Lifeboat Foundation

Coin cells are useful things that allow us to run small electronic devices off a tiny power source. However, they don’t have a lot of capacity, and they can run out pretty quickly if you’re hitting them hard when developing a project. Thankfully, [bobricius] has just the tool to help.

The device is simple – it’s a PCB sized just so to fit into a slot for a CR2016 or CR2032 coin cell. The standard board fits a CR2016 slot thanks to the thickness of the PCB, and a shim PCB can be used to allow the device to be used in a CR2032-sized slot instead.

It’s powered via a Micro USB connector, and has a small regulator on board to step down the 5 V supply to the requisite 3 V expected from a typical coin cell. [bobricius] also gave the device a neat additional feature – a pair of pads for easy attachment of multimeter current probes. Simply open the jumper on the board, hook up a pair of leads, and it’s easy to measure the current being drawn from the ersatz coin cell.

A new artificial intelligence program has beaten the world’s best players in the popular PlayStation racing game Gran Turismo Sport. But the impact could be felt far beyond that.

America’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science and Technology Council, and the National Security Council prioritize.

And it’s the size of a grain of dust. Energy storage might have been revolutionized thanks to a common dessert dish.

Advances in microelectronics have enabled the use of miniaturized computers for autonomous intelligence at the size of a dust particle less than one square millimeter across and a few hundred micrometers thick, creating an environment for ubiquitous computing. However, the size mismatch between microbatteries and microelectronics has emerged as a fundamental barrier against the take-off of tiny intelligent systems requiring power anytime anywhere. Mainstream microbattery structures include stacked thin films on the chip or electrode pillars and on-chip interdigitated microelectrodes. Nevertheless, available technologies cannot shrink the footprint area of batteries while maintaining adequate energy storage. Alternatively, the on-chip self-assembly process known as micro-origami is capable of winding stacked thin films into Swiss-roll structures to reduce the footprint area, which exactly mimics the manufacture of the most successful full-sized batteries—cylinder batteries. In addition to discussing in detail the technical difficulties of reducing the size of on-chip microbatteries with various structures and potential solutions, this Perspective highlights the following two basic requirements for eventual integration in microcomputers: minimum energy density of 100 microwatt-hour per square centimeter and monolithic integration with other functional electric circuits on the chip.

Space Race 2.0 is heating up.

There’s no use denying it: Space Race 2.0 is heating up.

Continue reading “China and NASA are developing next-gen Voyager-like spacecraft. But whose is better?” »

Glass isn’t uncommon on the Moon. But these spheres are.

China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover on a mission to find out more about the far side of the Moon has made a startling new discovery. It has found mysterious glass spheres that may have captured within them important information about the Moon’s composition and history of its impact events, * Science Alert* reported.

Originally scheduled to be operational on the lunar surface for just three months, the Yutu-2 now holds the record of being the longest operational rover on the Moon. When it landed in 2019, it became the first rover to reach the far side of the Moon and has since been providing us insights about the side we cannot see from Earth. Last month, we learned that the soil on the far side is a lot stickier, and now there is the mystery of the glass spheres on the Moon aren’t a new finding. But the nature of these spheres makes them interesting and possibly a gateway for future missions.