Saturday, January 28, 2012

DIY PVC Magnetometer

DIY PVC Magnetometer
starMAKE
January 25, 2012 10:00 AM
by John Baichtal

DIY PVC Magnetometer


I love it when people use humble PVC as a project enclosure. In this case, Alex Avtanski of San Jose, CA, built this DIY Magnetometer to detect and measure magnetic storms.

The activity of the Sun varies on a cycle with a period of approximately 11 years. Periods of low solar activity are followed by a few years of sharply increased number of solar spots, flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), disrupting Earth's magnetic field and causing magnetic storms. With the next Solar cycle maximum approaching I wanted to get on the fun too, so I set to build my own device for detecting and recording those magnetic storms, a.k.a. a magnetometer.
(…)
My magnetometer is of a torsion design. Torsion magnetometers work as follows: A magnet, attached to a mirror, is suspended from a thread. A laser beam is reflected from the mirror and falls on a detector. Changes in the Earth's magnetic field turn the magnet and the attached mirror, twisting the torsion thread. The reflected beam changes its position on the sensor, the changes are recorded and plotted on a chart.


Electronics Science


Dr. Art Trembanis
Associate Professor
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

"Il faut aller voir" -JYC

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Sunday, January 22, 2012

The Other Final Frontier - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/opinion/sunday/the-other-final-frontier.html?_r=2


Dr. Art Trembanis
Associate Professor
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

"Il faut aller voir" -JYC

OpenROV to Perform Preliminary Dives

OpenROV to Perform Preliminary Dives
starMAKE
January 22, 2012 3:16 AM
by Gareth Branwyn

OpenROV to Perform Preliminary Dives

As you may already know, David Lang, our Zero to Maker columnist, is involved in the OpenROV project, an open source camera-equipped R/C submersible, designed to look for water-buried treasure. They're taking the ROV prototypes up to Hall City Cave in Northern, CA tomorrow for some preliminary dives. How exciting!

Eric and I and a few others are up near the Trinity Alps, planning to go to the Hall City Cave tomorrow with a couple OpenROV prototypes. As you can see from the photo, we've hacked a GoPro 3D camera onto the OpenROV.

Biggest challenge now is the weather.

More to come soon!

OpenROV

More:
Search for buried treasure with your very own OpenROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle)


Robotics 3d camera david lang dives OpenROV treasure hunting trinity alps zerotomaker


Dr. Art Trembanis
Associate Professor
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

"Il faut aller voir" -JYC

Friday, January 13, 2012

High school students can explore ocean science at UD summer camp

Announcement about TIDE 2012 including a photo from the cruise aboard the RV Hugh R Sharp that we took them on two years ago.

http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2012/jan/tide-camp-011312.html


Dr. Art Trembanis
Associate Professor
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

"Il faut aller voir" -JYC

Best Practices for Programming MATLAB

Best Practices for Programming MATLAB
starLoren on the Art of MATLAB
January 13, 2012 7:21 AM
by Loren Shure

Best Practices for Programming MATLAB

I thought I would share my top goto list of things I try to do when I write MATLAB code. And checking with other MathWorks folks whose code I admire, I found they basically used the same mental list that I use. You can find blog posts on all of these topics by selecting relevant categories from the right side of The Art of MATLAB blog site.

Contents

My List of Best Practices

Clearly (at least to me), this is not everything you generally need to do. You still need to comment the code, add good help information and examples, etc. But these are the main coding practices and tools I always rely on.

  1. Vectorize (but sensibly).
  2. Use bsxfun in lieu of repmat where possible.
  3. When looping through an array, loop down columns to access memory in the same order that MATLAB stores the data in.
  4. Profile the code. I am often surprised about what is taking up the time.
  5. Pay attention to messages from the Code Analyzer.
  6. Use functions instead of scripts.
  7. Don't "poof" variables into any workspaces. Translation, don't use load without a left-hand side; avoid eval, evalin, and assignin.
  8. Use logical indexing instead of find.
  9. Avoid global variables.
  10. Don't use equality checks with floating point values.

Missing from Your List? Additions to My List?

What's on my list that you don't currently do? Do you have a major addition to my list (there can't be too many, or I won't remember to do them all!)? Let me know here.


Get the MATLAB code (requires JavaScript)

Published with MATLAB® 7.13

Best Practice


Dr. Art Trembanis
Associate Professor
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

"Il faut aller voir" -JYC

Seadiscovery.com - BlueView Signs Agreement with Outland Technology

http://www.seadiscovery.com/mtStories.aspx?ShowStrory=1055022056

Explore your world, start here.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/SbSV/~3/RjGGF_fu4N8/explore-your-world-start-here.html

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Neural networks research led by UD's Tanner wins outstanding paper award

UDaily article about the neural network object detection work by our colleague Bert Tanner in mechanical engineering, includes mention of our work detecting subway cars and scallops.

http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2012/jan/tanner-neural-networks-011112.html