Category Archives: Tech

When You're Hot You're Hot, and I'll Be Able to Tell

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The FLIR ONE Case Gives Your iPhone Thermal Vision

This looks pretty neat. I’m not sure of the exact technology — the sensors that detect out near 8-10 microns are quite expensive, so I doubt those devices just dropped in price by an order of magnitude or more. Some DIY projects use thermopiles (which you can find in point-and-shoot style temperature probes), so perhaps the technology has advanced to where you can make an array of these and project an image onto them. Or perhaps sensors that have a response that doesn’t extend to ~10 microns, but are still sensitive out to 5 or so, are cheap enough. Maybe the device quickly rasters so the sensor can be much cheaper. The fact that it has a regular camera makes me think the IR sensor will have a lesser resolution than the camera, and you get some of the subtlety of shapes from the regular camera with the IR overlaid on its image (if there’s enough visible light).

At first, I was a little skeptical about the potential use cases for a thermal iPhone case for the average consumer, but the company’s representative at CES explained that you could use it for something as simple as figuring out whether your dog is climbing up onto your bed when you leave or not. It could also be used for home security, detecting thermal leaks in your house, or finding water leaks in pipes behind the walls.

Mostly, though, it will be for IR images of cats.

Can’t wait until this comes out so I can get one and also have an excuse to get a new phone.

Crash-Happy

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If you don’t want to build a complex robot that can navigate around obstacles, you make one that can stumble around and bump into them and still work.

Sliced Bread Didn't Make the List

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The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel

The Atlantic recently assembled a panel of 12 scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, historians of technology, and others to assess the innovations that have done the most to shape the nature of modern life. The main rule for this exercise was that the innovations should have come after widespread use of the wheel began, perhaps 6,000 years ago. That ruled out fire, which our forebears began to employ several hundred thousand years earlier. We asked each panelist to make 25 selections and to rank them, despite the impossibility of fairly comparing, say, the atomic bomb and the plow.

Robots at Work and Play

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Robots at Work and Play

Advancements in robotics are continually taking place in the fields of space exploration, health care, public safety, entertainment, defense, and more. These machines — some fully autonomous, some requiring human input — extend our grasp, enhance our capabilities, and travel as our surrogates to places too dangerous or difficult for us to go. Gathered here are recent images of robotic technology at the beginning of the 21st century, including robotic insurgents, NASA’s Juno spacecraft on its way to Jupiter, and a machine inside an archaeological dig in Mexico.

The Game Will Be Over in Two Minutes

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As many of us know, the last “two minutes” of any sporting event can last far longer than that. And, as the joke goes, “I’ll just be a minute shopping for clothes” is similarly distorted.

The Edo Period Daimyo Clock of Unequal Hours

In the Japanese Edo Period (1603-1868), a variable hour system was used(dating back to the 9th century). The day was divided into 12 segments of unequal length. It seemed almost impossible to track unequal periods of time, but Japanese clock-makers devised a remarkable way to keep time in this way. The history of Japanese advances in mechanical timekeeping is indeed fascinating.

Wow. I had no idea.