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May 24, 2005
Cantenna
Some friends moved into our neighborhood a few weeks ago. They live three houses down the street from us. I thought it would be a cool project to extend our wireless network to their house, and after talking it over, we decided to try it.
I knew extending our wireless network to a house 100 feet away was possible, but I was not sure what equipment we would need. I did some research and found the Cantenna. From reviews I found, I knew it should easily be able to focus the wireless signal and transmit it to the house. I also knew I wanted to use a Linksys WRT54G with custom Sveasoft firmware. Sveasoft firmware allows you to boost the signal strength on the router, something you cannot do with the factory firmware. Would it work? Would we need more equipment, like a router on the other end? Only one way to find out.
Once I had everything setup on the router, we did a test from our second story porch. It worked perfectly. I plan on moving the router and cantenna inside our garage, which has a window with clear line of sight to the house. For now though, here is a shot of the setup on our porch.
Posted by Phil at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2005
RMNP
We visited Rocky Mountain National Park over the weekend. Borrowed a friend's Nikon D70 and took some great shots.
Posted by Phil at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2005
Monkeys treat robot arm as bonus appendage
Monkeys treat robot arm as bonus appendage: "David Pescovitz: Monkeys that controlled robot arms via neural implants were actually thinking of the arm as their own extra appendage. Duke University neurobiologists Miguel Nicolelis, Mikhail Lebedev, and their colleagues analyzed data from Lebedev's 2003 experiments in which he trained implanted monkeys to move a cursor and robot arm by thought alone. (Previous post about that demonstration.) Only recently though did the researchers discover that the monkey wasn't moving the arm in lieu of its real arm but rather that neurons in the brain had shifted to control the robot. From Duke University Medical Center:
Link"Mikhail's analysis of the brain signals associated with use of the robotic and animals' actual arms revealed that the animal was simultaneously doing one thing with its own arm and something else with the robotic arm," (Nicolelis) said. "So, our hypothesis is that the adaptation of brain structures allows the expansion of capability to use an artificial appendage with no loss of function, because the animal can flip back and forth between using the two. Depending on the goal, the animal could use its own arm or the robotic arm, and in some cases both.
"This finding supports our theory that the brain has extraordinary abilities to adapt to incorporate artificial tools, whether directly controlled by the brain or through the appendages" said Nicolelis. "Our brain representations of the body are adaptable enough to incorporate any tools that we create to interact with the environment. This may include a robot appendage, but it may also include using a computer keyboard or a tennis racket. In any such case, the properties of this tool become incorporated into our neuronal 'space'," he said...
"From a philosophical point of view, we're saying that the sense of self is not limited to our capability for introspection, our sense of our body limits, and to the experiences we've accumulated," Nicolelis said. "It really incorporates every external device that we use to deal with the environment."
(Via Boing Boing Blog.)
Posted by Phil at 07:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack