Record players are back in vogue at the moment and here’s one that really stands out, in an upright fashion. Or should I say, floats out? It’s a “Floating Record Player”…

A couple of developers in California have created the design for an Arduino shield with speech recognition technology. Called MOVI (My Own Voice Interface), it is the work of Bertrand Irissou and Gerald Friedland founders of Audeme and the project will launch on the Kickstarter crowd-funding website at 8am Wednesday 1 July. (11:59pm PDT) MOVI is cloudless with no Internet ...

The explosion of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket mere minutes after launch on Sunday was strike one for US hopes of rebooting crewed space flight: this is the very type of rocket the company wants to use to send people into space in 2017. “You want a really, really reliable rocket before you put people on it,” says Jonathan McDowell of Harvard University. ...

Zolt of San Jose has set itself a tough design challenge – squeezing a 70W three output mains power supply into a package 76mm long and 33mm in diameter weighing 85g. Input range is 110 to 240Vac. And the size includes the three output sockets and the mains plug – admittedly a US mains plug. The idea is that it will charge ...

TDK has introduced 30W wide input range dc-dc converters in a 25.4×25.4mm (1x1inch) by 9mm high metal package. Called CCG30, they operate over a 4:1 input range (9-36V or 18-76V) – so 12 and 24V, or 24 and 48V – and have six-sided shielding. Output voltages are 3.3, 5, 12 or 15V at up to 7A. Applications ae expected in ...

MathWorks is encouraging the use of its MATLAB and Simulink software by student engineers by offering a £500 prize for the most effective use of the design tools during the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ Formula Student competition at Silverstone next week. As part of the video challenge, MathWorks is offering participating students from universities across the country the opportunity to win ...

This just caught my eye – a temporary export bar on a John Logie Baird archive has been announced by the UK government.

French research lab CEA Leti is using ultrasonic sensing to detect imminent battery failure in electric vehicles, and has proposed a way to extend running life. It has identified three causes of electric vehicle battery fires: connector failures, thermal runaway on charge or failure in associated electronics – at the same time acknowledging freak puncturing incidents have also caused electric ...

Late in the day I discover the ‘Millennials’ – a term used for 15-25 year olds who seem to have something of the 60s about them. Millennials reject traditional employment in favour of a ‘passion career’ something they love to do which, ideally, also improves the world. This, of course, contrasts with Thatcher’s boomers who thought of nothing but dosh. ...

Cubietech, the China-based embedded board firm, has introduced four generations of its open source ARM based computer modules, call Cubieboard. Shenzhen-based Cubietech has announced its fifth board, called Einstein-A20, it is designed for the profession market, rather than maker market, and will be used for prototyping designs even for small volume production runs. Cubietech sells its boards in Europe through ...