Someone16

Hack a Day has great articles about hacks from all over the world. This time I want to write about a very interesting project about radio controlled lawnmower.

I wanted to build similar lawnmower with the difference that I would use Wiimote for controlling it. But interfering Wiimote directly to an AVR or other micro controller is a bit hard, so I thought of using the laptop to connect Wiimote to a mower. I already made some plans, but then I realized about the biggest problem - danger of using something like this without my direct control over it.

After all, I'm perfectly capable of hurting myself without additional help, so building this could end badly.

Anyway I'm happy that someone actually made something like this, and I have no problems about him using it as long as it's far away from me. :-D

More: http://hackaday.com/2009/11/14/rc-lawnmower/

I stumbled upon an interesting article about wireless transmission of power and thought of sharing it here.

It's really simple and cheap way to wirelessly transmit electricity on really short distance. It's made of big and small coil, a couple of capacitors and LED diode.

More info: http://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-Power-Transmission-Over-Short-Distances-U/

I'm interested in omnidirectional wheels from when I watched Prototype This!, The Discovery Channel TV series. They used these wheels in episode Six-Legged All Terrain Vehicle.

I thought a few times about building a RC car with these omni wheels, but never got around to even buy needed materials. And of course there is also a lack of tutorials/articles about it on the Internet.

Well, I then forgot about it, but a few days ago I found a post about Omni-car on Hack a Day blog. http://hackaday.com/2009/11/17/omni-car/

Really interesting project, but sadly these wheels are a bit too expensive.

Direct link: http://didyoumakethat.webs.com/projects.htm

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MS released MVC 1.0 for ASP.Net 3.5 a few months ago. I just didn't take time to learn about it.

And last week I learnt that it's very good addition and something that I had been waiting from the release of first ASP.Net framework. I rather programmed in ASP than in ASP.Net because of freedom. In ASP you are free to make your HTML code as you like. In ASP.Net you have some Web Controls which usually generated really nasty code. And you have no control over this code. Postbacks are pain in the ass too. Google and other search engines can't crawl web pages with postbacks because you need javascript to use them (Google recently announced that they were thinking about making javascript-compatible crawler, but for now no one has that capability).

In ASP.Net MVC you can use your own HTML code and do everything as you like. It's similar to ASP without a framework, except that you actually have a framework. Now you have a choice to use either Web Controls or MVC in your projects. And I also saw some web sites made with it already.

BTW classic ASP is still pretty much alive. There are a lot of sites made with them, I guess they just don't have time/experience/need to rewrite everything.

How to set timeout when fetching content from web site with file_get_contents?

<?php
$context = stream_context_create(array('http' => array('timeout' > 1)));
echo file_get_contents("http://example.com/", 0, $context);
?>

It's a good idea to use it with timeout, because otherwise default timeout from php.ini will be used.

PayPal is great. You can pay on the Internet without revealing your credit card information. I use it almost everywhere.

I just don't understand why the heck not every online shop supports it? Maybe they are worried about frauds? However, AFAIK PayPal can tell them if you are verified user or not. At least that's the case when using PayPal at GoDaddy.com.

With credit card, they get at least one information by which they can identify you ... and PayPal account can be opened by anyone. But on the other hand, one can easily steal credit card number, CCV and expiration date. So, it's PayPal really that insecure or is there actually no difference between those two?

BTW what's up with GoDaddy's $500 month limit?

Nothing here ...

In the following files you can find code for AVR micro controllers to use this modules.

Source (.c) file: hopeTx

Source (.c) file: hopeRx

PDF file: RFM12B

RFM12B and AVR - quick start
I found this tutorial when I searched for connecting this module to AVR.
You can download the tutorial at: PDF file: zenburn.net

My Experience
My attempts to get this module working were all unsuccessful.

Nothing here yet.