Litiholo Laser Wavelength: 635 nm

The Litiholo Kit is awesome for making holograms at home, but it only comes with one laser. So if you make a bunch of holograms and want to display them all of at once, you are stuck.

A fellow Crash Space member (who runs a cool electroluminescent supply site) was kind enough to run the Litiholo laser through a spectogram. Most of the power is at 637 nm and 638 nm, with some power at 636 nm and 639 nm:

It turns out this is almost exactly the same spectrum as a "5mW 635nm Red Laser Module Focusable Dot" I purchased from DinoDirect for $10!

DTV Talk at Crash Sapce

"Digital Television w/ Thomas Edwards

Upcoming Event: Monday, November 7th @ 8:00pm

Did you know there is high-definition digital TV in the air all around you for free? Thomas Edwards, VP Engineering & Development for the FOX Technology Group, will present on ATSC digital TV, including the history of digital and high definition TV, 8VSB modulation, MPEG transport streams, MPEG-2 video coding, AC-3 audio coding, and PSIP program guide data. There will also be a brief discussion of the new ATSC A/153 Mobile/Handheld DTV standard."

Crash Space

10526 Venice Boulevard Culver City, CA 90232

Arduinos etc with Ethernet

Now there are some Arduinos with built-in Ethernet. From Freetronics, the EtherTen, which has a Wiznet W5100 chip on board at $69.95. It looks much like an Arduino (including USB port) that happens to also have an Ethernet port. Apparently it works, even with DHCP.

Sparkfun has the Ethernet Pro at $54.95, which also has a W5100 but is a little more slimmed down.

And if instead of an Arduino, you want a ARM Cortex-A8 board that runs Linux, has 60 digital I/Os, and built-in Ethernet, you can try the BeagleBone for $89.

Also in ARM-land is the mBED, ($50.80 from Mouser) which has built-in Ethernet but needs a carrier board with magnetics such as mbed-Xpresso Baseboard ($45.14 with LCD display and VGA out), mbed LPC1768 Workshop Development Board ($25 but barebones), or Mission Control MC-101 baseboard ($45 with lots of screw-down terminals).

Meanwhile the coolest PIC board ever is the MikroElectronica Multimedia Board for PIC32MX7 ($149) that has a touchable TFT display and SD card as well as Ethernet. MikroE also has a bunch of dedicated Ethernet boards.

Finally there is the good old Modtronix SBC65EC ($65) a PIC-based system that has Ethernet and RS-232.

Dirac bra-ket notation tutorial

If you are having some trouble with the Dirac bra-ket notation used in Quantum Computing, read carefully this tutorial by Prof. Reddish from UMCP.

Caltech Quantum Computing Course

Caltech has a great class on Quantum Computing whose notes are here.

Dorkbot SoCal 46 - Sunday Oct. 16, 2011

Dorkbot SoCal 46

***** Sunday, October 16, 2011
***** 1:00pm-3:00pm
***** Machine Project
***** 1200 D North Alvarado Street
***** Los Angeles, CA 90026
***** Google map of Machine Project

Sean Bonner - Safecast.org
http://www.safecast.org/

Sean Bonner will present Safecast, a global project working to empower people with data, primarily by mapping radiation levels and building a sensor network, enabling people to both contribute and freely use the data collected. Created 1 week after the 3/11 Japan earthquake, Safecast has deployed 25 mobile, 50 handheld, and 50 static radiation sensors.



Carlyn Maw - Store Front Music
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/07/store-front-music-the-diy-edition.html

Carlyn Maw is a co-founder of Crash Space, a hackerspace in Culver City, CA. Carlyn will describe the Crash Space group project "Store Front Music", which allows people who walk past the hackerspace to interact with a music making machine.


Jim Jenkins
http://www.jimjenkins.net/

Part sculptor, part engineer, and part choreographer, Jim Jenkins' work primarily features the animation of text and objects to represent a situation or an observation. Inspirations also come from simple movements often found in nature, such as the rhythmic flapping of a bird's wings to the hypnotic swaying of a cat's tail.

Michael Nielsen Quantum Computing Course on YouTube

If you want to get a background in quantum computing, check out Michael Nielsen's courses on YouTube.