This week I found this story. It's a long story, but it has everything we like in a good spies story: a smart girl, some sexual tension (in this story it seems it's resolved) and some electronics gadgets.
Basic story: she tried to create a better interface to communicate with her vibrator, something more faster and natural that pushing some buttons on a remote control. And as I was reading her story, and found what she did to her ... gadget, and all the stuff she has at home, I got a bit curious (and a bit jelaous as well) on all the electronics she was using.
Basically: she is using Arduino, a programmable card to control an ultrasonic distance sensor which "sense" her hand (or other obstacle) and increases or decreases vibrator motor. Her article goes on explaining how she detected frequencies, command sequence, and how she created a cover to her new remote control.
So, this week I've been reading and looking for ideas about arduino, and some other thing she used to create that remote control.
I've been reading some pages, and half of an introductory book about Arduino. One thing I like about it is that you are using a programming language similar to Processing, and that it's really easy to create a circuit to light on and off a led, and from there, you can create more elaborated circuits.
As I list in my weekly summary, there are a lot of blogs sharing ideas and projects to do based on Arduino. If I have to choose, I'd pick these two: - [Polar Plotter on Arduino and MakerBeams]:(http://roxen.github.com/polar-plotter/) - Domótica casera con Arduino y Raspberry Pi(sp)
First project calls me because it's a fantastic project, where you have to use step motors, servos and Bresenham'%27's line algorithm (uff, a long time ago when we find this while plotting lines with spectrum and alike).
Second project reminded me about domotics, making small devices to make our houses more confortables, with more automatization. I was thinking, for instance, to control sunlight with some motors at the windows, like this(sp):http://www.motoresypersianas.com/catalogo/Oferta-kit-completo-para-motorizar-persiana_207.html, or better thermal control with sensors at every room...
I specially liked this project: Embdsocial: http://www.embdsocial.net/, and found myself thinking about this internet-of-things idea. I don't think we're there yet, but I think we're going to see a lot of this very close to us in near future.
So, I'm reading two more books before buying anything (Arduino itself is cheap, close to 20€, but when you start to buy servos, sensors, all that stuff you may have consider buying all at once), but I definitely will be doing something about this soon.