Technology

Review: Battery Spot Welders, Why You Should Buy a Proper Spot Welder

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Making battery packs is a common pursuit in our community, involving spot-welding nickel strips to the terminals on individual cells. Many a pack has been made in this way, using reclaimed 18650 cells taken from discarded laptops. Commercial battery spot welders do a good job but have a huge inrush current and aren’t cheap, so it’s not uncommon to see improvised solutions such as rewound transformers taken out of microwave ovens. There’s another possibility though, in the form of cheap modules that promise the same results using a battery pack as a power supply.

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Two-Dimensional “Hybrid Separator Membrane” Boosts Lithium Batteries’ Lifespans

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Designed to allow lithium ions to flow but prevent dendrites forming, this material could be key to longer-lasting, safer batteries.


Scientists at Friedrich Schiller University, Boston University, and Wayne State University have found a means to considerably boost the lifespan of rechargeable batteries — using a hybrid membrane to prevent dendrite formation.

Rechargeable batteries are undeniably useful, but while they’re usable far more times than a standard alkaline battery they do come with a finite lifespan. As they’re discharged and recharged, lithium dendrites form — tiny needle-like structures which eventually short-circuit the battery, piercing the separator membrane and potentially even starting a fire.

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Q-Dice – Quantum Powered Dice Roller

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Use background radiation to make your dice rolls! Features multiple dice types and guaranteed to make your DnD session more interesting!

Usually computers use numerical methods to generate random numbers. These are called pseudo-random number generators and, as the name implies, are not truly randomly generator.

True random number generators can use physical phenomena, virtually impossible to predict, to generate random numbers. Some of these use methods based on optical properties, radiation, raindrops, or even lava-lamps!

This project uses the detection of ionizing radiation coming from radioactive sources, such as cosmic rays as the source for randomness for dice rolls. The detection of radiation is made using a Geiger-Muller tube which generates an interrupt on the microcontroller that calculates the dice roll.

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This is Grand Theft Auto as made by AI

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Called GAN Theft Auto, this is GTA V as you have never seen it before.

Artificial intelligence figures prominently in a wide swath of games, mostly in the way NPCs react to situations. But AI is capable of much more than having a character duck behind a corner during a shootout and, going in a completely different direction, a couple of AI researchers tapped into Nvidia’s GameGAN neural network to create GAN Theft Auto—an entirely AI-generated version of Grand Theft Auto V. The result is pretty remarkable.

The playable demo consists of driving down a short stretch of highway in GTA V. From a modern graphics standpoint, it is not what you would expect—the scene is highly pixelated, and even after upsampling the output, there is still a haze, as if playing GTA V in a dream state.

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Tencent’s Robotics X Division Shows Off Ollie, a Leaping Wheeled Robot with a Clever “Tail”

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Designed around two wheels on four joined “legs,” the secret to Ollie’s agility is a hidden third wheel on an extra limb.

Robotics X, the robotics research division of Chinese multinational conglomerate Tencent, has shown off a new robot dubbed Ollie — capable of performing the skateboarding trick which provided its name, by swinging around a wheeled “tail.”

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Novel Research Powers Multiple Wearable Devices From a Single Source

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This new technology enables a single device to wirelessly power other wearables, using the human body as a medium for power transmission.

Wearable devices have become a large part of how we live our lives — from phones and watches to wireless health monitors and more — and will undoubtedly remain so. A major pain point in using and maintaining a variety of devices, however, is how to keep them properly powered. Charging numerous devices every day can be cumbersome and inconvenient, especially when the battery runs out. A team of researchers at the National University of Singapore have developed a solution: technology that allows a single device to wirelessly power other wearables, using the human body as a medium for power transmission.

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Researchers Develop Foldable Haptic Actuator for Mixed Reality Applications

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Touch&Fold is worn on a user’s fingernail and renders touch in MR without preventing them from also touching real objects.

Researchers from the University of Chicago have developed a foldable haptic feedback device that allows users to touch objects in mixed reality environments, then gets folded back onto the user’s nail when touching objects in the real world. Known as Touch&Fold, the end-effector also features a linear resonant actuator that lets the unit touch virtual objects and their textures. Sure, many haptic devices on the market enable users to interact with objects in the virtual world, such as controllers and gloves, but none provides the ability to interact with objects in both worlds and “feel” them at the same time.

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Bobby Towers’ Trochee Is a Parameterized, 3D-Printable, Raspberry Pi Pico-Powered One-Hand Keyboard

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Designed for accessibility, this Clojure-based project can be tweaked for your individual requirements.

Developer Bobby Towers has shown off two 3D-printed keyboards with a difference: These multi-colored marvels are designed for one-handed use, and powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico.

“There are many reasons and situations where one would find themselves without use of one or both of their hands. Injuries, disabilities, child-rearing, and probably countless others I haven’t thought of,” Towers explains of the reason for switching from a traditional two-handed keyboard layout to one more usable with a single hand. “Usually though, unless the reason is permanent, it is not worth the monetary investment to justify a $400-$1000 Maltron [single-handed] keyboard. I think this is a major problem, and if there were a cheaper option, more people would enjoy a more productive lifestyle while in these compromised situations.”

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Researchers Reveal Optimizations to Boost Battery Life in Arduino Uno, ATmega328P-Based Data Loggers

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With the addition of a MOSFET and some tweaks to the program code an Arduino Uno can log every two seconds for a year on a 2,400mAh battery.

A pair of researchers from Newcastle University have published a paper investigating optimizations to boost battery life in Microchip ATmega328P-based, Arduino-compatible data loggers — by tweaking SD card save operations.

“As part of a university project, I needed to look into how to make the Arduino/ATmega328P last on a couple of AA batteries for over a year,” first author Luke J. Bradley explains. “After doing a lot of digging through the datasheet and reading multiple online forums, I discovered that there are lots of tips and tricks out there but no one has made a standard method for creating a low power data logger. As such, I decided to write and publish a paper based on this. The paper shows exactly how to create a data logger using an SD card and an RTC as well as little tips and tricks within the code to help minimize power consumption. I hope it helps other people in their projects!”

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