t have space for it anyway. That’s great for tidy desks, but not so…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Pulse Width Modulation is a topic that tends to give a lot of beginners trouble. [Daqq], whose nixie plasma ball we covered a few days ago, has a simple but effective PWM project that you should take a look at. The circuit used 9 LEDs clustered together into 3 sets of RGB modules and connected them to an AVR ATtiny2313 through some current limiting resistors. Most of the time the PWM function of the AVR’s timers would be used to generate the signal but this application calls for 9 signals which is more than can be produced by this…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Going by the production of steel in the country so far this year, India is on its way to becoming the third largest steel producer in the world. With an output of 55 million tonne (mt) last year, the country was ranked fifth in the world after China (501 mt), Japan (119 mt), United States (91 mt) and Russia (69 mt). Germany, Ukraine and Brazil followed India at the sixth, seventh and eighth positions, respectively. India, which had earlier set itself the target of becoming the world’s third largest steel producer by 2013, is also aiming to produce 124 mt…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

MUMBAI (Reuters) – The BSE Sensex (^BSESN : 16185.2 -79.1) dropped 0.5 percent Monday as investors locked in profits after a six-session rally, with weak Asian markets setting the direction. By 11:23 a.m. (0553 GMT), the 30-share BSE Index was down nearly 80 points at 16,185.94 points, with 20 components losing. The benchmark, which climbed 5.6 percent over the previous six sessions, had more than doubled last Tuesday from its March low. “There is very little room for buying at these levels,” said D.D. Sharma, vice-president, Anand Rathi Securities. “There might be pockets of demand at dips, but largely…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

We’re very impressed with [Steve's] Electronic Snowball Fight game. It consists of two life-sized players standing opposite of each other. Each can throw a snowball or duck, the object is to hit the other person and not get hit yourself. He’s utilized a lot of good building techniques that could be easily adapted to other types of game play.

For the outlines of the players, [Steve] took pictures of himself standing, ducking, and in a throwing motion. Each picture was used to generate an outline which was then stenciled onto some Masonite. He then drilled holes along the outline…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Microsoft DirectX is a group of technologies designed to make Windows based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full color graphics video 3D animation and rich audio DirectX includes security and performance updates along with many new features across all technologies which can be accessed by applications using the DirectX APIs At the core of DirectX are its application programming interfaces or APIs The APIs act as a kind of bridge for the hardware and the software to quot talk quot to each other The DirectX APIs give multimedia applications access…

Realtek AC 39 97 Audio Driver for Windows Vista supports all ALC series audio chipsets from ALC101 up to ALC861 It is used as onboard sound on many motherboards Compatible with ALC 101 201 202 203 250 650 655 658 850 chipsets It is highly recommended to always use the most recent driver version available Featuring four 16 bit two channel DACs and a stereo 16 bit ADC the ALC850 is an AC 39 97 Rev 2 3 compatible multi channel audio CODEC designed for PC multimedia systems The ALC850 incorporates proprietary converter technology and fully meets performance requirements for…