Smart Mini Helicopter

Smart Mini Helicopter

I recently purchased a new mini Helicopter online at 22$. It is really exciting to control this mini helicopter. I actually bought this for doing a Project. This has been my long dream to buy and play with a mini Helicopter. When I was doing my Engineering, I was working to design a Heli, but it was not working, even not lifted. Because, the motor and the blades that I used for design of Heli were very heavy.

The specifications are

• Weight: 16g
• Dimensions: main rotor diameter 180mm
• Helicopter battery: 3.7v Rechargeable lithium polymer battery
• Charging Time: 20-30 minutes
• Flight Duration: 6-8 minutes
• Transmitter Batteries: 6 x 1.2v AA Alkaline Batteries
• Frequency: Infra red control system - bands A, B & C
• Control Specification: forward / backward / up / down / left / right
• Range: Up to 10m (30ft)

The weight of the Heli is really very less in weight and the size is also very small. I wonder how the technology has changed in all the field. The motor is very small in size (dia 180mm only). This is really a flying robot. I would like to design a circuit and prototype in such a way that it could be used for search and rescue operation during disastrous conditions.
I need also some help and suggestions on this topic. Those who are familiar with this topic, leave it as comments.

Virtual Instrumentation in the Engineering Process

Virtual Instrumentation in the Engineering Process

Virtual instruments provide significant advantages in every stage of the engineering process, from research and design to manufacturing test.

Research and Design
• In research and design, engineers and scientists demand rapid development and prototyping capabilities. With virtual instruments, you can quickly develop a program, take measurements from an instrument to test a prototype, and analyze results, all in a fraction of the time required to build tests with traditional instruments.
• When you need flexibility, an scalable open platform is essential, from the desktop, to embedded systems, to distributed networks.
• The demanding requirements of research and development (R&D) applications require seamless software and hardware integration.
• Whether you need to interface stand-alone instruments using GPIB or directly acquire signals into the computer with a data acquisition board and signal conditioning hardware, LabVIEW makes integration simple.
• With virtual instruments, you also can automate a testing procedure, eliminating the possibility of human error and ensuring the consistency of the results by not introducing unknown or unexpected variables.

Development Test and Validation
• With the flexibility and power of virtual instruments, you can easily build complex test procedures.
• For automated design verification testing, you can create test routines in LabVIEW and integrate software such as National Instruments TestStand, which offers powerful test management capabilities.
• One of the many advantages these tools offer across the organization is code reuse. You develop code in the design process, and then plug these same programs into functional tools for validation, test, or manufacturing.

Manufacturing Test
• Decreasing test time and simplifying development of test procedures are primary goals in manufacturing test. Virtual instruments based on LabVIEW combined with powerful test management software such as TestStand deliver high performance to meet those needs.
• These tools meet rigorous throughput requirements with a high-speed, multithreaded engine for running multiple test sequences in parallel. TestStand easily manages test sequencing, execution, and reporting based on routines written in LabVIEW.
• TestStand integrates the creation of test code in LabVIEW. TestStand also can reuse code created in R&D or design and validation.
• If you have manufacturing test applications, you can take full advantage of the work already done in the product life cycle.

Manufacturing
• Manufacturing applications require software to be reliable, high in performance, and interoperable.
• Virtual instruments based on LabVIEW offer all these advantages, by integrating features such as alarm management, historical data trending, security, networking, industrial I/O, and enterprise connectivity.
• With this functionality, you can easily connect to many types of industrial devices such as PLCs, industrial networks, distributed I/O, and plug-in data acquisition boards. By sharing code across the enterprise, manufacturing can use the same LabVIEW applications developed in R&D or validation, and integrate seamlessly with manufacturing test processes.

Energy Efficient E-Bus - Electric motors built in Wheels

Energy Efficient E-Bus

Most of the buses, four wheelers are run using Diesel Engines. Some buses are designed to run on using Electric motors for wheel drives. But it require adequate batteries with proper backup to run these electrical driven vehicles.
A novel technology has been developed where the electric motor is built within the wheel with built in controllers. This bus called as E bus. The main advantages of this type of bus are that it eliminates the transmitting mechanism from electric motors to the wheels.
This is in turn improves the efficiency of E-bus and also saves the energy. So the vehicle can be run for long period with available battery backup. At the same time vehicle can be ride very smoothly and controlled easily.

VLSI, Embedded, Matlab and Circuit Design related Websites

VLSI, Embedded, Matlab and Circuit Design related Websites

I would like to share some interesting tech sites which will be very help for the final year Engineering students. Already I have given a long list on Technology related website links. If you have such websites, feel free to list in dropping at Comments

VLSI
http://only-vlsi.blogspot.com
http://digitalverification.blogspot.com
http://vlsifaq.blogspot.com
http://asic-soc.blogspot.com/
http://vlsi-career.blogspot.com/

Embedded systems
http://ascprojects.blogspot.com/
http://www.lifezkoool.blogspot.com
http://www.embedded-bits.co.uk/
http://ilearntechnology.com

matlab
http://blinkdagger.com/

Electronic Circuit and Design and Other category

http://enggprojecttopics.blogspot.com/
http://electronicparts-kits.blogspot.com/
http://www.circuitizen.com/
http://schematronics.blogspot.com/
http://rfcircuits.blogspot.com/
http://transmitterpalace.blogspot.com/
http://aquacar.blogspot.com/
http://detector-sensor.blogspot.com/

Amazing and Exciting Dolphin Bubbles in SeaWorld

Amazing and Exciting Dolphin Bubbles in Sea World

Amazing events are happening in Nature World wide. I used to share with all my family members and friends such amazing events through online or other medias. This week, I watched a Video in online by which i amazed and excited. Yes, it was dolphin bubbles from the Sea World. Dolphin is naturally an intelligence sea creature. I have already heard about Dolphin's intelligence and some facts about it. It can play and dance with us. This is the first time i see Dolphin bubbles and its play with bubbles in sea water. It is really amazing and exciting to watch the video. While i was showing the Dolphin bubbles to my son and wife, they wondered its amazing behavior. My family members enjoyed a lot by watching the Video. It is my great wish to share with you all to watch the video and enjoy.



As I said, I would like to share some of the Dolphin's amazing facts. Dolphins can travel at a speed of 18 miles per hour and make up 1000 clicking sounds per second. There are different Dolphins in Sea World e.g. Spinner, Dusky Dolphins. The way it capture the food while feeding to it is really enthusiastic one. I would say that watching Dolphin blowing bubbles is a memorable event forever for me and my family members. It also makes us to interact with them to have a life time enjoyment and fun. There are no words to explain this kind of experience. I expect that everyone should get the same exciting experience and share with all of your friends. It is also a fun experience. One more interesting thing with this website is that we can know and learn more about Dolphins and its behavior. I thank GOD for having such wonderful creatures in earth.

VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS BEYOND THE PERSONAL COMPUTER

VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS BEYOND THE PERSONAL COMPUTER
• Recently, commercial PC technologies have begun migrating into embedded systems. Examples include Windows CE, Intel x86-based processors, PCI and CompactPCI buses, and Ethernet for embedded development. Because virtual instrumentation relies so heavily on commercial technologies for cost and performance advantages, it also has expanded to encompass more embedded and real-time capabilities.

• For example, LabVIEW runs on Linux as well as the embedded ETS real-time operating system from VenturCom on specific embedded targets.

• The option of using virtual instrumentation as a scalable framework that extends from the desktop to embedded devices should be considered a tool in the complete toolbox of an embedded systems developer.

• A dramatic technology change example that affects embedded systems development is networking and the Web. With the ubiquity of PCs, Ethernet now dominates as the standard network infrastructure for companies worldwide.

• In addition, the popularity of the Web interface in the PC world has overflowed into the development of cell phones, PDAs, and now industrial data acquisition and control systems.

• Embedded systems at one time meant stand-alone operation, or at most interfacing at a low level with a real-time bus to peripheral components.

• Now, the increased demand for information at all levels of the enterprise (and in consumer products) requires you to network embedded systems while continuing to guarantee reliable and often real-time operation.

• Because virtual instrumentation software can combine one development environment for both desktop and real-time systems using cross-platform compiled technology, you can capitalize on the built-in Web servers and easy-to-use networking functionality of desktop software and target it to real-time and embedded systems.

• For example, you could use LabVIEW to simply configure a built-in Web server to export an application interface to defined secure machines on the network on Windows, and then download that application to run on a headless embedded system that can fit in the user's hand.

• This procedure happens with no additional programming required on the embedded system. You then can deploy that embedded system, power it, connect to the application from a remote secure machine via Ethernet, and interface to it using a standard Web browser.

For more sophisticated networking applications, you can graphically program TCP/IP or other methods with which you are already familiar in LabVIEW and then run them in the embedded system.

Virtual Instruments versus Traditional Instruments

Virtual Instruments versus Traditional Instruments

• Stand-alone traditional instruments such as oscilloscopes and waveform generators are very powerful, expensive, and designed to perform one or more specific tasks defined by the vendor. However, the user generally cannot extend or customize them. The knobs and buttons on the instrument, the built-in circuitry, and the functions available to the user, are all specific to the nature of the instrument. In addition, special technology and costly components must be developed to build these instruments, making them very expensive and slow to adapt.

• Virtual instruments, by virtue of being PC-based, inherently take advantage of the benefits from the latest technology incorporated into off-the-shelf PCs. These advances in technology and performance, which are quickly closing the gap between stand-alone instruments and PCs, include powerful processors such as the Pentium 4 and operating systems and technologies such as Microsoft Windows XP, .NET, and Apple Mac OS X. In addition to incorporating powerful features, these platforms also offer easy access to

• powerful tools such as the Internet. Traditional instruments also frequently lack portability, whereas virtual instruments running on notebooks automatically incorporate their portable nature.

• Engineers and scientists whose needs, applications, and requirements change very quickly, need flexibility to create their own solutions. You can adapt a virtual instrument to your particular needs without having to replace the entire device because of the application software installed on the PC and the wide range of available plug-in hardware.

Flexibility
• Except for the specialized components and circuitry found in traditional instruments, the general architecture of stand-alone instruments is very similar to that of a PC-based virtual instrument. Both require one or more microprocessors, communication ports (for example, serial and GPIB), and display capabilities, as well as data acquisition modules.

• What makes one different from the other is their flexibility and the fact that you can modify and adapt the instrument to your particular needs.

• A traditional instrument might contain an integrated circuit to perform a particular set of data processing functions; in a virtual instrument, these functions would be performed by software running on the PC processor. You can extend the set of functions easily, limited only by the power of the software used.

Lower Cost

• By employing virtual instrumentation solutions, you can lower capital costs, system development costs, and system maintenance costs, while improving time to market and the quality of your own products.

Plug-In and Networked Hardware

• There is a wide variety of available hardware that you can either plug into the computer or access through a network. These devices offer a wide range of data acquisition capabilities at a significantly lower cost than that of dedicated devices.

• As integrated circuit technology advances, and off-the-shelf components become cheaper and more powerful, so do the boards that use them. With these advances in technology come an increase in data acquisition rates, measurement accuracy, precision, and better signal isolation.

• Depending on the particular application, the hardware you choose might include analog input or output, digital input or output, counters, timers, filters, simultaneous sampling, and waveform generation capabilities.

• The wide gamut of boards and hardware could include any one of these features or a combination of them.

Modern Real time Traffic control using GPS enabled cell phones

Real time Traffic control using GPS enabled cell phones

Traffic control is normally done either with the help of traffic police or traffic signal controllers (Timer based control). In the first case, the traffic police must present in each traffic signal and control the green, red and yellow signals according to the amount of traffic. In the second case, timer based control is used which will not bother about amount of traffic. The recent technology in the communication has emerged with the help GPS enabled mobile systems, where an accurate control of traffic is possible.The University of California researchers have developed a GPS enabled real time traffic monitoring systems for accurate control of traffic remotely. They have developed software which can be downloaded into cell phones which can automatically send the coordinates of the vehicles to a central server.
The traffic information is updated each time, the restructured traffic flow information is sent back to cell phones. This can be viewed as a color map in the cell phone as a level of traffic at a particular location in the city.
Depending on the amount of traffic in a particular location, we can change the path of our traffic which has least traffic. So our journey will be comfortable and can reach a place with no wastage of time.

Environment friendly future mobile phones

Environment friendly mobile phones

Almost all the people in the world have cell phones. The modern mobile phones are able to capture pictures, videos, records sounds, browsing internet, mapping locations, measuring temperature and even sensing light.The future cell phones are going to equip with environment parameters like weather conditions (atmospheric temperature or humidity level), air pollution level, and wind speed and so on. The cell phones will be built with these environment sensors. If the pollution level is known, each individual will able to control pollution individually so that the overall carbon emissions.
These data can even be exchanged among the people in particular among the taxi drivers so that they can inspect their vehicle emission level. The effort taken by the environment researchers are more appreciable.

Shrinking devices in the technology Era

Shrinking devices in the technology Era

Today, the technology revolutions have invaded in almost all the fields. The beauty here is that each inventions are well planed and optimized relevant to its field. For example, memory chips or flash memory are vital in computers, laptop, mobile phones which are fabricated at nano level even for GB of memory with best performance. The space is well optimized to fit into particular applications.
Another example is robot design which is made as small as possible with keeping in mind that it should perform as good as a human.
Now the question is, where is the technology era is heading? While everything is made small at micro or nano level including its weight as small as possible in order to assist human beings, what is the ultimate goal? Is it to explore this universe or to see the inner space within our self? No more questions, it requires only answers? I stop at this point.

Hurry up to harvest Energy from Renewable Energy Sources

Hurry up to harvest Energy from Renewable Energy Sources

The way and the trend to harvest energy from the renewable energy sources like solar, wind, tidal and Biomass has to change in order cater the need for today’s energy demand world wide. The polluting conventional energy sources are going to exhaust in another twenty or thirty years, it is the time to harvest energy from alternative energy sources. Though these renewable energy sources are available plenty, why is not harvest much? Why is not replacing the conventional energy sources so that we can be relieved from today’s energy demand?
The major concern is its capital cost. Most of the people can not buy it at an affordable price.
How this trend can be changed. Now we can compare this with the mobile technology revolution. Now everyone has a mobile. Even a poor can buy a mobile. As more competitors have entered this mobile field, the price has come down to very cheap. This trend like in mobile field can be extended to the use of renewable energy sources also. If more competitors enter this field, then the manufacturing of solar panels, wind mills will grow, it automatically will reduce the overall cost, hence people can buy it. So we can have a green technology every where.

Fingerprint analysis for Fingerprint authentication system

Fingerprint analysis

Automated fingerprint analyzers typically overlay various fingerprint images to find a match. In actuality, this isn't a particularly practical way to compare fingerprints. Smudging can make two images of the same print look pretty different, so you're rarely going to get a perfect image overlay. Additionally, using the entire fingerprint image in comparative analysis uses a lot of processing power, and it also makes it easier for somebody to steal the print data. Instead, most fingerprint scanner systems compare specific features of the fingerprint, generally known as minutiae minutiae comparison
A fingerprint is made of a series of ridges and furrows on the surface of the finger. The uniqueness of a fingerprint can be determined by the pattern of ridges and furrows as well as the minutiae points. Minutiae points are local ridge characteristics that occur at either a ridge bifurcation or a ridge ending. Typically, human and computer investigators concentrate on points where ridge lines end or where one ridge splits into two (bifurcations). Collectively, these and other distinctive features are sometimes called typica.
The scanner system software uses highly complex algorithms to recognize and analyze these minutiae. The basic idea is to measure the relative positions of minutiae, in the same sort of way you might recognize a part of the sky by the relative positions of stars. A simple way to think of it is to consider the shapes that various minutia form when you draw straight lines between them. If two prints have three ridge endings and two bifurcations, forming the same shape with the same dimensions, there's a high likelihood they're from the same print.
To get a match, the scanner system doesn't have to find the entire pattern of minutiae both in the sample and in the print on record; it simply has to find a sufficient number of minutiae patterns that the two prints have in common. The exact number varies according to the scanner programming.
Fingerprint matching techniques can be placed into two categories: minutiae-based and correlation based. Minutiae-based techniques first find minutiae points and then map their relative placement on the finger. However, there are some difficulties when using this approach. It is difficult to extract the minutiae points accurately when the fingerprint is of low quality. Also this method does not take into account the global pattern of ridges and furrows. The correlation-based method is able to overcome some of the difficulties of the minutiae-based approach. However, it has some of its own shortcomings. Correlation-based techniques require the precise location of a registration point and are affected by image translation and rotation.

Basics of Biometrics

Introduction to Biometrics

Biometrics is automated methods of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Among the features measured are face, fingerprints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein, and voice. Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions.As the level of security breaches and transaction fraud increases, the need for highly secure identification and personal verification technologies is becoming apparent. Biometric-based authentication applications include workstation, network, and domain access, single sign-on, application logon, data protection, remote access to resources, transaction security and Web security. Utilized alone or integrated with other technologies such as smart cards, encryption keys and digital signatures, biometrics is set to pervade nearly all aspects of our daily lives.
Utilizing biometrics for personal authentication is becoming convenient and considerably more accurate than current methods (such as the utilization of passwords or PINs). This is because biometrics links the event to a particular individual (a password or token may be used by someone - 9 - other than the authorized user), is convenient (nothing to carry or remember), accurate (it provides for positive authentication) and cost effective.

Google Earth with its amazing New features

Google Earth with New features

Google earth’s latest version (Google earth 5.0)have been unveiled. I have recently downloaded it and installed in my computer and I browsed through it and got amazed by seeing my birth place. It is really amazing to see it from the satellite point.I wonder that the internet technology has evolved to see the entire world from our place. The new features include 3D views, touring (any of the places on earth), Historical imagery and 3D Mars. It is really a Ocean. Some of the places are very close at a distance of order of few feet away. It takes only few seconds to reach a place. For example, I visited the Eiffel tower in Paris, Google campus, Olympic area in Australia and so on. I congrats the team of Google members who contributed the amazing Google earth .

Hobby Projects - Review

Hobby Projects - Review

Most of the engineering enthusiast wish to do mini electronic projects to higher level projects. Projects like Remote controlled devices are more attractive than other type of projects. In particular, Remote controlled Airplanes, helicoptors, boats, watercrafts and tanks are really amazint to do and testing. In search of such projects, I would like to share about bananahobby which is a hobby project website posts project models with relevant tips. The project list includes Remote controlled Airplanes, helicoptors, boats, watercrafts and tanks. The RC model tips are really worth to read before we start to do the model, so that we can avoid waste of money.
This also increase our confindent level of doing further steps in progress of successful project models. They also sale the different RC models at an affordable cost. Though it seems to be an online store, the tips part of the website is really nice to experience with real time models.