Greenwashing is a set of marketing techniques that will allow you to portray your company as eco-friendly and sustainable (whatever that may mean) without actually being so. In this helpful guide (with examples), we present you with the best tricks so you can continue harming the planet with a clear conscience and full pockets while deceiving your customers.
I’ve been wanting to replace my good old Anet A8 for a while now. It is without a doubt one of the best (and cheapest) 3D printers to get started. Mine it is already a few years old and thousands of meters of filament have passed through it. Although it is still working well, it is time to move to a more professional printer that doesn’t require so much maintenance and presets to start printing. Before choosing one, it is worth looking at what Open Hardware 3D printers are available out there.
The rapid growth of metropolitan areas, combined with increased car use, has let to most of the world’s major cities suffer from continuous traffic jams. In addition to wasting time, traffic congestion increases fuel consumption, the number of collisions and air pollution levels. Traffic jams are the main cause of the rising cost of passenger and freight transport and the cause of billions lost each year. Additionally are one of the main causes of reduced quality of life in our cities.
Working on the prototype of one of the new Bike Pixel model, I’ve started to miss a benchtop power supply. They are devices that provide us with a regulated DC voltage and current. This makes them ideal for testing prototype designs or new components. It is one of the tools that should be present in any electronics workshop.
Cities consume more than two thirds of all energy produced. They are important centres of transport, housing and business and are responsible for more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. In the case of transport, cities and urban areas are responsible for 24% of CO2 emissions.
The majority of the population now lives in urban areas. It is estimated that up to 75% of Europeans, 81% of Latin Americans and more than 82% of North Americans now live in cities. Although the number of accidents is not directly linked to the number of inhabitants of a city, the fact is that the majority of road accidents occur in urban environments.
In accidents occurring on urban roads, it is also more common for other road users to be involved in addition to the drivers and their passengers. The worst off, as always, are pedestrians and cyclists. To try to reduce these figures, one of the easiest and least expensive measures to be implemented by administrations is limiting the speed of motor vehicles within the urban area. By limiting its speed the safety of all road users is significantly improved.
(more…)One of the possible extensions for Bike Pixel that I am considering is to add a module that allows charging its battery through a solar panel. In theory we can power our Arduino projects by directly connecting a solar panel. If we have some current stabilizer circuit and a lot of sun radiating the panel there should be no problem. But as soon as the energy supplied by the light is insufficient our device will stop working.
After the shutdown of the Open Source Hardware data organisation (OSHdata) in April this year, it seemed that their activity quantifying the development of the Open Hardware community had come to an end. Fortunately, the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) has, in part, taken over the legacy of OSHdata. A few days ago they presented a new report on the state of Open Source Hardware. In it they show different statistics and interesting information with the current state (as of 1 July) of the community. Last year’s report produced by OSHdata focused more on the commercialisation of open hardware projects. This year’s report is dedicated to the community and the effects of free hardware on its members. Below is a summary of the highlights.
Even more important than a good bicycle light (eg. a Bike Pixel 😉 ) a cycling helmet should be the basic security measure to wear when we are riding on bike. This is especially true in urban, leisure or commuting trips. In such cases speeds are lower (including ours and the other vehicles that surround us). Therefore, in the event of an accident, the impact energy is much lower. On the other side, helmet may be less useful on the road, where a running over vehicle (cars, trucks or trains) goes at higher speeds than 90 km/h. In any case wearing helmets always reduce mortality and morbidity of cyclist trauma.
If in any of your projects you have limits in terms of space or power consumption one of the best solutions is to work with an Arduino Pro Mini board. The USB port and the programmer circuitry have been removed from the design. As a result, its dimensions are considerably reduced. That’s why for the new version of Bike Pixel I’m thinking of using one of these boards.
There are currently two versions of the Pro Mini plates. It is possible to find them in 3.3V with a processor at 8MHz and with 5V at 16MHz. In both cases, apart from reducing their size, they use less energy than their big brothers (especially in the case of the 3.3V version).
(more…)
Bike Pixels © 2024
Except where otherwhise noted this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Made with and by OD·C