Digital DawgPound

Original Post: Using a Radiosonde as a real time, low cost GPS based tracking device

Thanks to Hack A Day and those that left comments, many useful ideas / suggestions were received along with some offers of support and a promising looking solution.

Here follows a roundup of the more informative comments:
Wizdom points out that if you [...]

A Radiosonde is a small package of electronics used in weather balloons by Meteorologist’s to measure pressure, altitude, wind speed, and humidity. They are mass produced, rarely recovered after use, and fairly low cost devices (~£20 on eBay / Bullnet (non GPS model).
After being launched the Radiosonde works by continuously transmitting back readings to [...]

I have been hearing bits and pieces about RFID technology for a while, but it now seems that it has evolved to a point where kits are available to the amateur electronics hobbyist at an affordable price.
Most recently Kn1ghtl0rd, and Lowtek Mystik, did a T.W.A.T Radio episode on RFID, and Make Magazine Volume 6 had [...]

After being aware of it for a while I finally decided to subscribe to the electronic edition of Make Magazine at the cost of $26.95 for a year (4 Volumes).
I was not disappointed. Volume 6 was a just shy of 200 pages and featured articles on:

Robotics projects you can make yourself including an IR [...]

So I was updating my home page earlier today, along with a bunch of other software here and there. I was “Hardening the system” as discussed on BRR #147 last week. Well, upon upgrading to the latest version, I suddenly got a parsing error on line 11 of my configuration file. Luckily, [...]

I was recently considering upgrading an Intel based PC, however as is the way with technology things change fast and I decided it would be easier just to build a new machine. Here is what I found:

AGP is out, PCI Express x16 is in.
Serial ATA replaces the old Parallel ATA IDE interfaces however there [...]

This weekend was the Orlando “Hamcation” which is Orlando’s version of hamventions that appear all over the US. I have never been to any of them before, so this was my first experience. I have tried to go to others, particularly in Miami, but something always came up at the last minute. [...]

I really like buying new toys to play around with. So a few weeks ago I went out and bought a Sirius Satellite Radio. I am pleased with it so far. No, I didn’t pay over $300 (with subscription) because of H. Stern but I did find the satellite radio as a whole entertaining. [...]

I have used a standard cheap wireless remote control extender to change channels on a Sky Digital decoder box in another room for a number of years. Due to the distance between rooms, this usually involves pointing the remote control into the box, and moving the two in parallel around in the air until the [...]

I recently received my copy of InfoWorld magazine (a trade magazine for IT professionals) and was excited that it had a review of the new MS SQL Server 2005 in it. But before I got to that review, I read this “Editor’s letter” and felt the need to point out a few things.
The editorial [...]