A robotic arm totally made out of Legos

As kids most of us have had our hands on some or the other sort of Lego kits. Although if you haven't been keeping up, Lego kits have come a long way. With the 'Lego Mindstorms' series you can almost build anything out of it, all you need is imagination and the right skill to assemble the parts.

A guy named Max Shepherd uploaded a video on YouTube titled 'Lego Robotic Arm' where he demonstrates his creation of what he calls a 'Lego Prosthetic Arm'. Similar to what the title claims the arm has a striking resemblance to the movements of a human arm. It has 12 degrees of freedom (DOF), just for your information, a normal human arm is said to have 7 DOF. The arms incorporates lego pneumatic cylinders. Although the movements are pretty slow but are fair enough to look human like. It can lift a couple ponds of weight and pour a drink for you.

The thing that sets this robotic human arms different from the others is; anyone can actually build one with the lego parts that have been used. Unfortunately Max Shepherd hasn't reveled a lot of details online except for the video and a little description, but anyways his work is really worth appreciating.

Recording Data through heat could lead to faster magnetic Hard Drives

When it comes to computer components like processor, RAM and graphics everything is getting faster and cheaper than ever before, the only thing that's not keeping up with speeds is data storage devices, although we have SSDs but they don't have a lot of space and it is seen that they tend to degrade in performance over time. As a result the good old magnetic hard drive is still the choice for many, because its cheaper and has more storage space than existing SSD for the price.

All that being said, an international team of scientists have demonstrated a revolutionary new technology of magnetic recording which will allow information to be processed hundreds of times faster than by current hard-drive technology. The multinational team of scientists and researchers from countries which include Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, Japan and the Netherlands. Experimental work for the research was carried out at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Radboud University Nijmegen, in Netherlands.

It was found that data could be recorded by using heat which was never thought of before. Existing hard drive and other magnetic storage devices use a magnetic field to bring changes in the polarity of magnetic domains within the hard drives metallic plate, but there is a limitation to the speed of writing and reading the data. Until now it has been believed that in order to record one bit of information by inverting the poles of a magnet  there is a need to apply an external magnetic field. The stronger the applied field, the faster the recording of a magnetic bit of information.  

Unboxing the D-Link Wireless N150 ADSL2+ Modem Router

Hey guys this is the first ever unboxing here at Tech Center. We start with the D-Link Wireless N150 ADSL2+ Modem Router (Model no. DSL-2730U). 

Nothing much to talk about here. Its a really great Wireless modem router, it provides all the necessary feature for a home or small office needs to establish a secure and high-speed link to the internet. As you might have figured by now this is an ADSL modem which basically provides you with internet service over a land-line phone. 

We picked this modem from Lamington Road, a place in Mumbai popularly know for its electronic and computer hardware market. The modem is priced at Rs. 2536/- on the box but we got a fair deal at a decent price of Rs. 1850/- from a shop called Cassette World. 

Here is a look into whats comes in the box.

The Pirate Bay introduces a new category: Physibles

3D printing has really got a lot of recognition in the past couple of years. With easy to assemble and affordable kits available like the MakerBot's 'Thing-O-Matic' and their latest product called 'The Replicator', 3D desktop printing is becoming a more easy and fun task. Now with the hardware available, there a need for online platforms where people can create and share 3D CAD model so that others could download and print them. There are various platforms available. The one I tried and would recommend you to start with is www.thingiverse.com.

All that said, popular torrent sharing site The Pirate Bay has just introduced a new category in its inventory and named it 'Physibles'. Here users will be able to upload and share torrents related to 3D printable CAD models. This was explained in a really interesing blog post on TPB  titled Evolution: New category. Here the blog post goes to the ultimate limit of saying : "You will download your sneakers within 20years." which sounds really amazing and hopeful.

Liquipel: A Nanocoating that waterproofs your Mobile device.

Since history we know that water and electronics don't get together well . A California based company called 'Liquipel' might have found the way to change that. The company claims to have found a nano-coating that wont let water affect the functioning of your electronic mobile device. The coating itself is called named 'Liquipel' . Talking briefly about the company, Liquipel is a company founded in 2011 by Danny McPhail and Kevin Bacon who are determined to protect devices around the world from water damage.

Now to basically understand this, its a nano coating finer than the width of a human hair that prevents the circuitry to come in direct contact with water, thus making the device virtually water proof. From what the company says this is achieved by a process where in the device is placed in a chamber, here vacuum is created. Then a vapor called 'Liquipel vapor' is introduced in the chamber which permeates into every corner inside out of the device. The coating is thus bonded on the entire device at a molecular level, as a result the coating should last the entire lifespan of the device. The chamber is then brought at atmospheric pressure and the device is fully functional and water proof. No need for any bulky cover whatsoever.

The coating is totally invisible to the naked eyes and doesn't interfere with the normal functioning of the device.

Raspberry Pi: A $25 Credit card sized bare bones PC

In the world of Technology the smaller it gets the better it is. Back in 2011, we talked about 'Dream Plug'  a small computer that could be directly plugged into the wall socket. That opened up a door to whole new possibilities for developers and prototypes. Raspberry Pi is a project that started out as a non-profit foundation (RPF) to broaden the access to personal computer to kids by developing bare-bones and ultra cheap machines. It's basically a full computer board the size of a credit card.