Ladyada of Adafruit Industries created the Tweet-a-Watt to monitor energy usage in her apartment.

Each Tweet-a-Watt device contains some power monitoring electronics and an Xbee module.  The Xbee modules relay energy usage data for each Tweet-a-Watt back to a single receiver, which collects the data.

In staying with the overall green theme of the project, Ladyada used an Asus Wl-520gU wireless router to control the receiver and collect data.  This is the same router I used for my Wifi Radio project!  The WL-520gU consumes ~5W and has enough horsepower to run the python data acquisition scripts while still acting as a cablemodem gateway.

More info:

http://ladyada.net/make/tweetawatt/expand.html

Steve Chamberlin created an 8-bit computer from discrete logic and called his project the Big Mess o’ Wires.

The BMOW runs at 2MHz and has 512K RAM and 16K ROM.  It is constructed with primarily 7400 series logic and over 1048 wirewrap connections.

The feature list is very impressive:

• It can multitask.
• It has VGA video output.
• It can make sounds and music.
• It even runs Microsoft Basic!

Here’s a video of a music test from his site:

I am completely blown away by this project.  Has someone invited Steve to the Maker Faire??  I want to see this thing in person!

Check out his site and prepare to spend at least an hour looking at all of his plans and construction photos.

Totally amazing.

Hubble image of the colliding Antennae Galaxies

If you haven’t seen this, check it out.  This is amazing stuff – and there’s still a whole week of images left before Christmas!

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2008 – The Big Picture – Boston.com

I used GIMP to create the design and remain impressed with this open source alternative to Photoshop.

Like the design?  Great news! Thanks to Zazzle’s marketplace, you can get one for yourself!

If you order before November 4th, Zazzle will give you $3 off the price of the shirt.  Enter promotional code 3OFFZAZZLETS during checkout.

Update: There is one for girls, too.

Visit my Zazzle Gallery.

Are you as handy with Java as your are with a soldering iron? Do you code by day and flash micros at night? Does writing cycle accurate code turn you on? If you answered any one of these questions with a resounding yes, this stylish shirt is just for you.

936 Little Blobs

Last weekend at the Electronics Flea Market I picked up some very strange items, including this one, pictured above.  It’s a tin can that looks very similar to an ordinary soup can, except that it has the following markings on it:

R16-C-28604-15
COIL
QTY.1

NSC.OAKLAND JULY 1953
PRES METH. 2D

Thus far the only information I have learned from the markings are that NSC.OAKLAND stands for the former Oakland Naval Supply Center, closed a decade ago in 1998.  According to Wikipedia, NSC supplied components to the fleet in the Pacific during WWII.  Beyond this I have not been able to find any information.  Presumably this is a replacement part for some piece of obsolete military hardware.  A “coil” is another name for an inductor, a clue that this may be part of a radio system or other high frequency equipment.

After staring at this mysterious object for almost forever (a week) I decided to open it.  Realizing that the can could be full of cold war era hazardous chemicals, munitions, objects under high compression, or nasty sharp edges, I did this very carefully and documented the entire process of discovering the contents.

First, the obvious – opening the can.  Pretty straightforward.

What’s inside?

Weird.  Lots of oiled green paper.  Whatever is inside is packed very well, when the can is shaken nothing moves around.

This is the clump of stuff to come out.

Packing material?  The precursor to styrofoam peanuts?

Below the packing material…

What’s this?  Vintage dessicant!!!

The last object left in the can looks interesting.  It’s wrapped in oiled green paper and sealed with tape.

Inside the paper we find this:

Not a huge surprise – it’s a coil (inductor).  It has a knob or grabby thing on the top and a funny connector on the bottom.  It looks brand new.

Here are a few more pictures.

The markings are “ARC” and “7270 239 KC”.  ARC might be American Radio Corporation?  239 might be 239 kHz (kilocycles)?  Hard to say, google didn’t turn up anythign interesting.

An impressive amount of stuff was packed into that can!

This solves the mystery of what’s in the can, but what is it for?  Does anyone know?  I’d love to find out – leave a comment or contact me directly.

More photos are on flickr here.

I’m at The Last HOPE in NYC this weekend, checking out lots of cool talks about hacking both hardware and software.  I took a few pictures today and put them up on flickr.

Club-Mate is a very popular beverage this year, a shipment arrived from Germany yesterday and bottles are on sale at the 2600 store on the Mezzanine.  Based on my experience, I have to agree with their motto, which is “You get used to it!”  The flavor is something like prune juice (!) crossed with tea and honey.  But honestly, are people drinking it for the flavor?

I’ll be at the con all weekend and should have an update soon.