There have been rumors of snow in seattle. Predictions have been between zero and 30 inches. Who knows what will happen. Regardless, you can watch a live stream from a Thermal IR camera pointed at highway 99 South in SODO...
Archive for January, 2012
Live! thermal camera stream of a snowstorm
on 18 January 2012
Gingerbread!
on 9 January 2012
So, just before the holidays, some enterprising lab members (Phebe, Beth, Rob and Rich) put together an awesome pair of holiday craft nights. There was sous vide cooking, conductive thread sewing, gingerbread construction and more.
Open source PID controller
on 5 January 2012
My friend Brett Beauregard has been working on this sweet open source PID controller.. and he's finally published information online about it here.
A PID (proportional–integral–derivative) controller is a device which use hardware feedback with an algorithm; this allows the operator to maintain a target value (temp). Cruise control in car is the classic example: Set it at 60mph, and it will increase the accelerator until you hit 60. There are all sorts of things which can go wrong with closed-loop control systems - - overshoot, ringing, bias, etc. As this device is all open source, as it will make debugging these devices much easier.
It's currently on "presale" for $85. I think this is a sweet deal. If you want to make your own Sous-vide cooker, this is the ticket. Go buy one, as I want to make sure this type of hardware is available to the masses. I'm excited to get mine.
