Author Archives: Robin

DIY Pocket-Sized Oscilloscope Kit For $33

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Using a oscilloscope for your projects is often an expensive endeavor. At the low end you are talking several hundred bucks at least%u2014but this DIY version fits in your pocket and only costs $33.

Features:

Max sample rate – 2M/s%uFF0C8 bits
Sample memory depth – 256 bytes
Analog bandwidth – 1MHz
Vertical sensitivity – 100mV/Div – 5V/Div
Vertical position adjustable with indicator
Input impedance – 1M%u03A9
Max input voltage – 50Vpp
DC/AC coupling
Horizontal – 5%u03BCs/Div – 10m(minute)/Div
Auto, normal and single trig modes
Rising/falling edge trigger
Trig level adjustable with indicator
Hold/run feature
Built-in 500Hz/5Vpp test signal
Frequency counter features with independant F and T read-outs (only for TTL level input signal)
9 – 12V DC or AC power supply
Dimension: 110mm X 65mm X 25mm (no case)
Weight: 70 gram
With Panels

The “Digital Storage Oscilloscope” may not be as fully featured as traditional models, but you definitely get a lot for your money. Plus, it’s open source so you can include the firmware in your tinkering. The oscilloscope comes in a kit version for the aforementioned $33, as well as a pre-built version for only $49.

Gizmodo – DIY Pocket-Sized Oscilloscope Kit For $33 – Digital storage oscilloscope

Google adds More Search Options

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wants to add more search options: allowing the user to filter through the results themselves more effectively

Especially they want webmasters to add stuctured data:

by adopting microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML and bring this structured data to the surface. This will help people better understand the information you have on your page so they can spend more time there and less on Google. We will be rolling this feature out gradually to ensure that the quality of Google’s search results stays high

Some more information about Structured data here

More information on Microformats

and more on RDFa

how eBay stops Graverobbers

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Oddly enough, it turns out that eBay has helped reduce the amount of tomb raiding. This is because there has apparently never been that much money in it for the actual tomb raiders looking for artifacts: the high cost of artifacts has to do with middlemen: fences, transport, bribes, authenticators, etc.
So it’s cheaper (and safer) to get into the high quality knock-off market and build cheap fakes to sell on eBay. This means that collectors can get high quality versions of the artifacts and don’t need the actual artifact itself, lowering the price of the original artifact on the market. As this price lowers itself, grave robbers are less likely to incur the costs and risks for a shrinking profit margin.

MI6 gets into the secret losing business

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True to the Labour Governments’ form, yet ANOTHER serious data breach has been executed by government agencies. What’s surprising this time, is that it was done by a trained MI6 operative, who lost all the details about covert anti-drug operations in Columbia! Yes, that would be contact names, agent names and adresses and other details, operation details, etc etc etc. And how?

She left it in her handbag on the bus.

Now the article doesn’t mention if the data was encrypted, but considering that absolutely nothing in the UK Government is (because they quite surprisingly can’t do what millions of other people can – for free), it’s safe bets that it wasn’t.

Of course, Jacqui Smith still thinks centralised databases are the dogs bollocks. Trust the government with your private data – what could go wrong?!