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William Gaatjes

William Gaatjes

Lifer
May 11, 2008
22,220
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In Afghanistan (But Pakistan too), people are making parabolic solar mirrors, used as solar ovens.
I do hope they notice that hotglue is not that handy since it can melt again. Thermoplastic behavior of the hotglue, it would melt again.
To cook the water, cook food or heat up stuff.
When water is boiled for some time, a lot of the parasites and bacteria are killed. Filtering the water through clean sand and afterwards cooking the water.
No more disease from contaminated water.
But keep the children away. Looking into the focal point of a parabolic solar mirrors will cause blindness.




Edit, posted the wrong name of the country.
 
Last edited:
Kaido

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
50,742
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William Gaatjes said:
In Pakistan, people are making parabolic solar mirrors, used as solar ovens.
I do hope they notice that hotglue is not that handy since it can melt again. Thermoplastic behavior of the hotglue, it would melt again.
To cook the water, cook food or heat up stuff.
When water is boiled for some time, a lot of the parasites and bacteria are killed. Filtering the water through clean sand and afterwards cooking the water.
No more disease from contaminated water.
But keep the children away. Looking into the focal point of a parabolic solar mirrors will cause blindness.


Click to expand...

My buddy has a Sun Oven:

www.sunoven.com

The Ultimate Solar Cooker - The All-American SUN OVEN – Sun Ovens International, Inc.

For a do-it-all solar cooker, you need the All-American SUN OVEN - the World's favorite solar cooker. Create great food with sunshine.
www.sunoven.com www.sunoven.com

Nice backup oven! As long as it's sunny lol

1743510273735.png
 
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William Gaatjes

William Gaatjes

Lifer
May 11, 2008
22,220
1,411
126
Kaido said:
My buddy has a Sun Oven:

www.sunoven.com

The Ultimate Solar Cooker - The All-American SUN OVEN – Sun Ovens International, Inc.

For a do-it-all solar cooker, you need the All-American SUN OVEN - the World's favorite solar cooker. Create great food with sunshine.
www.sunoven.com www.sunoven.com

Nice backup oven! As long as it's sunny lol

View attachment 121055
Click to expand...
It is a perfect way to harness solar energy, efficiency wise it is ideal too.


For drinking water : If one would use parabolic solar mirrors and glas pipes in the focal point, with a thin stripe of titanium oxide coatings on the inside : Perfect water decontaminator. After that water needs to be filtered through sand.
But just black coated copper pipes would work as well, steaming hot boiling water is decontaminated enough to drink after cooling down and storing the water in a closed clean storage water drum.
Keep the water drums closed or all kinds of pesky mosquitos will drop their eggs and let their larvea hatch inside the open water drum.

In the middle ages in Europe, it took a lot of years before EU people figured out that boiling water helps decontaminating the water.
For some time, people did not even shower or wash since water could make them sick.
Some people stank as hell.
 
IronWing

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
72,337
32,882
136
We’ve had both. The oven is definitely more useful but the dish was more fun.


We also had a fresnel lens that could melt asbestos but I got rid of it.

Do all rear projection TVs have a fresnel lens? Update: Evil laugh!!!!

I want to play with a big fresnel lens and picking up a used rear projection TV might be the cheapest method of obtaining one. But... I want to be sure that before I buy a projection TV that the lens is really in there. Also, if they do, are they generally linear or spot pattern? Moved to OT...
forums.anandtech.com forums.anandtech.com

The pics are gone from the thread but the video links still work.

 
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William Gaatjes

William Gaatjes

Lifer
May 11, 2008
22,220
1,411
126
Kaido said:
An Australian man lived for 100 days with an artificial titanium heart while he awaited a donor transplant, the longest period to date of someone with the technology:


View attachment 119658
Click to expand...
I was thinking , to make a pumping heart and not a regular pump , they could use shape memory alloy like nitinol. A heart that is comprised of 2 plastic chambers (disposable artificial heart, only used once per patient) that can be compressed and expanded. With the nitinol wire, or instead of nitinol just with two stepper motors for the two chambers of the heart. Constantly compression and expanding in a sequential rhythm. Add non-return valves and i am sure the patients will live longer.
 
Kaido

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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William Gaatjes said:
I was thinking , to make a pumping heart and not a regular pump , they could use shape memory alloy like nitinol. A heart that is comprised of 2 plastic chambers (disposable artificial heart, only used once per patient) that can be compressed and expanded. With the nitinol wire, or instead of nitinol just with two stepper motors for the two chambers of the heart. Constantly compression and expanding in a sequential rhythm. Add non-return valves and i am sure the patients will live longer.
Click to expand...

My buddy had bendy nitinol glasses, they were wild!! The new ones are nickel-free:

 
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purbeast0

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
53,544
6,368
126
I modified the Hypseus Singe emulator code to handle my light guns natively with an SDL controller API to be able to get the x/y coordinates on trigger press, so now I can play American Laser games without having to run a joystick-to-mouse piece of software in the middle, which was giving me a little bit of trouble. This is just a test video when I first got it working but I also have it working with Mad Dog McCree 2. According to the devs of the emulator, I'm the first one to ever do this since it just hasn't been a need for anyone. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get it in the actual code base and make it an option for users.

Inside this cabinet is just a Windows 10 PC.

 
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William Gaatjes

William Gaatjes

Lifer
May 11, 2008
22,220
1,411
126
purbeast0 said:
I modified the Hypseus Singe emulator code to handle my light guns natively with an SDL controller API to be able to get the x/y coordinates on trigger press, so now I can play American Laser games without having to run a joystick-to-mouse piece of software in the middle, which was giving me a little bit of trouble. This is just a test video when I first got it working but I also have it working with Mad Dog McCree 2. According to the devs of the emulator, I'm the first one to ever do this since it just hasn't been a need for anyone. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get it in the actual code base and make it an option for users.

Inside this cabinet is just a Windows 10 PC.

Click to expand...
Is it true that those guns work by following the electronbeam on the CRT television ?
 
purbeast0

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
53,544
6,368
126
William Gaatjes said:
Is it true that those guns work by following the electronbeam on the CRT television ?
Click to expand...
Yeah those are true arcade light guns, and based on where it is pointed when you pull the trigger (which is why there is always a flash), it tracks the position.

In actual light gun games it is not constantly tracking where you are pointing. It strictly tracks the point only when the trigger is pulled, because that is the only time you care about it. It's either on screen or off screen (reload in most games). I don't know if you played games like Revolution X or Terminator 2 back in the day, but if you recall, those guns were mounted. Those games also had a cursor on screen. That's because they were not true light guns. They were glorified analog sticks basically.

In that video above however, I am running Windows 10 Pro. There is a special piece of hardware from an arcade game called America's Army that came out nearly 20 years ago, called USB2GUN, that allows Windows to recognize the guns as analog controllers. In this case however, Windows is "always" tracking. However, if you are not on a bright screen, it will not track real time just because it can't see the bright screen to calculate the point it is aimed at. But again, for gun games, that doesn't matter at all - as long as that flash happens on trigger pull, that is all that matters.

That piece of hardware is where the flash is coming from too. It's not part of Windows or emulator doing it. Those USB2GUN boards are basically unobtanium at this point though, so I'm fortunate to have picked one up a few years ago with this project in mind.

EDIT:

Here is a video of real time tracking after I implemented it into the emulator, just to see if it actually worked. It's only tracking though because as you can see it's a completely white screen that is on this tester software I am running. But yup, it works!

 
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William Gaatjes

William Gaatjes

Lifer
May 11, 2008
22,220
1,411
126
purbeast0 said:
Yeah those are true arcade light guns, and based on where it is pointed when you pull the trigger (which is why there is always a flash), it tracks the position.

In actual light gun games it is not constantly tracking where you are pointing. It strictly tracks the point only when the trigger is pulled, because that is the only time you care about it. It's either on screen or off screen (reload in most games). I don't know if you played games like Revolution X or Terminator 2 back in the day, but if you recall, those guns were mounted. Those games also had a cursor on screen. That's because they were not true light guns. They were glorified analog sticks basically.

In that video above however, I am running Windows 10 Pro. There is a special piece of hardware from an arcade game called America's Army that came out nearly 20 years ago, called USB2GUN, that allows Windows to recognize the guns as analog controllers. In this case however, Windows is "always" tracking. However, if you are not on a bright screen, it will not track real time just because it can't see the bright screen to calculate the point it is aimed at. But again, for gun games, that doesn't matter at all - as long as that flash happens on trigger pull, that is all that matters.

That piece of hardware is where the flash is coming from too. It's not part of Windows or emulator doing it. Those USB2GUN boards are basically unobtanium at this point though, so I'm fortunate to have picked one up a few years ago with this project in mind.

EDIT:

Here is a video of real time tracking after I implemented it into the emulator, just to see if it actually worked. It's only tracking though because as you can see it's a completely white screen that is on this tester software I am running. But yup, it works!

Click to expand...
I was reading about light guns. Indeed , tracking is only needed when the trigger is pulled. And there is some allowable margin of course , to detect the electron beam spot.
Now fancy cameras are used. I remember the wii mote with that special IR camera and also an acceleration sensor to emulate free movement like tennis.
I bought such a wii mote long ago but never got to it to take it apart and use the IR camera.

Here is a topic from hackaday that also discusses light guns and the use with LCD panels.
hackaday.com

wiimote – Hackaday

hackaday.com hackaday.com

And another link :
hackaday.com

The Little Lightgun That Could: Sinden Makes Good

Back in 2018, we covered the work being done by [Andrew Sinden] to create a lightgun that could work on modern televisions. The project was looking for funding via Kickstarter, but due at least in …
hackaday.com hackaday.com

As a sidenote : the Wii mote IR camera.

Instructions | Open IR Tracking Module | Hackaday.io

hackaday.io hackaday.io

A PCA9517 from NXP will also be a good I2C voltage level translator, easier to solder and use.

www.instructables.com

Wii Remote IR Camera Hack With Arduino Interface

Wii Remote IR Camera Hack With Arduino Interface: We'll physically extract the IR camera from the Wii remote and interface it with an arduino controlling a servo. The Wii IR camera is a beautiful thing. It has an integrated processor which outputs the X and Y positions and size of the 4 brightest I…
www.instructables.com www.instructables.com
 
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sdifox

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
99,363
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As predicted by anime?

myanimelist.net

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei Episode 23

Chen Xiangshan appeals to Mr. Zhou to free Lu Gonghu during a prisoner transport, and Chen promises to watch over Chinatown during the operation. Lu Gonghu is broken out shortly after by Mr. Zhou's forces. Ichihara visits Chioda to convince her to hold onto her feelings of bitterness for...
myanimelist.net myanimelist.net
 
purbeast0

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
53,544
6,368
126
William Gaatjes said:
I was reading about light guns. Indeed , tracking is only needed when the trigger is pulled. And there is some allowable margin of course , to detect the electron beam spot.
Now fancy cameras are used. I remember the wii mote with that special IR camera and also an acceleration sensor to emulate free movement like tennis.
I bought such a wii mote long ago but never got to it to take it apart and use the IR camera.

Here is a topic from hackaday that also discusses light guns and the use with LCD panels.
hackaday.com

wiimote – Hackaday

hackaday.com hackaday.com

And another link :
hackaday.com

The Little Lightgun That Could: Sinden Makes Good

Back in 2018, we covered the work being done by [Andrew Sinden] to create a lightgun that could work on modern televisions. The project was looking for funding via Kickstarter, but due at least in …
hackaday.com hackaday.com

As a sidenote : the Wii mote IR camera.

Instructions | Open IR Tracking Module | Hackaday.io

hackaday.io hackaday.io

A PCA9517 from NXP will also be a good I2C voltage level translator, easier to solder and use.

www.instructables.com

Wii Remote IR Camera Hack With Arduino Interface

Wii Remote IR Camera Hack With Arduino Interface: We'll physically extract the IR camera from the Wii remote and interface it with an arduino controlling a servo. The Wii IR camera is a beautiful thing. It has an integrated processor which outputs the X and Y positions and size of the 4 brightest I…
www.instructables.com www.instructables.com
Click to expand...
The problem with IR guns is the tracking is all relative to where you calibrate it from. If you are not standing in the same exact spot every time you play the game, then you're calibration is going to be off by some offset. I believe it's also slightly laggy just due to the technology so there is some "input delay" and it just tracks slightly laggy. I know the Wii did when I had one back in the day.

With actual light guns and CRT's, you don't have this problem of standing in the same spot. If you aim in the center of the screen or corner no matter where you are, then you are going to get that tracking.

The Sinden guns get pretty good reviews. Their software does a little trick where it adds a border around the screen of the TV. I believe you can control the pixel width of it, and the wider it is, the better the tracking is. But I believe the idea is that as long as it knows you are aiming inside the border, it can track the gun. It's gotten pretty good reviews but I've also heard people saying it can just be tough to calibrate it properly and get it right.
 
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William Gaatjes

William Gaatjes

Lifer
May 11, 2008
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126
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Kaido

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
50,742
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William Gaatjes said:
:oops:

I really hope the AI business stays out of the electronic design branche. I fear for finding a job now.
Click to expand...

AI PCB design:

www.flux.ai

A Better Way to Build PCBs | Flux

Go 10x faster from idea to PCB by reducing busy work, never starting from scratch, and keeping your team in sync. Now with the help of Flux Copilot.
www.flux.ai www.flux.ai

CAD AI:

www.adamcad.com

AdamCAD: AI Powered CAD

AdamCAD is a Text-to-CAD tool enabling hardware teams to make prototypes faster than ever
www.adamcad.com www.adamcad.com
 
bbhaag

bbhaag

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2011
7,200
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Benny the Bull celebrated his 56th b-day today. He is regarded as one of the first mascots in NBA history dating back to 1969. Happy b-day Benny! Just in case anyone was wondering Jewel-Osco is the official sponsor of Benny's b-day.
 
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