A Homemade Spacecraft (DIY Tech)

Hey guys your host Akib here, I came across this really interesting short documentary about how amateur Engineers and entrepreneurs Kristian von Bengston (worked at NASA) and Peter Madsenin in Denmark are working on a project to build a suborbital spacecraft to carry a human into space and then release a capsule to return the passenger back to safety.

The Team calls themselves Copenhagen Suborbitals, a not-for-profit  which started off  in 2008 and now comprises of  20 plus specialists determined to create the first homemade, manned spacecraft to go into suborbital flight.  The idea is to prove that fact that rocket technology is not something beyond the reach of a common individual. The rockets that are undergoing testing are made from off the shelf components that are easily available to anyone. The project is completely open sourced you can have all the access to information and designs if you want to create your very own spacecraft.

Hexacopter and hexapod union looks like a robotic insect

Hexacopter and Hexapod are amongst  the latest and the most popular remote control robotic toys out there. How about combining them together to create a new walking and flying-walking hybrid machine. I bet you never though of that before. That's what the guys at Mad Lab Industries (MLI for short) have come up with. MLI is a  fresh start up that sells robotic components online and on the side they do cool stuff too.

So the basic idea behind this unnamed project is to integrate a remote controlled Hexapod Robot with a remote controlled Hexacopter. With this idea, they received a PhantomX AX Hexapod kit from Trossen Robotics.

The PhantomX AX Hexapod

Now the integration wasn't an easy task, considering the fact that the PhantomX was originally designed to be tough and was quite heavy to be  taken to the air. So it had to undergo a lot of surgery, the frame originally made of ABS plastic parts had to be replaced with lighter carbon fiber parts. Despite the fact, it was still heavy for it to be taken in the air by a quadcopter. Rather it needed a Hexacopter which has a much greater lifting force and was much stable than a quadcopter. A quadcoptor would have been cheaper considering the fact that it would have reduced the cost of 2 BLDC motors and ESC (Electronic Speed Controller).

MSI N550 GTX-TI unboxing/review on Intel Pentium 4 PC

Hey guys this is the first ever GPU unboxing review on Tech Center, I m not a PRO. at reviewing graphics cards, so please bear with me. I would like to tell you first hand that this is not a GPU review that you might find all across the internet its more of a GPU review on an old desktop computer.

My desktop computer is now over 6 years old and I really needed to upgrade it to gain some performance improvements. My desktop wasn't even able to play HD videos smoothly with the age old on-board graphics. With my tight budget, I did not go for the processor and motherboard upgrade, cause that would be like buying a new computer that would end up being only a little better than the existing one.

Keeping in mind that I would buy a new computer in like one year, I had to go for a graphics card that would not only fit my budget but; improve my existing machine and also be useful in the new computer that i plan to buy a year later. So after quite a bit of research and looking at benchmark results online I went for  the MSI Nvidia N550GTX-TI Cyclone II (1GB DDR5).

Lewis Hamilton burns some rubber on the streets of Mumbai.

Formula 1 McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton was in Mumbai this past Sunday night at Bandra-Kurla Complex. The run up was flagged off by Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan in the presence of Public Works Department and Tourism Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, among other dignitaries.

With the Singapore Grand Prix just a week ahead, Lewis Hamilton made this skilful burnout in the  Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP4-27 race car. Lewis Hamilton told that he is really looking forward for the Indian Grand Prix scheduled on 26-28 October later this year.

My cousin brother Rahil was able to capture the run up and burnout up close. Probably the best amateur footage available on YouTube.

DARPA's Cheetah Robot and the LS3 taking quadruped robot tech to new highs

DARPA in collaboration with Boston Dynamics has been brewing up some really awesome legged robot technology over the past few years. The various legged robot projects have been under constant update and improvement over the years. The list of the state of the art legged robots from Boston Dynamics includes the The Big Dog, Cheetah, Petman and the latest of the pack, the LS3. Each robots have been designed for a own unique purpose and have significant differences.

The latest updates however are from the Cheetah and the LS3.

The Cheetah

The Cheetah has been under development since 1989 under MIT and later under Boston Dynamics. It has been developed and funded under DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program. A recent video update on YouTube shows The Cheetah running at 28.3 mph (45.5 km/h), breaking it previous record of 27.78 mph (44.7 km/h) which it achieved back in 2009. This makes it 0.5 mph faster than Usain Bolt.

Now that being said, The Cheetah has a lot of advantages over Usain Bolt, It runs on a high speed treadmill; plus, it is powered by an off board hydraulic pump and uses a boom-like device to keep it running in the center of the treadmill. Overall, significant improvements for the speeds have been made in the algorithms and a more powerful pump have been added. Although Boston Dynamics plans to test a free running Cheetah in the open environment by next year.

Not much details about the technology have been made public.

A Solar- powered system that's a Reverse air-conditioner to develop power for Developing world.

In the developing world, electricity and other resources necessary to run clinics are difficult to achieve and many a times costly to produce. In many African countries electricity from the grid is very inconsistent and unavailable in rural parts. So medical centres and clinics in these areas rely on Diesel generators or Photovoltaic solar cells for power, now these are costly propositions and require recurring cost of fuel and maintenance. Also places in Africa that fall in the temperate regions face very cold winters and Hot water becomes a necessity. Health worker avoid washing hands as the water supply gets very cold thus creating unhygienic conditions. 

A startup by the name STG (Solar Turbine Group) international established by alumni students of MIT have come up with a seemingly effective solution to the problem. The Technology is called Solar ORC and is somewhat similar to one those Concentrated solar power systems. It utilizes parabolic mirror reflectors that look like troughs. At the centre line of the these troughs lies a metal pipe which carries a HTF (Heat transfer fluid) inside. Now this HTF absorbs the heat from the concentrated sunlight and this results in raising the temperature of the HTF upto 160 degree Celsius. 

Credit: stginternational.org (Click to enlarge)

This heated HTF now enters into an ORC unit/ORC engine, it works on an Organic Rankine cycle (Its a Rankine cycle except it works on Refrigerant rather than water as working fluid) . It works like a reversed air conditioning unit. Instead of utilizing electricity to cool the air and throw hot air outside. It actually uses the hot HTF and the cold ambient air to produces mechanical work which is converted into electricity.

The key element of the system a device called a scroll expander, which convert the heat difference into mechanical power is described in a paper to be published in the ASME Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power.

3D printing and robotic technology helping doctors help patients

3D printing technology has really given manufacturing a new dimension. Specially if you think in terms of  manufacturing small intricate parts that might be useful in small robotic devices. Although personally I never thought that one day 3D printing technology would help doctors help patients until, I came across this story.

2 year old Emma suffers from a rare congenital disorder called Arthrogryposis that is characterized by multiple joint contractures (shortening and hardening of muscles) and can include muscle weakness and fibrosis. Emma was born with her legs folded up by her ears and her shoulders turned in. As a result she could not move her arms and lift things like normal 2 year olds would.

So the solution was to give her arms some external help by an exoskeleton. Researchers at a Delaware hospital 3D printed a durable custom device with the tiny, lightweight custom parts Emma needed. She calls them her “magic arms.” Now this allows her to freely move her hands around and pick up objects.

Lockheed in Collaboration with LaserMotive Tests UAVs With Laser Power Beaming

The quest to transmit power without wires has been something people have been working on since centuries and obviously it not science fiction anymore, people have come up with different ways to transmit power wirelessly. We wrote about Wirticity back in 2010 which gained a lot of media attention back then.

Back in 2009 a Seattle-based company by the name 'LaserMotive' specializing in laser power beaming proved to be the only successful entrant and winner of the NASA-sponsored Power Beaming Challenge. 

The idea of laser power is pretty simple. Just like a photovoltaic cell (solar cell) produces electricity from sun light, Laser power beaming acts in the same way. A powerful laser beam is used to carry energy over distances; this energy in the form of light and heat can be converted into electricity by using photovoltaic cells. This enables to transfer power wirelessly over distances and can be consider a more practical efficient and cost effective way compared to other wireless power transmission methods available. To get into the details you can check out this Laser power beaming fact sheet.

So now that we know about laser power beaming, the idea can be used for a wide variety of applications, only your imagination is the limit. Although there are a lot of safety and efficiency factors involved with makes it difficult to use over existing electric power grid, we wont get into that in this post. You can always leave a question or opinion in the comments.

Now in the modern warfare era of Drones, UAVs and UAS (unmanned ariel systems), endurance is one of the major challenges faced by UAV designers and developers. Battery based UAVs are silent but poor at endurance. Conventional fuel based UAVs have better endurance but they are very noisy and are difficult to use where you require to fly at low altitudes and small areas. So the application of laser power beaming seems to be the best solution. 

Miniand Tech its MiniX TV Box and Mini PC devices.

In the past we have covered some really interesting and cost effective mini computers and plug computer devices. Here is a list if you are interested. 

An Australia/China based company by the name "Miniand Tech" is selling two interesting mini computer devices. One is the MK802 Mini PC and the other is the MiniX TV Box H24 which can be rather compared to a TV box like Google TV.

The MK802 Mini PC.

The MK802 Mini PC is a kind of plug computer with very small dimensions i.e. 88.5 x 35 x 13.4 mm weighs in at 300 grams. The device has 2 USB ports one Full size standard USB and the other seems to be a micro USB. The best part is the standard USB could be used to connect plug and play devices like a wireless mouse and keyboard. It runs on the latest Android 4.0 OS ans supports most application and features supported by a top notch Android 4.0 smartphone. Its powered by an External adapter 5V/2A output, 110-240V input.

What that means you could even run it from an external battery if you get the right voltage and amps. Although i wont recommend you to do that if you don't know anything about electronics.

Google 'Build' brings LEGO right in your chrome browser.

LEGO has always been a craze among kids and also adults from a long time and has gained popularity around the world. LEGO is also pretty much a part of Google offices across the world. As a part LEGO Festival of Play online which marks the 50th anniversary of the LEGO in Australia, Google Australia and New Zealand announced; "Build with Chrome" or 'Build' for short. Build is the result of the latest Chrome Experiment. Build lets you explore and build a new world of LEGO creations together online.

Although Build looks like a simple Web App, this might not have been possible a couple years ago. Its proves the fact as to how far browser technology has come, which is making the internet an ever more creative platform. Build has been developed on the WebGL platform which brings the power of 3D graphics right in the browser.

A Robot that never loses a Stone, Paper, Scissor game

The Japanese always come up with some really amazing robotic technology. A robotic hand developed by the University of Tokyo's Ishikawa Oku Lab is so good at the game of stone, paper, scissor or Jaken as the Japanese call it, that no human can ever beat the robot, its undefeatable.

The reason no human can't beat it is cause its a robot!,  little stupid humour there. Obvioulsy its a machine that's designed for the purpose.The working is pretty simple to explain, it has what the researcher call the 'high-speed vision'. This lets the robot detect the movement of the hand and recognise the move being made by the human opponent with in 1 millisecond.

Renault Duster to be launched next month in India

We haven't been writing articles about the automotive industry for a while now. Although, this news is specifically related to the Indian Auto industry. French automobile manufacturer Renault hasn't been doing quite well in India and the major reason being the poor range of option it provides to the Indian customer. 

Although that's changing slowly, Renault has some very aggressive business strategies in the years to come and with the new Renault Duster, things might really turn around for Renault.

Renault Duster is a car that comes under the compact SUV segment which aims to provide the luxury of an SUV at the price of a Basic Sedan. The Duster is expected to be priced in the range of Rs 7-10 lac. It will be available in both Petrol and Diesel variants.

ASUS unveils its new Windows 8 Ultra Books: ASUS Taichi (dual screen) and ASUS Transformer

With the new ultra book line up of laptops hitting the market its all about having the computing power of the top of the line laptop and the weight and thin profile of a net-book. Now that's leading to more and more laptop-tablet hybrid devices. Laptops have the advantage of their productivity and the comfort of the keyboard. Tablets have the advantage of being light weight and ultra portable and give the best browsing and entertainment experience. ASUS is one company that been putting in a lot of efforts into these laptop-tablet hybrid devices. In the past ASUS came up with Eee Pad Transformer Prime. Now with the Windows 8 OS at hand things seem to have have become a lot easier for these kind of hybrid devices.

About a week ago popular computer hardware manufacturer ASUS unveiled to the world its new line up of Windows 8 ultra-books, tablets and desktop PCs at the Computex 2012 in TAIPEI, Taiwan.

Although what really caught the attention are two devices in particular, the ASUS Taichi (dual screen) and the ASUS Transformer.

ASUS Transformer Book

Tin could triple the capacity of lithium-ion batteries (Super Li-ion)

Lithium-Ion Battery technology hasn't changed much since 1991 when they first became commercially available. Although the devices that use them now need a lot more power to run than the devices that used them couple decades ago. And that's the problem why your smartphone barely lasts a day on a full charge and your laptop barley survives 3-5 hours before it needs a socket.

Researchers at the Washington State University have found a way that could triple Li-ion battery capacity plus make them charge faster and give them more charge cycles than existing Li-on batteries. A research group led by 'Grant Norton' a professor at the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, the researchers have filed patents on this nanoscale-based technology.

The existing Li-ion batteries utilize a graphite anode (positive terminal). The key difference that makes these new batteries better is the anode, instead of graphite its made of Tin.

Norton and postdoctoral researcher Uttara Sahaym developed the idea for this novel material a little over a year ago while working on a project to reduce the problem of tin whiskers. Tin Whisker are a major problem which cause damage to electronic components. These whiskers can sometimes grow as long as 10 millimetres, are a big problem in microelectronics because they cause short circuits and arcing that can cause severe damage to electronic components and reduce reliability. Despite the fact that tin whiskers have been causing problems for more than 60 years, researchers have been unable to come up with ways to entirely avoid them. The only popular way is to add lead to the tin solder material but lead has its environmental problems and its use has been restrained by the European Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS).

Google maps taking it to the next level with Street View Trekker

Google has been on a quest to give its users the best experience in terms every web based service it provides, specially when it comes to its free web based Google Maps service. Over the past 7 years Google Maps has done it all, from satellite images to now recently the 360 degree street view where Google mobilised its hardware by mounting it on top of specially modified cars, trikes, trolleys and even snowmobiles to give its users a Street View of cities and even jungles of the world, but can anything stop Google in its quest to map the world? Nope.

LG Unveils its New P series Cloud Monitors for Office setup

With cut throat competition and increasing power and software costs, it has become really important for businesses these days to reduce office setup and other operational overheads to get the best out of the business. The IT industries solution to the problem was Cloud Computing, making office computing more reliable, efficient and fast. Now we have a huge software environment for cloud computing but it can be fully effective only when we pair it with the right kind of hardware for office needs.

A week ago LG released its new P series of monitors which have been built for the Cloud office environment, something comparable to a Sunray thin client. The P series of monitors are the predecessors of the already existing D&E series of cloud monitors which LG seems to have discontinued.

LG likes to call these new P series of monitors as 'zero client' monitors. the reason being all you have to do is plug in a Keyboard, Mouse and an Ethernet Cable to the monitor and the system is ready to go. It even features this new technology from Cisco called Universal Power over Ethernet (UPoE) technology, enabling it to draw its power right from the Ethernet cable, no power socket needed.

Doggie Poo = Free WiFi internet for everyone around.

With Pet dogs in public parks, Dog poo is something that always comes in the way. It's always difficult to make pet owner clean up the mess. So the best idea to make people work is a reward strategy. 

A Mexican Internet service provider 'Terra' in partnership with an Ad agency called 'DDB Mexico' has come up with an innovating marketing strategy that's not only unique but also a benefit to everyone around.

The idea is pretty simple, Terra has installed these very interesting looking units called 'Poo WiFi' in 10 different parks around Mexico City. When someone puts a bag of dog poo in the unit, it weighs the poo and activates a free public WiFi Hotspot for some amount of time; its like 70 grams = 20mins. The more the poo the more free minutes of WiFi for everyone in the range.

It's a really great idea to spread  awareness among pet owners. Plus its a great way to promote a service. Obviously the units can't make a difference between dog poo and ordinary garbage so the units are manned with hostesses all day, passing out bags for doggie droppings.

Check out this really creative and funny sounding video 

Source

Next Gen Cargo Ships could use high sails to be fuel efficient

Cargo Ships are like the arteries of human civilization on this planet, they move tons of cargo of all sorts which keeps the international economy running. That being said, there are over 40,000 cargo ships on this planet which burn poor quality Diesel fuel for propulsion. This adds up to a lot of Carbon emissions every year and not much is being done to make these ships more fuel efficient and eco-friendly.

This past week at the 10th International Maritime Exhibition held in Tokyo in Japan a new cargo ship concept was unveiled, named the 'Wind Challenger Project'. The Project is lead by a group which involves members from the University of Tokyo. 

The aim of the Wind Challenger Project is to significantly reduce fuel consumption of large merchant/cargo vessels. The idea is to utilize giant retractable sails, 20m wide and 50m high, to make maximum use of wind energy. The idea is not really new though, sails have been used in the past. The essence of the technology lies in the fact that it will utilized modern day weather forecasting, navigation, networking and communication  technology to automatically control the sails and find the best possible path to safely reach the destination with minimum fuel consumption.

Simulations have already shown an annual average of 30% reduction in fuel consumption on shipping routes such as Yokohama-Seattle.

Google+ gets a makeover

When Google plus first came out everyone thought it would take social networking to a new level and yes Google Plus does have the potential. But unfortunately the novelty died pretty quick and then a lot of people stopped using Google plus. Although Google Plus now has over 170 million users, I really wonder how many are really active though. So now Google is using it's big programming Guns to make Google Plus the best place for Social networking.

I just logged into my Google+ account today to find out Google plus looks all different than ever before. I must say the new interface looks amazing. It's made things a lot simpler to find. Everything looks a lot clearer. I really appreciate the new interface. The free conference video chat feature called 'Hangout' has become much easier to use. Being an avid Facebook user, I must say the new G+ interface has won my heart. If only all my friends on Facebook are willing to be on Google plus. I m ready to stop using my Facebook account.

Micromax fires up the cheap tablet market with ' Funbook'

The cheap tablet market is really getting fired up with companies jumping into this lucrative market with these amazingly cheap portable tablet devices. After the announcement of the Akash 2 tablet a lot of companies have come up with tablet devices like Zync's Z-990, WishTel's Ira, Beetel's Magiq and just announced yesterday, the HCL's ME Tab U1.

To give a brief look in the specifications, The Tablet runs on the latest Android 4.0 Ice cream sandwich OS its powered by an ultra powerful 1.2GHz Cortex A8 Processor,features 512MB of RAM with 4GB of internal memory expandable up-to 32GB via microSD card. 

It has a 7 inch Capacitive touch screen with a native resolution of 800 x 400. 

Most importantly it features a Dual Mali 2D/3D Graphics processor, making it capable of playing 1080 HD playback with Adobe Flash support. It also has mini HDMI out. The form factor of the device is pretty slim too. The tablet supports 3G connectivity via USB dongle and comes bundled with a Tata Photon EVDO datacard with 1GB of data for 2 months.

Indian Television shows on YouTube!

Well it seems like YouTube has struck a major deal with various television media houses in India.

I just logged into my YouTube account to find out a new link tab called "TV shows" . What I ended up discovering is a whole archive of Indian TV shows right there infornt of my eyes, any episode from the shows available at the click of a mouse. 

The 7th All Japan Robot American Football Tournament (Video)

I came across this really cool and unique robotic sport that's becoming popular in Japan, 'The All Japan Robotic American Football'. 

In this game 5 robots from each team compete with one another to get the ball across the opponents line. These robots are Radio controlled with limited autonomous abilities. Just like in an American Football (Rugby) match the robots dash and wrestle against each other to get to the ball. These robots have dimension and size limitations. Dimensions should not exceed 20cm width, 20cm depth, and it should fit within a rectangular framework of 20cm in height.

Play Angry birds with a real slingshot!

By now most of the people across the planet who have access to the internet have tried their hands on Angry birds, if not you should try it out, its pretty engaging.

But if you are among the ones bored of the same old thing and like something thats closer to the real world then here is something really interesting you can try your hands on.

A guy named 'Simon Ford' who leads an online tools group at ARM, particularly mbed and http://mbed.org, a community website which works on enabling rapid prototyping with microcontrollers and taking DIY technology to the next level, developed a really cool device that's  a sling shot that can be actually used to play angry bird on a computer.

The idea for the project started off to show how easy it is to build USB devices using the new mbed NXP LPC11U24, specially designed to built USB devices.

A robotic arm totally made out of Legos

As kids most of us have had our hands on some or the other sort of Lego kits. Although if you haven't been keeping up, Lego kits have come a long way. With the 'Lego Mindstorms' series you can almost build anything out of it, all you need is imagination and the right skill to assemble the parts.

A guy named Max Shepherd uploaded a video on YouTube titled 'Lego Robotic Arm' where he demonstrates his creation of what he calls a 'Lego Prosthetic Arm'. Similar to what the title claims the arm has a striking resemblance to the movements of a human arm. It has 12 degrees of freedom (DOF), just for your information, a normal human arm is said to have 7 DOF. The arms incorporates lego pneumatic cylinders. Although the movements are pretty slow but are fair enough to look human like. It can lift a couple ponds of weight and pour a drink for you.

The thing that sets this robotic human arms different from the others is; anyone can actually build one with the lego parts that have been used. Unfortunately Max Shepherd hasn't reveled a lot of details online except for the video and a little description, but anyways his work is really worth appreciating.

Recording Data through heat could lead to faster magnetic Hard Drives

When it comes to computer components like processor, RAM and graphics everything is getting faster and cheaper than ever before, the only thing that's not keeping up with speeds is data storage devices, although we have SSDs but they don't have a lot of space and it is seen that they tend to degrade in performance over time. As a result the good old magnetic hard drive is still the choice for many, because its cheaper and has more storage space than existing SSD for the price.

All that being said, an international team of scientists have demonstrated a revolutionary new technology of magnetic recording which will allow information to be processed hundreds of times faster than by current hard-drive technology. The multinational team of scientists and researchers from countries which include Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, Japan and the Netherlands. Experimental work for the research was carried out at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Radboud University Nijmegen, in Netherlands.

It was found that data could be recorded by using heat which was never thought of before. Existing hard drive and other magnetic storage devices use a magnetic field to bring changes in the polarity of magnetic domains within the hard drives metallic plate, but there is a limitation to the speed of writing and reading the data. Until now it has been believed that in order to record one bit of information by inverting the poles of a magnet  there is a need to apply an external magnetic field. The stronger the applied field, the faster the recording of a magnetic bit of information.  

Unboxing the D-Link Wireless N150 ADSL2+ Modem Router

Hey guys this is the first ever unboxing here at Tech Center. We start with the D-Link Wireless N150 ADSL2+ Modem Router (Model no. DSL-2730U). 

Nothing much to talk about here. Its a really great Wireless modem router, it provides all the necessary feature for a home or small office needs to establish a secure and high-speed link to the internet. As you might have figured by now this is an ADSL modem which basically provides you with internet service over a land-line phone. 

We picked this modem from Lamington Road, a place in Mumbai popularly know for its electronic and computer hardware market. The modem is priced at Rs. 2536/- on the box but we got a fair deal at a decent price of Rs. 1850/- from a shop called Cassette World. 

Here is a look into whats comes in the box.

The Pirate Bay introduces a new category: Physibles

3D printing has really got a lot of recognition in the past couple of years. With easy to assemble and affordable kits available like the MakerBot's 'Thing-O-Matic' and their latest product called 'The Replicator', 3D desktop printing is becoming a more easy and fun task. Now with the hardware available, there a need for online platforms where people can create and share 3D CAD model so that others could download and print them. There are various platforms available. The one I tried and would recommend you to start with is www.thingiverse.com.

All that said, popular torrent sharing site The Pirate Bay has just introduced a new category in its inventory and named it 'Physibles'. Here users will be able to upload and share torrents related to 3D printable CAD models. This was explained in a really interesing blog post on TPB  titled Evolution: New category. Here the blog post goes to the ultimate limit of saying : "You will download your sneakers within 20years." which sounds really amazing and hopeful.

Liquipel: A Nanocoating that waterproofs your Mobile device.

Since history we know that water and electronics don't get together well . A California based company called 'Liquipel' might have found the way to change that. The company claims to have found a nano-coating that wont let water affect the functioning of your electronic mobile device. The coating itself is called named 'Liquipel' . Talking briefly about the company, Liquipel is a company founded in 2011 by Danny McPhail and Kevin Bacon who are determined to protect devices around the world from water damage.

Now to basically understand this, its a nano coating finer than the width of a human hair that prevents the circuitry to come in direct contact with water, thus making the device virtually water proof. From what the company says this is achieved by a process where in the device is placed in a chamber, here vacuum is created. Then a vapor called 'Liquipel vapor' is introduced in the chamber which permeates into every corner inside out of the device. The coating is thus bonded on the entire device at a molecular level, as a result the coating should last the entire lifespan of the device. The chamber is then brought at atmospheric pressure and the device is fully functional and water proof. No need for any bulky cover whatsoever.

The coating is totally invisible to the naked eyes and doesn't interfere with the normal functioning of the device.

Raspberry Pi: A $25 Credit card sized bare bones PC

In the world of Technology the smaller it gets the better it is. Back in 2011, we talked about 'Dream Plug'  a small computer that could be directly plugged into the wall socket. That opened up a door to whole new possibilities for developers and prototypes. Raspberry Pi is a project that started out as a non-profit foundation (RPF) to broaden the access to personal computer to kids by developing bare-bones and ultra cheap machines. It's basically a full computer board the size of a credit card.