Sorry for the long silence; I've been working on a couple different posts, and both have run into problems. I'm going to be heading off to Swarthmore this weekend for Senior Week and Commencement, so I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to finish anything, but I thought I'd tell you a bit about what I've been thinking about, in case you want to express an opinion about which I should finish first.
Remote Controls - I was watching some TV a couple days ago, and it got me thinking about the way remotes work. The questions that came to mind were: How many times can the beam bounce off the walls, and still produce a usable signal? How long does a single command last? How much could the signal spread out, and still be usable? I started doing the calculations, but I ran into problems trying to sort out the weird units involved. (Lumens per steradian? Seriously?)
Weather Interpolation - Steve runs an electronic weather station in Ashfield that uploads its data to a site called Weather Underground. I thought it would be interesting to try taking various data from the site (such as temperature) and interpolating between nearby stations to determine the approximate weather in places that didn't have a station. I've been trying to automate the process with a Perl script, but it's been too long since I did any programming aside from Matlab's insane scripting language, so I'm having some trouble.
Let me know in the comments if one these piques your interest, or feel free to suggest your own idea.
I would like instructions for building a long-range remote control. Something suitable for changing channels while lying prone behind the tree-line.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I don't feel the need to covertly change a television from the tree-line, I would be interested in the limits of remote controls.
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