ZZZ Online | Other Issues

PhoneSecure

On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk

I'm not generally an insecure person. I'm perfectly happy with carrying in excess of ?1000 in electronics on my person... well, maybe I should get some protection after all, and I've found it, in the form of PhoneSecure.

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Phraselator

On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk

One step closer to the babelfish from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

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Epson fabricates 20-layer PCB using InkJet tec

On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought

Epson has fabricated a 200micron thick 20 layer using their own InkJet technology with a conductive ink containing silver micro-particles measuring from several nanometers to several tens of nanometers in diameter, and a newly developed insulator ink.

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PetaPixel displays, 100TB storage and more...

On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought

Colossal Storage is developing 14M dpi or 200Tpixels per square inch of near-non-volatile display. It is based on a ferroelectric material which gives each pixel a state retension of up to 12 hours. Display resolutions of up to 4Petapixel will be possible with this technology.
Colossal Storage is also developing a holographic media which can store 10TB on a single 3?" disc. The theory behind it can go up to 1.5Exabytes (1.5x10^1.
They are currently looking for companies who are interresting in licensing the products.

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No BangBangBang

This coilgun uses cut-up nails as ammo. Yep, nails. Bullets don't come much cheaper than that. It has a solenoid inside it that when powered pulls the bullet through it. This is the basic firing mechanism, it's just magnetic attraction, and is enough to propel the bullet to 33meters per second (74mph or 118kph). The bullet is accelerated very fast, considering the small length of the solenoid is all that is used. Actually not even the whole solenoid length is used. Let me explain:

If you power the solenoid up, it will pull the bullet inside of it and it will come out the other end of the solenoid. But because of the magnetic properties of a solenoid, the bullet is actually somewhat slowed down by the solenoid as it's exiting it. This slows the bullet down, and you don't want this, no sir, you want all the speed you can get with none of the slowing down. So what Evgenij has done is made a smart little arrangement (he has called the SCRS V-switch) so that the solenoid will only pull the bullet inside of itself, and then once the bullet is at a certain point inside the solenoid, the solenoid will instantly cutoff thereby stopping itself from inadvertently slowing the bullet down on it's way out. Because of the speeds involved there was even an issue with the power not being cut off instantly enough. when the power was cut the voltage running through the solenoid would come down slowly, not instantly, and this still slowed down the bullet somewhat. But this has all been solved with the V-switch gizmo. Hurrah! With the SCR V-Switch enabled the gun can shoot bullets right through a tin can, but with it disabled it can only make a small hollowed impact on the surface.
Evgenij explains the process in detail on his site, so I?ll just let you go there if you want to know more about the V-switch.

The gun is powered by 6 AA NiCd accu batteries, which charge into 16 capacitors for 25seconds for every shot. The capacitors then discharge into the solenoid for only a split second to fire the bullet. Because of the huge voltages involved, there is a high risk of blowing circuits and components up if the circuit is not designed properly, so creating this gun was no walk in the park. Yes unfortunately the gun has to charge for 25seconds before it can fire, for every single shot. Evgenij tells me if he changes the batterys to NiMH accu batterys, it reduces the charge time between shots to only 10seconds though.

But what is especially cool is that this gun makes no noise, it's silent. There is no explosion noise because there is no explosion, it's all electro-magnetics. You pull the trigger and the bullet whizzes out the end. Not even a "zwing!" or "woosha!", from what I?m told it's completely silent. The bullet travels slower than the speed of sound so there's no noise from a sonic boom either. Pull the trigger and the gun says "............." NOTHING. Also there is no heat caused by exploding gunpowder, so the gun runs a lot cooler than a normal gun would. It still has vents though to cool the electronic parts. I wonder if you could somehow encase the whole thing in resin? I imagine you could, if you use some metal heatsinks to help dissipate the electronic heat to the outside, to replace the vents. In this way you could fire the gun underwater. Or in space (I guess you wouldn't need resin for that).

The gun has an LED display on it to show when the gun is turned on, when it's ready to fire, and when the batteries are low. It also has a laser sight.

Evgenij has plans to make a larger hunting rifle version of the coilgun. That could still be used to hunt silently but would be high powered enough to take down a deer. On his site there are also links to other people's coilgun projects, generally they all look pretty cool and Evgenij has high praise for all his fellow tinkers' work.

Surround Sound Revolutions

The comany, Nirotek, has built a system which has one speaker box, with 5 speakers inside it. The audiophiles out there will be saying to themselves that this is impossible, and the box size must make that speaker very inefficient.

When you think of home theatre systems, you probably imagine a half-dozen speakers, a spaghetti tangle of wires and connections, and precise placement of equipment and seats to enjoy the experience. Starting today, forget that old image of home theatre systems. "NIRO1.1" achieves superior surround sound with just one speaker and a subwoofer.

Well, its true, and it seems to work very well. Are the days of rear, center and front speakers numbered? To achieve the 5.1 surround sound effect, an on-board computer manipulates the signal to each speaker using algorithms that mimic the effects used by the brain to identify the direction a sound is coming from.

One thing that I'm not sure about, is the direction of the speakers inside the box. The PRO version still has 5 speakers in the one box, obviously trying to get the front, rear, and front center format, but if all these speakers are facing straight at you, then their sound waves are going to hit you at the same places. If the speakers are angled, and therefore relying on walls, how will this system cope with odd shaped rooms and angled rooves and walls?

The system comes in two models, the STD, and the PRO, obviously Standard, and Professional respectively. The standard doesnt seem to have rear speakers, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the system, so I don't know why anyone would buy that system. However, the PRO version has full 5.1 surround sound.

The main speaker, as mentioned, has 3 or 5 different speakers in it, each of those speakers provides 30Watts RMS power each, which is about what you get from normal Home Theatre systems, but it's certainly not replacing any high power stereo system.

One thing which I have neglected to mention, is that the bass driver, or subwoofer is not part of the normal speaker box. The bass response is provided by another speaker box which looks very much like your typical subwoofer from any home theatre system. Its big, square, and shakes the room.

What I think will revolutionise Home Theatre, is when you can get subwoofer type bass from a smaller speaker. This may be hard to imagine, but nothing is impossible. The Subwoofer that comes with the Niro 1.1 is a 50Watt 20cm driver, which should be reasonably powered for your basic home theatre system. However I think that the system would benefit from a slightly more powerful bass unit, of say 80 or 90 Watts with a slightly larger driver. The subwoofer of a Home Theatre system is not only there to provide bass response, but booms and bangs too, and a 20cm woofer is wont provide the big bang. I have recently just upgraded the sub in my system from a 30W to a 90W system, and the difference is amazing.

Home Theatre systems these days have done very well in revolutionising the market, providing small, unobtrusive speakers, and making systems which provide what people want. This new system might get approval from your wife, but I doubt that it will be replacing the speakers that we have all come to live with. It's like anything digital. You can emulate all you want, but nothing will replace true sound, coming from five different places in the room.

My opinion? I believe that the one thing which Home Theatre companies should work on, is wireless technology. If you can get a signal to a speaker without the long wires, then you have solved most of the problem which the Niro system tries to solve by providing only one source of audio.

This seems to be something that would bode well for a small apartment where space is the limiting factor, and situations where you would rather not do long cable runs for the rear speakers.

I would really like to learn more about the emulation of surround that this system gives, and compare it to systems which actually have physical speakers in the the rear of the room. If anyone remembers, older and some new sound cards in computers have 3D Emulation, which adds reverberation to the signal, to give a 3D emulation. This manipulation of the signal is somewhat concerning, because it's not the original signal you are hearing in your ears.
But, like I said, I would like to learn more about this, since it is an area where the consumer wants improvement.