Exploring the stars, thousands of light years away from Earth, sounds pretty great right about now. While Darian Johnson hasn't invented intergalactic travel, he has created a tiny desktop computer that looks straight out of Jean-Luc Picard's ready room, letting you at least pretend that you're safely aboard a distant starship.It's a testament to Star Trek: The Next Generation's production designers, including technical consultant Michael Okuda, that the fictional LCARS (short for Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) operating system used on the computers aboard the USS Enterprise-D still look futuristic, despite the show first airing 33 years ago. Gene Roddenberry himself insisted that the computer screens aboard the ship be as minimal and clean as possible to give the impression of the technology being incredibly advanced, and it's an aesthetic that many fans of the show are still fans of, including Johnson.Johnson's LCARS computer is based on an existing design for a similar TNG-themed alarm clock, which he upgraded with a larger 3D-printed enclosure, bigger screen, and additional components to add considerably more functionality.Using everything from an Adafruit ESP32 Feather Board to Amazon's AWS cloud servers, the computer can access and display a host of information, accessible with a series of simple buttons, including the weather, the temperature and humidity of the room, news headlines, calendar data pulled from Microsoft Outlook, fitness info courtesy of Google Fitness, a resistor color code chart and calculator, and even a tool for measuring power and current that Johnson can use as he develops other devices. Geordi La Forge would be proud.All of the files and schematics needed to create and customize your own are available for free on Hackaday for download, and while you don't need to be a Starfleet caliber engineer to build one, you will need soldering, electronics, and programming skills to make it so.
June 9, 2020, WIN Enterprises, Inc., a leading designer and manufacturer of embedded x86 motherboards and appliances for electronic OEMs, announces the MB-50040. The MB-50040 is a high performance Mini-ITX single board computer (SBC) for graphically-oriented factory process monitoring and IoT applications that require high performance. Features 8th Generation Intel® Core™ Processor Mini-ITX DDR4 2400MHz SODIMM up to 64GB Supports 3 independent displays: LVDS + DP/HDMI + DP/HDMI (Auto-detecting) DP++ resolution supports up to 4096x2304 @ 60Hz Multiple expansion: 1 PCIe x4, 1 M.2 M Key (SATA/PCIe), 1 M.2 E key (PCIe/USB) Storage: 2 SATA 3.0 Rich I/O: 2 Intel GbE, 4 USB 3.1, 4 USB 2.0 15-Year CPU Life Cycle Support Until Q1' 31 Three independent displays are supported for factory-line visualization. One display has DP++ resolution up to 4096 x 2160 @ 60Hz. To meet the requirements of a complete IoT architecture, the unit supports 2 S...
This bite-sized PC is smaller than an apple
By Christopher Coke on April 18, 2020 | News | 0
CHUWI, makers of affordable tablets and PCs, unveiled the LarkBox with a giveaway today. Measuring 2.4x2.4x1.7 inches, it's a full-fledged PC that can fit in the palm of your hand.
Even though CHUWI is comparing the PC to an apple, it's actually fairer to say it's the size of a mini apple. At only 2.4 x 2.4x1.7 inches and 127 grams, it's easy to mistake it for something else entirely, but make no mistake, this is a real PC you could throw in the side pocket of a bag with room to spare.
Despite its small size, the LarkBox has enough processing power to be quite the capable entertainment or productivity PC. It's running an 8th-gen Intel N4100 with integrated UHD graphics, and 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM. It even comes with a built-in 128GB SSD for rapid booting and responsive media storage...
Coronavirus could have a rather disastrous impact on the video game industry, as a whole. The fact of the matter is that a lot of console parts are manufactured in China, where the virus has hit the hardest. As a result, Nintendo Switch units are expected to become quite a bit scarcer, and one retro console has now been delayed as a direct result of the virus. Konami has officially announced a delay for the TurboGrafx-16 Mini, for an indefinite amount of time. The system was set to go on sale March 19th. Konami released a statement, explaining the delay. "We deeply apologise to our customers for the significant inconvenience, and we humbly ask for your understanding and patience while we keep our close attention on the situation. We are investing all of our efforts to deliver the PC Engine Core Grafx Mini as soon as possible, and will provide further details on the deliver timing once confirmed." Retro consoles have been around for quite some time, but t...
Exploring the stars, thousands of light years away from Earth, sounds pretty great right about now. While Darian Johnson hasn't invented intergalactic travel, he has created a tiny desktop computer that looks straight out of Jean-Luc Picard's ready room, letting you at least pretend that you're safely aboard a distant starship.It's a testament to Star Trek: The Next Generation's production designers, including technical consultant Michael Okuda, that the fictional LCARS (short for Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) operating system used on the computers aboard the USS Enterprise-D still look futuristic, despite the show first airing 33 years ago. Gene Roddenberry himself insisted that the computer screens aboard the ship be as minimal and clean as possible to give the impression of the technology being incredibly advanced, and it's an aesthetic that many fans of the show are still fans of, including Johnson.
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