I’ve long been interested in creating some physical world manifestation of [sometimes relevant] events in the virtual world. For FSoM episode 2, we decided to present the notion of a modern newswire. The concept is simple; one just queries a RESTful API or RSS feed and passes the formatted output to a line printer. With an always-on embedded computer, this becomes a device people can incorporate into their every day environments.

Watch the Video in the full article.

While there is nothing groundbreaking about a discussion of serial communications, we felt that it was important to address this topic early on in the Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate series. Being able to interface with various hardware via the serial port is a key tool in any experimenter’s or developer’s tool kit.

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Tango Echo Films has started producing a few weekly video shows. The first to debut is “Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate”, which stars Hunter Hutchinson and Vin Marshall.

Each week, these two will provide a very short synopsis of a DIY project on which they’ve been working. The goal is to provide our viewers with some new ideas and some new tools to use in their own projects.

Starting small, stay tuned for next Friday when we explore the Serial Port and what magic it still holds for you in the year 2009.

Watch the video in the full article.

At TE Motorworks, we get the opportunity from time to time to build novel machines. We sometimes then film ourselves romping around with these machines. From this comes the Dispatch From The TE Labs, presented in association with Tango Echo Films.

This video is an introduction to the TE Labs show by way of a highlights reel.

My parents tell me that when I was two years old, I would sit in front of the TV watching dukes of hazard with a block between the couch cushions for a shifter and a plate in my hand for a steering wheel. When I learned to read, I read Hot Rod Magazine cover to cover every month trying to absorb what I could about muscle cars. At 12 I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince my father to let me buy a junker so that I could practice taking cars apart. Finally when I was 16 I bought my first car. It was a two-seater Honda chosen for reliability, but it was a far cry from the muscle car of my dreams.