Build your own robotic bartender with Arduino and a 3D printer
You can certainly buy a ready-made drink mixing robot if you’re flush with cash, but wouldn’t you rather spend that money on the drinks themselves? Yu Jiang Tham thinks so — he recently designed Bar Mixvah, a robotic bartender you can build yourself with $180 in parts. The key ingredient is an Arduino Nano microcontroller that takes your requests through a web-based interface. After that, it’s mostly a matter of 3D printing the frame and wiring up the pumps that will make your beverage a reality.
Bar Mixvah definitely isn’t a simple project; you’ll need to be comfortable with both loading Arduino code and soldering connections. You’ll also need a 3D printer, so the final cost will be much higher if you’re starting completely from scratch. However, it may be worth the time and effort — in the end, you’ll have both perfectly made drinks and the tools to create other things you fancy.
Filed under: Household, Robots
Source: Yu Jiang Tham
Machine ridicules nature by turning fruit juice into fruit
3D printing with meat and sugar is fine, but where’s the food for the more health conscious futurists among us? Cambridge based design studio Dovetailed might have the solution, after developing hardware that can print fruit, or at least, a close approximation. Droplets of fruit juice and alginic acid are dropped into a bath of calcium chloride, which causes them to form a gelatinous ball. By repeating this action several times, molecular gastronomists chefs are able to build them up into structures that kinda look like berries. We’re not sure if we’d be able to switch this out for our regular apple-per-day, but hell, it’s better than a diet entirely comprised of burgers and delicately-crafted candy.
Filed under: Misc
Via: CNET
Source: Dovetailed
Toshiba announces $109 Excite Go for July
Toshiba on Tuesday announced the upcoming availability of its next Android-based tablet, the 7-inch Excite Go. Expected to launch in July, the tablet will carry an affordable $109 price tag. Specifications include Android 4.4 KitKat, a 7-inch 1024×600 display, 8GB internal storage, and a quad-core Intel Atom processor. Other details include a battery with up to 8 hours of general usage, microUSB, microSD expansion card slot (up to 128GB SDXC), and two color options: silver, white.
The post Toshiba announces $109 Excite Go for July appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Multiple sources point to the addition of a 64GB Moto X
Many fans of the Moto X have had a pretty valid complaint for the past few months. For such a great phone, why isn’t a 64GB option offered?! Fans of abundant storage and customizable hardware, listen up!
Mobiltelefon.ru, a Russian phone site, recently discovered traces of a 64GB variant on Motomaker.com. Aside from the obvious “64GB” option plastered all over the page, we can also see a price associated with this phone – $449.99. Considering the phone is getting to be a year old, and that’s the off-contract price, that’s a pretty dang good deal.
What’s more is that there is evidence of a 64GB variant in the source code on the Motomaker storage selection page.
Android Police has also gotten some pretty decent evidence regarding the new storage option, as well. When a new phone is announced, basically all carrier employees get a calendar regarding the need-to-know dates. One of these calendars from Sprint leaked out, showing the approximate launch date. The new storage option should have been available for Sprint on 5/23/14, but that date has already happened. We aren’t counting the phone out completely, though. Sometimes these documents are incorrect… who knows.
We’ve seen more than enough evidence to get ourselves excited for this new storage option. We’ll be sure to let you know if anything else surfaces in the next few weeks. All of this poses one question: Would you still buy a 64GB Moto X this late in the game? We’d love to hear your opinions!
Source: Mobiltelefon.ru, Android Police (1), (2)
The post Multiple sources point to the addition of a 64GB Moto X appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Watch Dogs: The Joystiq Review
The advanced technology in Watch Dogs is not just indistinguishable from magic – it IS magic. The game would have you believe you’re the world’s most powerful hacker, bending surveillance cameras, traffic control and all manner of personal electronics to your one-touch whims. But in this paranoid vision of the future, in which every mundane device is grafted to the same computerized skeleton, the right software might as well be an all-powerful wand.
Wouldn’t you like to be the wizard?
Click here for more
Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Sony, Microsoft
Source: Joystiq
Iranian court summons Mark Zuckerberg to answer privacy concerns
We’ve got a feeling that Mark Zuckerberg will, regretfully, be unable to accept this particular foreign invitation — especially after all the recent name-calling that’s been coming out of Iran. Nevertheless, a court in the south of that country has reportedly ordered the Facebook CEO to attend a hearing to answer complaints over privacy, specifically regarding Instagram and WhatsApp. There have been calls for both services to be blocked in Tehran, but they’re still operational for now, perhaps partly due to a degree of protection from more moderate forces within the country. The precise details of the court summons are hard to be sure of, because news of it comes not from the court itself, but from an official within the Basij militia — a voluntary paramilitary force that is regularly called upon to protect Iran’s theocracy from dissent. And frankly, that’s exactly the sort of geo-political context that might further dissuade Zuckerberg’s PA from scheduling an appointment.
Filed under: Internet
Source: Sky News
Netflix’s first show from the UK could be a £100m drama about the Queen
Netflix is going big on original programming: House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black are proof of that. However, no such content has so far come out of the UK. That could be about to change, after the streaming giant reportedly beat both the BBC and ITV to secure a new 20 episode biopic of the Queen, corgis and all. According to Broadcast Now, Netflix is on the verge of finalising a £100 million deal for the series, titled The Crown, which will centre on the Queen’s “ascent to the throne at the age of 26, to the present day.”
While recent releases depicting the royal family, including Diana, were widely panned, Netflix’s new commission has a fair shot at success. It shares the same esteemed writers and directors that were behind the critically-acclaimed 2006 film The Queen, starring Helen Mirren. A monarch-filled drama might not be on the top of everyone’s binge-watch list, but Netflix is set to go hard by allocating a £5 million budget per episode — besides, who doesn’t like a bit of royal scandal?
[Image credit:bisgovuk, Flickr]
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Broadcast Now
Spotify warns Android users to update their apps following hack
It’s not all good news over at Spotify HQ. The music streaming service says it’s just investigated a security breach in which one unlucky user’s account was hacked. Despite the apparently limited scale of the attack (at least compared to what happened to eBay last week), Spotify evidently considers the incident to be pretty serious: Over the next few days, it’ll start asking users to re-enter their login details, and it’ll also push out an update to folks who use the Android app — a step that will additionally require any offline playlists to be re-downloaded. Meanwhile, if you’re the person whose account is at the center of all this, then by now you should have received some special instructions all of your own.
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio/Video, Tablets, Internet, Mobile
Source: Spotify
Uber shows defiance following pressure from London’s black cabs
Uber’s used to taking heat from traditional taxi organisations that’d rather the new breed not muscle in on their turf; including in London, where black cabbies are expected to protest against the car service next month. Even Hailo, which for years has given the capital’s iconic cabs an app-based platform for finding customers, suffered backlash last week after announcing its intention to include private hire services in the future. Without referring to either of these events specifically, Uber’s taken to its blog today to “clarify a few things,” or rather, tell black cabbies where to go. Most poignantly, Uber reiterates that it ticks all the appropriate regulator’s boxes, and that calculating fares using smartphones is neither the same as having a taximeter, nor is it illegal — one of the main arguments cabbies are trying to use to shut Uber down. Beyond that, the service points out the convenience factor and its commitment to safety, commenting also that wider choice and competition for customers shouldn’t be considered a bad thing. Basically, this is Uber’s veiled rebuttal to all the arguments against it, but it’s still got some love for black cabs, it seems. Uber calls them “arguably the best taxis in the world,” adding afterwards, however: “there is room for more and better.”
Filed under: Transportation
Source: Uber
GE helps old wind turbines increase power production by lengthening their rotor blades
Building new fleets of windmills isn’t the only way to meet increasing demand for breeze-based energy, it seems. General Electric plans to get more renewable energy out of some of its existing turbines by lengthening their blades. You see, shorter rotors need a stronger wind to turn them, so GE figured out how to make existing blades longer — without reducing their strength — to increase their electrical production by over twenty percent.
Lengthening the blades was no small feat, either. Because they’re made of composites to keep weight down, GE’s boffins were able to cut the 120-foot blades in half and seamlessly insert a 23-foot extension in the middle. You can see one such surgery happen in time-lapse fashion in the video above, but bear in mind that the most important bits are blurry — the process has yielded 16 patent applications thus far, so we won’t know the particulars until the USPTO publishes them.
Filed under: Science
Via: Gizmag
Source: GE Reports
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