Category: Cool

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From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Rec-Room Cockpit: How One Reader Built His Own Flight Simulator

Pitch Perfect Clint Fishburne initially tried a leaf blower to power his flight simulator’s movable platform. Courtesy Clint Fishburne

Clint Fishburne, a regional-airline pilot based in Atlanta, wanted to help his children develop the body movement and muscle memory necessary to fly and land a plane. With the cost of commercial flight simulators starting at $2,800, though, Fishburne, a longtime PopSci reader, decided to make one from scratch. Building the plywood-and-PVC plane, frame and control stick was relatively easy. The challenge was making a platform that could mimic a plane’s motion and that was strong enough to support and move a 75-pound child.

After some experimentation, Fishburne built four custom airbags made of PVC-coated fabric and, to inflate them, connected them to 457-air-watt central vacuum motor. The amount of air in the four bags varies, allowing the simulator to bank or pitch up to 25 degrees on either axis. When the pilot pushes the stick left, a valve increases airflow to the right airbag and vents air from the left. An accelerometer sends spatial-position data to a laptop by USB, and an LCD projector beams the imagery from Microsoft’s Flight Simulator software onto a wall. Fishburne is now trying to commercialize a kit version of his simulator, in part to inspire more young gamers to become pilots.

Cost $1,200
Time 20 months

TWO MORE BRILLIANT PROJECTS

Created by Popular Science readers

3-D Projector
Copper River, Alaska, science teacher Gene Crow built a 3-D camera and projector system that superimposes two video feeds of the same scene from two cameras at slightly different perspectives, creating the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional screen. Circular polarized filters on the projectors and viewer’s glasses ensure that each eye sees video from only one of the projectors, producing the 3-D effect in the brain.

Since motion enhances the effect, Crow has also mounted the cameras on a remote-controlled vehicle.

Cost $935
Time 8 hours

Cocktail Mixer
Andrew Jaeger, an electrician in Wisconsin, turned a refrigerator into an automated mixed-drink dispenser. After the user chooses a drink on a touchscreen, a logic controller calls up a stored recipe and gives directions to the mixing system inside the fridge. Jaeger stripped the solenoid valves from an old soda-fountain machine, allowing him to route a pressure line of carbon dioxide into each bottle, and a second line that, when opened, causes the liquor or soda to flow out into a glass.

Cost $2,500
Time 3,000 hours

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

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From Ars Technica: French anti-P2P law cuts back pirating, but music sales still decline


France’s three-strikes anti-piracy law is one of the strictest in the world. It employs private companies to scan file-sharing networks for copyright infringement and sends warnings to pirates if they’re caught red-handed. The law, enforced by a French authority called Hadopi, was instated 17 months ago to the applause of music copyright holders and their representatives. Although an early study originally showed piracy had actually increased after the anti-P2P law passed, Hadopi released a report this March saying French ISP users had significantly decreased their illegal file sharing. Despite that announcement, the French music industry still saw a decline in revenue.

Hadopi used the reports of two different companies to ascertain the decrease in pirated traffic. One metric said illegal data sharing on peer-to-peer networks decreased by 43 percent; another survey used a different methodology and saw a 66 percent decrease in illegal P2P traffic. While Hadopi only monitors peer-to-peer networks, its recent study noted there’s “no indication that there has been a massive transfer in forms of use to streaming technologies or direct downloads.”

For all the fanfare in Hadopi’s 14-page report celebrating the crackdown on music and video piracy, the music and video industries in France did not see increased profit in 2011 compared to the year before. The overall recorded music industry saw a 3.9 percent loss, and France’s video market dropped 2.7 percent overall.

The depressed sales likely won’t take copyright holders off the warpath. In fact, both music and video industries saw significant increases in purchases of digital media. In music, download revenues increased by 18.4 percent. Streaming and subscriptions revenue grew by 73 percent, largely due to the rising popularity of Spotify and Deezer. According to a domestic video publisher’s group, video-on-demand sales increased 50 percent.

An article on the French website Numerama also noted that streaming music played a large part in increasing sales of digital music downloads, and surprisingly, concert tickets. Streaming music did not, however, influence a user’s impetus to buy CDs.

These numbers show that despite the hemming and hawing about piracy eating up entertainment industry revenue, the transition from physical discs to digital files is a huge factor in negative growth. No matter what, music industry officials are unlikely to let up on piracy. More than likely, they will adopt the argument that media sales would be even lower without ISP monitoring.

 

from Ars Technica