Monday, January 17, 2011

Beauty tips

Keep some rose petals in raw milk ( unboiled milk ) and keep this mixture for half an hour aside after that apply the mixture to the face and wash it.Your face will become neat and clean

For children apply raw milk to the body and keep for some time and make them bath they will have a nice skin 


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The top optical illusions

An optical illusion is always characterized by visually perceived images that, at least in common sense terms, are deceptive or misleading. Therefore, the information gathered by the eye is processed by the brain to give, on the face of it, a percept that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source. This is a list of twenty amazing illusions.
1. Blivet
Pic Blivet
A blivet, also known as a poiuyt, is an undecipherable figure, an optical illusion and an impossible object. It appears to have three cylindrical prongs at one end which then mysteriously transform into two rectangular prongs at the other end.
2. Bezold Effect
Bezold Effect
The Bezold Effect is an optical illusion, named after a German professor of meteorology, Wilhelm von Bezold (1837-1907), who discovered that a color may appear different depending on its relation to adjacent colors. In the above example, the red seems lighter combined with the white, and darker combined with the black.
3. Café Wall Illusion
800Px-Café Wall.Svg
The café wall illusion is an optical illusion, first described by Doctor Richard Gregory. He observed this curious effect in the tiles of the wall of a café at the bottom of St Michael’s Hill, Bristol. This optical illusion makes the parallel straight horizontal lines appear to be bent. To construct the illusion, alternating light and dark “bricks” are laid in staggered rows. It is essential for the illusion that each “brick” is surrounded by a layer of “mortar” (the grey in the image). This should ideally be of a color in between the dark and light color of the “bricks”.
4. The Chubb Illusion
Chubbillusion
The Chubb illusion is an optical illusion wherein the apparent contrast of an object varies dramatically, depending on the context of the presentation. Low-contrast texture surrounded by a uniform field appears to have higher contrast than when it is surrounded by high-contrast texture. This was observed and documented by Chubb and colleagues in 1989.
5. Ebbinghaus Illusion
650Px-Mond-Vergleich.Svg
The Ebbinghaus illusion is an optical illusion of relative size perception. In the best-known version of the illusion, two circles of identical size are placed near to each other and one is surrounded by large circles while the other is surrounded by small circles; the first central circle then appears smaller than the second central circle.
6. Fraser Spiral Illusion
597Px-Fraser Spiral.Svg
The illusion is also known as the false spiral, or by its original name, the twisted cord illusion. The overlapping black arc segments appear to form a spiral; however, the arcs are a series of concentric circles.
7. Hermann Grid Illusion
232Px-Hermann Grid Illusion.Svg
The Hermann grid illusion is an optical illusion reported by Ludimar Hermann in 1870 while, incidentally, reading John Tyndall’s Sound. The illusion is characterised by “ghostlike” grey blobs perceived at the intersections of a white (or light-colored) grid on a black background. The grey blobs disappear when looking directly at an intersection.
8. Hering Illusion
320Px-Hering Illusion.Svg
The Hering illusion is an optical illusion discovered by the German physiologist Ewald Hering in 1861. The two vertical lines are both straight, but they look as if they were bowed outwards. The distortion is produced by the lined pattern on the background, that simulates a perspective design, and creates a false impression of depth.
9. Impossible Cube Illusion
582Px-Impossible Cube Illusion Angle.Svg
The impossible cube or irrational cube is an impossible object that draws upon the ambiguity present in a Necker cube illustration. An impossible cube is usually rendered as a Necker cube in which the edges are apparently solid beams. This apparent solidity gives the impossible cube greater visual ambiguity than the Necker cube, which is less likely to be perceived as an impossible object. The illusion plays on the human eye’s interpretation of two-dimensional pictures as three-dimensional objects.
10. Isometric Illusion
Simpleisomillusion
An isometric illusion (also called an ambiguous figure or inside/outside illusion) is a type of optical illusion, specifically one due to multistable perception. In the image above, the shape can be perceived as either an inside or an outside corner.



11. Jastrow Illusion
333Px-Jastrow Illusion.Svg
The Jastrow illusion is an optical illusion discovered by the American psychologist Joseph Jastrow in 1889. In this illustration, the two figures are identical, although the lower one appears to be larger.
12. Kanizsa Triangle
300Px-Kanizsa Triangle.Svg
The Kanizsa triangle is an optical illusion first described by the Italian psychologist Gaetano Kanizsa in 1955. In the image above, a white equilateral triangle is perceived, but in fact none is drawn.
13. Lilac Chaser
400Px-Lilac-Chaser
Lilac chaser is a visual illusion, also known as the Pac-Man illusion. It consists of 12 lilac (or pink or magenta-like), blurred disks arranged in a circle (like the numbers on a clock), around a small, black, central cross on a grey background. One of the disks disappears briefly (for about 0.1 second), then the next (about 0.125 second later), and the next, and so on, in a clockwise direction. When one stares at the cross for about 20 seconds or so, one first sees a gap running around the circle of lilac disks, then a green disk running around the circle of lilac disks, then a green disk running around on the grey background, the lilac disks appearing to have disappeared or to have been erased by the green disk.
14. Motion Illusion
800Px-Anomalous Motion Illusion1
One type of motion illusion is a type of optical illusion in which a static image appears to be moving due to the cognitive effects of interacting color contrasts and shape position. To properly view this effect, click the image above to see the full sized version.
15. Necker Cube
400Px-Necker Cube.Svg
The Necker cube is an ambiguous line drawing. It is a wire-frame drawing of a cube in isometric perspective, which means that parallel edges of the cube are drawn as parallel lines in the picture. When two lines cross, the picture does not show which is in front and which is behind. This makes the picture ambiguous; it can be interpreted two different ways. When a person stares at the picture, it will often seem to flip back and forth between the two valid interpretations (so-called multistable perception).
16. Orbison Illusion
225Px-Orbison Illusion.Svg
The Orbison illusion is an optical illusion that was first described by the psychologist William Orbison in 1939. The bounding rectangle and inner square both appear distorted in the presence of the radiating lines. The background gives us the impression there is some sort of perspective. As a result, our brain sees the shape distorted. This is a variant of the Hering and Wundt illusions.
17. Poggendorff Illusion
302Px-Poggendorff Illusion.Svg
The Poggendorff Illusion is an optical illusion that involves the brain’s perception of the interaction between diagonal lines and horizontal and vertical edges. It is named after Johann Poggendorff (1796-1877), a German physicist who first described it in 1860. In the image above, a straight black and red line is obscured by a grey rectangle. The blue line appears, instead of the red line, to be the same as the black one, which is clearly shown not to be the case in the second picture.
18. Adelson’s Checker Shadow Illusion
Same Color Illusion
The image shows what appears to be a black and white checker-board with a green cylinder resting on it that casts a shadow diagonally across the middle of the board. The black and white squares are actually different shades of gray. The image has been constructed so that “white” squares in the shadow, one of which is labeled “B,” are actually the exact same gray value as “black” squares outside the shadow, one of which is labeled “A.” The two squares A and B appear very different as a result of the illusion.
19. White Illusion
White Illusion
White’s illusion is an optical illusion illustrating the fact that the same target luminance can elicit different perceptions of brightness in different contexts. Note, that although the gray rectangles are all of equal luminance, the ones seen in the context with the dark stripes appear brighter than the ones seen in the context with the bright stripes. Note that this effect is opposite to what would be expected from a simple physiological explanation on the basis of simultaneous contrast (in that case the rectangles sharing the long borders with the dark stripes should appear brighter).
20. Zöllner Illusion
480Px-Zollner Illusion.Svg
In this figure the black lines seem to be unparallel, but in reality they are parallel. The shorter lines are on an angle to the longer lines. This angle helps to create the impression that one end of the longer lines is nearer to us than the other end. This is very similar to the way the Wundt illusion appears. It may be that the Zöllner illusion is caused by this impression of depth.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Biography

Martin Luther KingMartin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Natural remedies for eczema

If you are suffering from eczema then you know how important an effective remedy is. The most effective therapies are those that are soothing, healing, and safe. This is why natural alternatives are a preferred method over the harsh chemicals and health risks of standard medical remedies.
This article will address three specific natural remedies for eczema, including explaining why they work and how to prepare them. These three therapies will help you find much deserved relief from eczema.
Oatmeal Treatment
Eczema - 
Oatmeal BathOatmeal has been one of the most commonly used home remedies for eczema and many other skin problems since ancient Egyptian times.
Oatmeal is a fiber-rich, nourishing food that keeps you healthy on the inside.
Although it may seem unbelievable, this fantastic food is also an excellent way to keep you healthy on the outside as well.
Oatmeal has unique properties that soothe and relieve the symptoms of eczema as well as keeping skin healthy to prevent eczema. On a basic level, oatmeal hydrates your skin and prevents it from drying out.
Oatmeal mainly consists of four skin promoting components, polysaccharides, proteins, saponins, and fats. Polysaccharides are a complex sugar that breaks down into a gel-like consistency when mixed with water. It helps to prevent drying by creating a protective barrier on top of the skin.
The proteins in oatmeal further that protection by promoting your skin’s natural ability to create a barrier against foreign irritants and allergens. Saponins are natural cleaners that work to keep the skin functioning by cleaning out the dirt from your pores.
Finally, the fats in oatmeal are a fantastic natural way to lubricate your skin and keep it hydrated.
You can often find oatmeal in many forms, such as lotions or compresses. However, one of the most effective oatmeal remedies for eczema is the oatmeal bath.
Start by taking four cups, or two for a young child, of raw, unprepared oats and processing it in a blender or grinder until it is a find powder. Pour the powder into your bath as you run the warm water; make sure the water is not too hot as this will aggravate your eczema.
Soak in this bath for at least 15 minutes and then rinse yourself clean with warm water. When you dry off, try to dab at your skin instead of rubbing it in order to preserve the oatmeal on your skin.
Natural Cleanser
You probably already know that good hygiene is an important part of any remedy for eczema. However, many of the cleaners can be too abrasive to your skin. They may dry out your skin and make the itching and inflammation of eczema worse.
However, there is a very good natural alternative that will keep your skin healthy and help it heal.
Eczema - 
ComfreyA combination of comfrey root, white oak bark, and slippery elm bark will make a very good cleaner to use both during an eczema flare up and as your normal cleanser.
It will also help relieve the itching and inflammation of eczema. It is even gentle enough for use on babies and young children.
Comfrey root has been used for centuries to heal wounds and reduce inflammation. It also accelerates cell growth and renewal and helps to reduce scarring.
White oak bark is rich in vitamin B12 and skin soothing minerals like zinc. It is also an excellent astringent to tone your skin and reduce inflammation.
Slippery elm is packed full of tannins, like the cleansers found in oatmeal discussed earlier in this article. These cleaners are very powerful at removing and killing germs. Slippery elm is also great for reducing inflammation resulting from infection.
As one of the better cleaners and eczema home remedies, this natural skin wash is easy to make. Take 1 teaspoon of comfrey root, 1 teaspoon of white oak bark, and 1 teaspoon of slippery elm bark and combine it with 2 cups of water.
Make sure all of the ingredients have been mixed together and then heat the mixture over medium heat until it boils. Reduce the heat and let simmer for about a half an hour.
Then, remove the mixture for heat and let it cool completely. Strain out the solids. The remaining liquid can be used as you would any other liquid face wash.
A Healing Moisturizer
MoisturizerAfter you have cleansed your skin, it is important to keep it hydrated.
A lotion will help keep your skin moist, but you must make sure it is one that will help your skin heal more quickly and protect you from future outbreaks.
Many commercial lotions are full of manmade chemical, allergens, and other items that are known to actually trigger eczema.
Those that do not cause eczema can aggravate the itching, redness, and pain.
A very good eczema remedy and alternative to commercial lotions is to use a natural moisturizer that is enhanced with blueberry leaf and licorice extracts.
Blueberry leaves are known to contain a very powerful compound that prevents the spread of germs.
This will prevent a secondary infection from forming and will help your skin cells better repair themselves. This will reduce the redness and inflammation from eczema, which will also help to alleviate the itching.
Licorice extract has been proven to quickly reduce swelling and redness. It is known to relieve pain related to skin wounds and open lesions, like those from eczema.
It also helps relieve itching and children were shown to scratch less when using licorice, which helps the skin heal more quickly.
You can buy lotions and moisturizers from natural stores that contain both blueberry leaf and licorice extract.
However, it is not necessary for you to give up your favorite natural lotion. You can also add these extracts to your lotion and get the same fantastic results.
Make sure you always start with a natural lotion that is free of dyes, oils, and fragrances. An aloe vera and/or zinc based lotion is the best choice among lotions that are eczema remedies.
To add the extracts to your lotion, start by applying your normal quantity of lotion to the palm of your hand. Then add 2 drops of blueberry extract and 1 to 2 drops of licorice, depending on how bad your eczema is, to the lotion in your hand. Use your finger to mix the extracts into the lotions. Then, apply the lotion as you normally would.
If you are having a severe outbreak you might try a more concentrated solution of licorice extract to relieve acute symptoms.

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The biggest prime number

[up]   1. Introduction

An integer greater than one is called a prime number if its only positive divisors (factors) are one and itself.  For example, the prime divisors of 10 are 2 and 5; and the first six primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and 13.  (The first 10,000, and other lists are available).  The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic shows that the primes are the building blocks of the positive integers: every positive integer is a product of prime numbers in one and only one way, except for the order of the factors. (This is the key to their importance: the prime factors of an integer determines its properties.) The ancient Greeks proved (ca 300 BC) that there were infinitely many primes and that they were irregularly spaced (there can be arbitrarily large gaps between successive primes).  On the other hand, in the nineteenth century it was shown that the number of primes less than or equal to n approaches n/(log n) (as n gets very large); so a rough estimate for the nth prime is n log n (see the document "How many primes are there?")
The Sieve of Eratosthenes is still the most efficient way of finding all very small primes (e.g., those less than 1,000,000).  However, most of the largest primes are found using special cases of Lagrange's Theorem from group theory.  See the separate documents on proving primality for more information.
In 1984 Samuel Yates defined a titanic prime to be any prime with at least 1,000 digits [Yates84, Yates85].  When he introduced this term there were only 110 such primes known; now there are over 1000 times that many!  And as computers and cryptology continually give new emphasis to search for ever larger primes, this number will continue to grow.   Before long we expect to see the first fifteen milliondigit prime.
If you want to understand a building, how it will react to weather or fire, you first need to know what it is made of. The same is true for the integers--most of their properties can be traced back to what they are made of: their prime factors. For example, in Euclid's Geometry (over 2,000 years ago), Euclid studied even perfect numbers and traced them back to what we now call Mersenne primes.
The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic.  It has engaged the industry and wisdom of ancient and modern geometers to such an extent that it would be superfluous to discuss the problem at length...  Further, the dignity of the science itself seems to require that every possible means be explored for the solution of a problem so elegant and so celebrated. (Carl Friedrich Gauss, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, 1801)
See the FAQ for more infrmation on why we collect these large primes!

[up]   2. The "Top Ten" Record Primes

The Ten Largest Known Primes See also the page: The top 20: largest known primes.
The largest known prime has almost always been a Mersenne prime.  Why Mersennes?  Because the way the largest numbers N are proven prime is based on the factorizations of either N+1 or N-1, and for Mersennes the factorization of N+1 is as trivial as possible (a power of two).  The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) was launched by George Woltman in early 1996, and has had a virtual lock on the largest known prime since then.  This is because its excellent free software is easy to install and maintain, requiring little of the user other than watch and see if they find the next big one!  Tens of thousands of users have replaced the ubiquitous inane "screen savers" with this much more productive use of their computer's idle time (and the hope of winning some EFF prize money)!
Any record in this list of the top ten is a testament to the incredible amount of work put in by the programmers, project directors (GIMPS, Seventeen or Bust, Generalized Fermat Search...), and the tens of thousands of enthusiasts!

rankprime digitswhowhenreference
1243112609-1 12978189 G102008 Mersenne 47??
2242643801-1 12837064 G122009 Mersenne 46??
3237156667-1 11185272 G112008 Mersenne 45??
4232582657-1 9808358 G92006 Mersenne 44??
5230402457-1 9152052 G92005 Mersenne 43??
6225964951-1 7816230 G82005 Mersenne 42?
7224036583-1 7235733 G72004 Mersenne 41?
8220996011-1 6320430 G62003 Mersenne 40
9213466917-1 4053946 G52001 Mersenne 39
1019249·213018586+1 3918990 SB102007
      
Click here to see the one hundred largest known primes. You might also be interested in seeing the graph of the size of record primes by year: throughout history or just in the last decade.

The Ten Largest Known Twin Primes See also the page: The top 20: twin primes,
and the glossary entry: twin primes.
Twin primes are primes of the form p and p+2, i.e., they differ by two.  It is conjectured, but not yet proven, that there are infinitely many twin primes (the same is true for all of the following forms of primes).  Because discovering a twin prime actually involves finding two primes, the largest known twin primes are substantially smaller than the largest known primes of most other forms.
rankprime digitswhowhenreference
165516468355·2333333+1 100355 L9232009 Twin (p+2)
265516468355·2333333-1 100355 L9232009 Twin (p)
32003663613·2195000+1 58711 L2022007 Twin (p+2)
42003663613·2195000-1 58711 L2022007 Twin (p)
5194772106074315·2171960+1 51780 x242007 Twin (p+2)
6194772106074315·2171960-1 51780 x242007 Twin (p)
7100314512544015·2171960+1 51780 x242006 Twin (p+2)
8100314512544015·2171960-1 51780 x242006 Twin (p)
916869987339975·2171960+1 51779 x242005 Twin (p+2)
1016869987339975·2171960-1 51779 x242005 Twin (p)
      
Click here to see all of the twin primes on the list of the Largest Known Primes.
Note: The idea of prime twins can be generalized to prime triplets, quadruplets; and more generally, prime k-tuplets.  Tony Forbes keeps a page listing these records.

The Ten Largest Known Mersenne Primes See also the pages: The top 20: Mersenne primes,
and Mersenne primes (history, theorems and lists).
Mersenne primes are primes of the form 2p-1.  These are the easiest type of number to check for primality on a binary computer so they usually are also the largest primes known.  GIMPS is steadily finding these behemoths!
rankprime digitswhowhenreference
1243112609-1 12978189 G102008 Mersenne 47??
2242643801-1 12837064 G122009 Mersenne 46??
3237156667-1 11185272 G112008 Mersenne 45??
4232582657-1 9808358 G92006 Mersenne 44??
5230402457-1 9152052 G92005 Mersenne 43??
6225964951-1 7816230 G82005 Mersenne 42?
7224036583-1 7235733 G72004 Mersenne 41?
8220996011-1 6320430 G62003 Mersenne 40
9213466917-1 4053946 G52001 Mersenne 39
1026972593-1 2098960 G41999 Mersenne 38
      
See our page on Mersenne numbers for more information including a complete table of the known Mersennes.  You can also help fill in the gap by joining the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.
The Ten Largest Known Factorial/Primorial Primes See also: The top 20: primorial and factorial primes,
and the glossary entries: primorial, factorial.
Euclid's proof that there are infinitely many primes uses numbers of the form n#+1.   Kummer's proof uses those of the form n#-1.  Sometimes students look at these proofs and assume the numbers n#+/-1 are always prime, but that is not so.  When numbers of the form n#+/-1 are prime they are called primorial primes.  Similarly numbers of the form n!+/-1 are called factorial primes.  The current record holders and their discoverers are:
rankprime digitswhowhenreference
1843301#-1 365851 p3022010 Primorial
2392113#+1 169966 p162001 Primorial
3366439#+1 158936 p162001 Primorial
4145823#+1 63142 p212000 Primorial
542209#+1 18241 p81999 Primorial
624029#+1 10387 C1993 Primorial
723801#+1 10273 C1993 Primorial
818523#+1 8002 D1989 Primorial
915877#-1 6845 CD1992 Primorial
1013649#+1 5862 D1987 Primorial
      

rankprime digitswhowhenreference
1103040!-1 471794 p3012010 Factorial
294550!-1 429390 p2902010 Factorial
334790!-1 142891 p852002 Factorial
426951!+1 107707 p652002 Factorial
521480!-1 83727 p652001 Factorial
66917!-1 23560 g11998 Factorial
76380!+1 21507 g11998 Factorial
83610!-1 11277 C1993 Factorial
93507!-1 10912 C1992 Factorial
101963!-1 5614 CD1992 Factorial
      
Click here to see all of the known primorial, factorial and multifactorial primes on the list of the largest known primes.
The Ten Largest Known Sophie Germain Primes See also the page: The top 20: Sophie Germain,
and the glossary entry: Sophie Germain Prime.
A Sophie Germain prime is an odd prime p for which 2p+1 is also a prime.  These were named after Sophie Germain when she proved that the first case of Fermat's Last Theorem (xn+yn=zn has no solutions in non-zero integers for n>2) for exponents divisible by such primes.  Fermat's Last theorem has now been proved completely by Andrew Wiles.
rankprime digitswhowhenreference
1183027·2265440-1 79911 L9832010 Sophie Germain (p)
2648621027630345·2253824-1 76424 x242009 Sophie Germain (p)
3620366307356565·2253824-1 76424 x242009 Sophie Germain (p)
4607095·2176311-1 53081 L9832009 Sophie Germain (p)
548047305725·2172403-1 51910 L992007 Sophie Germain (p)
6137211941292195·2171960-1 51780 x242006 Sophie Germain (p)
731737014565·2140003-1 42156 L952010 Sophie Germain (p)
814962863771·2140001-1 42155 L952010 Sophie Germain (p)
933759183·2123458-1 37173 L5272009 Sophie Germain (p)
107068555·2121301-1 36523 L1002005 Sophie Germain (p)
      
Click here to see all of the Sophie Germain primes on the list of Largest Known Primes

Top 10 supercomputers

. BlueGene/L ß-System
• IBM eServer Blue Gene Solution
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA
• 136.8 TF/s, 65,536 processors

BlueGene/L is designed for research and development in computational science and is targeted at delivering hundreds of teraflops to selected applications of interest for the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (ASC). It has doubled in size since November 2004 and will be doubled in size once again before the next version of the TOP500 list is published in November 2005. This next doubling in size will bring BlueGene/L to its planned final configuration with 65,536 dual-processor compute nodes for a theoretical peak computing capability in excess of 360 teraflops.

2. Watson Blue Gene (BGW)
• IBM eServer Blue Gene Solution
• IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA
• 91.29 TF/s, 40,960 processors

BGW is designed for use in a variety of fields including life sciences, hydrodynamics, materials sciences, quantum chemistry, molecular and fluid dynamics and business applications. IBM also intends to provide access to BGW computing resources to academic and industrial researchers as part of the U.S.Department of Energy's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program.



3. Columbia
• SGI Altix 3700, Infiniband
• NASA/Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA
• 51.87 TF/s, 10,160 processors

With Columbia at its core, the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division provides an integrated computing, visualization and data storage environment to help NASA meet its mission goals and the Vision for Space Exploration. Columbia allows NASA to perform numerical simulations at the cutting edge of science and engineering.


4. Earth-Simulator
• NEC Vector, SX6
• Earth Simulator Center, Yokohama, Japan
• 35.86 TF/s, 5120 processors

The Earth Simulator creates a "virtual planet earth" through processing vast volumes of data sent from satellites, buoys and other worldwide observation points. The system aids in analysis and prediction of environmental changes on the Earth through the simulation of global-scale environmental phenomena such as global warming, El Nino, atmospheric and marine pollution and torrential rainfall. It also provides a research tool for explaining terrestrial phenomena such as tectonics and earthquakes.
5. MareNostrum
• IBM BladeCenter JS20 Cluster, Myrinet
• Barcelona Supercomputer Center, Barcelona, Spain
• 27.91 TF/s, 4800 processors

Housed in a majestic 1920s chapel on the university grounds, MareNostrum-literally "Our Sea," a Latin term for the Mediterranean-has a dual purpose: to serve as a primary high performance computing resource for the European e-science community, and to demonstrate the many benefits of Linux on POWER in scale-out processing environments.



6. Blue Gene/L Prototype
• IBM eServer Blue Gene Solution
• ASTRON, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
• 27.45 TF/s, 12,288 processors

Unlike current observatories that use big optical mirrors or radio dishes to point to distant galaxies, Blue Gene/L will enable ASTRON to harness more than 10,000 simple radio antennas spread across the northern Netherlands and into the German state of Lower Saxony, and interpret them using high-speed calculations. LOFAR will detect radio waves that show us the universe as it was 13 billion years ago, when it first recombined into normal hydrogen from the hot ionized plasma of the Big Bang. Detailed maps should show the universe condensing into the first individual stars and the first pieces of galaxies.
7. Thunder
• California Digital NOW-Intel Itanium2 Tiger4 Cluster, Quadrics
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA
• 19.94 TF/s, 4096 processors

The Thunder Linux supercomputer supports Lawrence Livermore's national security and science programs in fields such as materials science, structural mechanics, electromagnetics, atmospheric science, seismology, biology and inertial confinement fusion.

8. Blue Protein
• IBM eServer Blue Gene Solution
• Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Ishikawa, Japan
• 18.20 TF/s, 8192 processors

The Computational Biology Research Center (CBRC) of The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) is using BlueGene/L to better predict tertiary structures and functions of protein molecules in research on protein structure analysis via molecular dynamics, on protein-compound docking, and so forth. This information is important to understanding how drugs interact with diseases.


9. EPFL Blue Gene — Blue Brain Project
• IBM eServer Blue Gene Solution
• Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Lausanne, Switzerland
• 18.20 TF/s, 8192 processors

The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Blue Brain Project marks the beginning of a long task to study how the mammalian brain works by building very large scale computer models. The project's first objective is to create a cellular level software replica of the neocortical column for real-time simulations. Over the next two years, scientists will create a detailed model of the circuitry in the neocortex - the largest and most complex part of the human brain. By expanding the project to model other areas of the brain, scientists hope to eventually build an accurate, computer-based model of the entire brain.

10. Red Storm
• Cray XT3
• Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA
• 15.25 TF/s, 5000 processors

Red Storm, an air-cooled supercomputer, was developed using mostly off-the-shelf parts. Its main purpose is to work for the U.S. nuclear stockpile: designing new components; virtually testing components under hostile, abnormal, and normal conditions; and helping in weapons engineering and weapons physics.

Want to make a robo?

This tutorial is the easiest way in the world to give you a fast start into building robots.


Welcome :)
Everything here is so easy, that after you have gone through it, you can make a robot in a couple of hours. Why can't you do that now?
Because there are so many little things you need to know. This is an attempt to let you know exactly all these little things, and nothing more. Fast, and based on 2 years of experience of what people need to know to get started. If you hurry, you can run through this, and be robot builder in a couple of hours. But expect to use a good weekend - Learning takes time - even though it is very easy, it just takes some time, all the little things to get to know :)
There are other "How to get started building robots" out there. This one is focusing on getting you around everything extremely fast. You need no knowledge of ... anything. And you will learn everything... well, the basics of everything ;)
All images in high-res here.


Materials needed


It used to be a hassle to buy the materials, because not one single webshop was carrying everything needed, and you had to buy from several shops.
Good news is that LMR have started a cooperation with Solarbotics, one click get's you all the parts:
- And if you buy it there, you even support us, so we can keep hosting letsmakerobots.com
Everything you need can also be found in webshops, and via Google, if you do not want to buy the LMR bundle. And as it is sold in webshops, you can get it where you are, in any country.

No matter from where you get it, the following is what you will need:

(The following is all included in the bundle)

1 PICAXE-28 Project Board
The 28 pin project board is like a game of Mario Bros; Fun and full of extras and hidden features, making you want to play over and again. It is an extremely good board to get you started, and it can be used for a fantacillion different projects, don't get me started :)


Male "snap off" Header Pins,  at least 10 pins on a strip
Many times the boards that you buy just have holes in them, and that makes it hard to plug something in / on. One way to overcome this, is to solder wires into the holes. Another is to add these pins, so you can plug on wires, like with the servo and female headers shown below. "Why don't they just put pins in all the holes from the factory", you may ask. Well, I don't know. Maybe to give us the option. It is also possible to solder female headers onto the board, perhaps this is why.
You get these in long rows, and simply break them apart with your fingers.


3 Shorting Blocks, Top Closed
Put these over 2 pins next to each other, and there is a connection between them!


5 or more Female-Female Header Jumper cables
Yes. These are nice. When I started this hobby a couple of years ago, these where really hard to get. Now they are everywhere, and that is really good. Most things in this new robot-hobby of yours have pins (or you solder some in ;) - and by using these jumpers, you can make quick connections without soldering. Nice!


1 USB PICAXE Programming Cable
You write your robots programs on your computer. Plug this cable into the robot, and transfer the program. Unplug, and the robot runs the program by itself.


1 PICAXE-28X1 IC
This chip is a Microprocessor. That is often explained as "A computer in a chip". It can be placed in the board described above, after that, it can be programmed from your computer via the programming cable.

Your program can tell the controller to "listen for inputs", "think about them", perhaps make some calculations or look in some datas, and make outputs to something like the motor driver below.

It is chosen here, because it is quite strong, yet very easy to program, as you will see below.


1 L293D Motor Driver IC
I will describe this later, when we install it below :)


1 DIL 330 x 8 resistor array
The Yellow chip! It is very dull, just a row of little resistors. You will be using it to set your board up for servos.


1 Standard servo
A Servo is a cornerstone in most robotic appliances. To put it short it is a little box with wires to it, and a shaft that can turn some 200 degrees, from side to side.
The microcontroller can decide to where the shaft should turn, and stay there. Like go to "3 o'clock". That is it pretty handy; You can program something to physically move to a certain position. Next thing (after this project) could be to let one servo lift another servo. You would then have what is referred to as 2 DOF ("Degrees of Freedom"). But let's start with one ;)

You may wonder why my servo has that white pin, where yours might have a flat disc, a cross, or something. It does not matter, servos comes with all kinds of "servo horns". We just need something there to glue the head on to!

1 Sharp Analogue InfraRed Range Finding System (AERS) with cable
+++++++++Note:+++++++++
SHARP has discontinued their opto-electronic product lines, and as such the GP2D12 sensor described here has become obsolete afte we made this. Supply is running out everywhere, and we are working on solutions. For the time being you can (or we will do so for you, if you buy the kit) replace the GP2D12 with an GP2Y0A02YK Long Range Distance sensor. The GP2Y0A02YK's do not sense as close as the GP2D12's but they have a much farther range 20 - 150cm. We did some measurements and found that these sensors can actually reliably measure approx 16 - 180cm.

You can use the GP2Y0A02YK sensor in place of the GP2D12 to achieve better range, with not much change from the GP2D12. The pinout and voltages are exactly the same with the only change being that the GP2Y0A02YK sensors do not do as well in the close range.

Thanks for understanding, we are working on a fix.

++++++++++++++++++++++++
The one "eye" sends infra red light. The other sees the reflection of this (if there is one), and the unit returns the distance to the object in front of it. It has 3 wires (make sure you get the cable for it, or it can be a little hard to hook up). You give it power on 2 of the wires, and the third one plugs into the microcontroller, and tells it the distance.


1 4 x AA Battery Holder if you are using rechargeable batteries
or
1 3 x AA Battery Holder if you are using non-rechargeable batteries

(See more below, regarding batteries, and why the difference - Point is that you need as close to 5V as possible, one way or the other, and you can use something completely different in terns of batteries if you want. As long as it is just about 5 Volts.)


2 Geared motors and wheels to fit
It is very important that your motors have gears. You want a slow robot; Go for high ratios, like 120:1 or higher, as a slow robot is so much more fun in the beginning, because you can see what it is doing.
Apart from that, there is not much to say. Well, that would be, that there are many ways of moving and steering. This way of only using 2 wheels, is sometimes referred to as "skid steering". And it is worth remarking that if you'd like to add belt tracks later on, the basics are the same ;)


1 Roll of double sided foam tape
Oh yes! If there is something you cannot fix with this tape, it is because you are not using enough! It is a very, very fast way of sticking 2 items together. In fact we will be using it to make this entire robot! Depending on the make, of course, it is also reasonably easy to take apart again.
Paint stirring sticks, this tape, and a melt glue gun is the backbone for most of my fun with robots :)


1 Heat shrink tube (5 mm approx)
Sometimes you do need to solder 2 wires together. For instance the Sharp IR Range finder; It comes with straight up wires on the plug. What you do, is cut one of the female cables (above) in 2 parts, solder them together.. but before that, you cut a little piece of this heat shrink tube to slide over the place without insulation. Then with a lighter, you can quickly heat up the tube, and it shrinks to fit.
That is so much smarter than using tape ;)


All of the above materials are included in the LMR bundle.





Also needed:


Batteries
Either 3 AA Non rechargeable, or 4 AA Rechargeable.
This robot needs 5 Volts. Mainly because the Sharp IR, really feels best on 5.0V, that's what it's made for. Motors and servo would like more, microcontroller could live with 6.0V, but keeping it simple is the core here, so we feed the whole robot with as close to 5.0V as possible. And rather too little than too much, so we make sure not to fry anything, now that this is your first robot ;)
Now, you may know, that normal batteries provide 1.5V. However, you may not know that rechargeable batteries only provide 1.2V!
No matter if you knew that or not, 3 times 1.5V from normal batteries, is 4.5V. If we use 4 times 1.5V we would get 6.0V, which might be a little scary to use on the Sharp, rated for 5.0V.
4 times 1.2V from rechargeables is 4.8V, which is nice and close to 5V. And then it is much cheaper in the long run. So I strongly recommend you to get some rechargeables and a charger.
Tip: The best rechargeables have the highest capacity, measured in "mAh". The 2500 mAh AA-size is a fine battery.


A Soldering iron and solder
If you are new to soldering, this might interest you.


A lighter and a cutter
Lighter for heat shrinking, cutter to.. cut.
Tip: If you want to use the cutter to remove plastic from cables, turn it this way; Imagine that you where sticking the cable right into the cutter from where you are now, into the table it is laying on. That way. And not from the table, and out to where you are. Then gently close around the wire, and pull the plastic off.

A computer with an internet connection and a free USB port
             
Can be Mac, Linux or PC. The software needed for this is free.



Nice-to-have tools, though not essential:


A multimeter (aka measure-thingey), a wire stripper, and a screwdriver





Ready? Let's make a robot :)


Pins in holes!
First unwrap your board (I am sure you already did that :), and then see that it may have some red stuff underneath. That is just there from when they made it; They insert the components on the upper side, and dip the boards lower side into hot solder.. and areas where they don't want solder to be stuck, they have placed that red stuff. So just take it off :)
Let's look at somewhere where we for sure are going to add some pins.. Yes, the motor-outs.

The A & B on the board. We will get back to them, but for now, snap off 2 times 2 pins, and plug them in.
It does not matter if you snap off single pins or anything like that. They are simply little metal rods in plastic. Short side down into board.
Use some foam tape to hold the pins in place.

Turn the board around  and solder..

And now, tatataaaa.. You can plug in any standard female header, where you used to have a hole :)

Nice, and while you are at it, also solder a pin into analogue port 0, that we are going to use for the Sharp:

Then solder a pin into output 0..

And you are done with pin-soldering.
If it was me, I'd just solder pins in all the holes, but you may want to leave that for later. You have soldered all the pins that we need for this project now.

Next, general instructions: Extensions and alternations of wires and cables:
Connecting 2 wires "The right way" is almost a religion to some. Here is how I do it :)
First, I simply twist together the 2 wires

Then I solder them together, cut some off, if it is too long, and bend it along the side of one of them.

However, BEFORE I do this, I make sure that I have cut off a little piece of heat shrinking tube, and placed it over one of the wires. Then I slide that over..

A lighter quickly heats it up. This makes it shrink, hence the name, and it is a perfect insulation.

I don't think you realize how hard it was to take that picture all by myself :) It had to be in focus on the right spot, you know. And yes, the wire got a little burned :p Good shot though, if I may say so myself.

From now on, I expect you to just extend wires that are too short, hook up headers on wires when needed, and if you need to connect something to the board, where there is only a hole... you simply add a pin :)



Get it together!


Fixing up the motors
Mount the wheels on the geared motors. You may have a completely different set than I do here, but as long as they are geared motors that run fine on a few volts, and some nice wheels, you will be all right.
When you have the wheels on the motors, cut one of the female-to-female wires in halves, take away some of the plastic from the end of the wire, and solder it on. And do the same for the other motor.

Make sure no solder or wires touches the metal on the motor :)
Some wheels come with optional rubber tyres. It can be a good idea to wait with putting on this rubber, because if the robot is stuck, it can just slide, which is nice when testing and developing.

Chips in the board!
The Picaxe 28X1 Microcontroller that you have here, and the board, is a pretty amazing and very powerful little package.
I remember how amazed I was that I could actually make this control everything I could imagine, I hope you will get that sensation at some point as well; Seriously, you can make this thing do all sorts of stuff with all sorts of electronics. Even if you know nothing about anything, and electronics is as strange to you, as it is to me.
You can also make it handle your servos, motors, calculations, monitoring distance.. everything a robot needs. And that is what we are going to set it up for now
The microcontroller is the long chip. That is the one you program, and then there are inputs and outputs on the board that it can use.

Have a look at this page: 28 pin Project Board (AXE020), Picaxe for dummies

Now, I do not expect you to read that page now, because I have promised you that you will building building the robot as fast as possible :) However, it is important that you read that page at some point, to learn about the board, and the microcontroller. Promise me to get back to that, make a bookmark for next step ;)
OK, enough talk, insert the long black chip, that is the microcontroller.
Make sure to turn it the right way: It has a marking in one end, and so does the socket. They should match.

Now, when you bought the board, it should already have a black chip in it, in the slot where I have placed the yellow chip, in the picture below.
Take up the black chip, and as I did, replace it with the yellow one. It does not have enough pins, but see picture for what end to leave open. (the inner side)
The yellow chip is sitting between the microcontroller and the topmost row of pins on the picture. That row has (as you will know when you read about the board, your bookmark, remember?) the outputs.
We are going to hook up the servo to one of these. Servos are sending a lot of electrical noise back on the line. The Yellow chip is a series of 330 Ohm resistors, that will reduce the amount of noise that is sent back to the microcontroller. It is simply straight lines across, with some resistance between, making the signals travelling both ways a little weaker. So it is there to protect the microcontroller.
Frankly, I have never heard of anyone frying a microcontroller because of servo noise, but since manuals tells us to do this, and the board is prepared for it, we might as well.
I have also heard of black versions of this chip. How boring, but none the less, and yes; You can use it, no matter the colour, if it has the same functionality.
The black chip that was in its place, is a so-called Darlington driver. If you need more info than that, please read the manuals :) But it is a good chip, if you are not hooking up servos right on the board. It is amplifying the signals, so for instance you can hook up a speaker right on it (where we now will be placing a servo) - and using the command "Sound", you can make it beep quite loud, play tunes etcetera. You have got to try that as well! Just not now ;) Disadvantage of using the microcontroller and this board for everything is, that when you want to play with servos, you take out the Darlington, and the fun it provides. But there is more, wait and see!
Last chip is the motor controller, throw that in as well!
When your microcontroller is placed in your board, it can switch power on/off. You could use that to drive motors. However, motors are "rough", and could fry the microcontroller's outputs. And another thing is that if the microcontroller can only turn power on/off, then.. how do you drive backwards?

A motor driver takes care of all this;
This little motor-driver-in-a-chip can drive a pair of small motors (600 mA each, for the tech interested), without frying the microcontroller. And furthermore; It can make the motors go backwards. Which is handy when facing a wall :)
Your nice board has a place for a motor driver that can take a pair of small motors, and make them drive both forward and reverse.
The board is set up, so the microcontroller's outputs 4, 5, 6, and 7 are fed into the motor controller, and out comes 2 fine pairs of wires that you can hook up to a pair of motors: Motor A and Motor B. And you just soldered pins into them, how nice.

Tip: New chips in
New and unused chips usually have the two rows of legs a little too wide apart. So gently push down the side of the chip towards a table to correct it, before inserting it into a slot. You will understand me once you try to place a new chip in a socket ;)
Tip: Old chips out
It is easy to get a chip out of a socket, by inserting a flat screwdriver below it, push it under, to the far end, and gently push it up.
Fact: Later in your life, you will want the microcontroller to just be a microcontroller. You then buy extra other boards for something like servo control and motor control. These boards will get their commands from the microcontroller. And then your robot can do everything much more powerful, and simultaneously.
However, it is pretty amazing what you can make this set-up do, as you have it right here! Many, many cool robots and other project use far simpler or just this set-up.


Make the body.. without a body!

In order to keep this as simple as possible, we are just glueing all the parts together, and call that a robot! Yes.
If you prefer, of course you can make it more advanced than this. Only thing to note as such is that we use 2 central wheels, each with one motor. Driving both forward makes the robot drive forward, and if one is going backwards with one forward, it turns on a plate. If one is still, and the other is driving, it is more like "sliding" to one side.
What you can do, is simply to stick on the motors to the battery holder, using the foamy tape. If the batteries are in there, and the wheels are big enough to have them placed below the axle, the whole thing will simply balance on its own. Quite strange, actually, when I think about it :)

Somehow also leave some room for the servo in front. Or stick it on to the front of it all.

Most important is that wheels touch ground, and the rest is more or less in balance. It does not matter if it is tipping a little backwards.
Feel free to make your own design, of course :) If you do not like the balancing part, or cannot make it work, you can just add some smooth "pads", or extra wheels. A pearl, or an old LED could make nice little "third wheels", that usually are placed in the rear of the robot.

Now, as you can see, this time, I used the 4-battery holder. Because that is the biggest one, which makes it easier to stick it all on to it.

- But if you are using non-rechargeables, and only should use 3 batteries, here is a tip:
Find an old telescopic antenna, from a radio or something.
Cut off a piece (Here is a tip on how to cut it), and insert it instead of one of the batteries. Bingo ;)

OK, next thing is to place the board on the robot, and hook everything up (apart from the Sharp, wait with that).
First: Take out the batteries again (or at least one of them). Just to make sure you don't fry something by accident. We don't have an On/Of on this robot; Batteries in, and it is alive. But we want it dead now, so one battery out! (and not like on next picture, doh!)
Some battery holders have wires (like the one I am using), and some have a clip that fits right onto the clip on the board, as illustrated in the 3 battery holder below. If you have a clip, then hook it up, you are done. If you have wires like me, cut off the clip from the board, and connect black with black and red with red. (and use shorter wires than I did ;)
The + from the battery should go the where the RED is hooked up on the board, from the factory.



Hook up stuff to the board


Hook up the servo
Your servos wires colours may be different, but the hints are; Brown or Black (Ground) to the outside, Red (Volt) in the middle, and yellow or white (Signal) on the inside of the board. These descriptions may make most sense to you, if you have read about the board, as you promised me to do earlier. But for now you can just note the colours, and make sure to plug in your servo the right way around :)



Mount the board, and hook up the motors
With some (more) foam tape, stick on the board to the rest of the robot.
Make sure the mini-jack (the metal ring in one end of the board) is placed so it is easy to plug in a cable, because you will be doing that many times! And be careful to make sure that the bottom of the board does not touch any metal ;) That would cause short circuits.
Hook up the motor wires, into the A&B-pins that you soldered on earlier:
One motor's 2 wires goes to A on the board, the other two wires go to B. It does not matter which motor connects to which output, we will manage the rest in the programming.
Oops, one of my motors wires was too short, so I added little blue extensions from a scrap piece of wire that I found.

There is a nice little room to stuff in excess lengths of wires :)

And voilà!




Break out, software



(Yes, I know your robot still has no face :)
We need to turn the servo to centre.
Of course you could try and do it by hand, and estimate it to be in centre, but the smarter way is to let the microcontroller put the servo to centre. Because then you can mount "the face", facing forward, right where the microcontroller thinks it should be, when facing forward.
You are going to take a "Time-Out" from this tutorial, because you will need to set up your computer to know there is a programming cable attached, and a piece of programming software must be installed.
I cannot help you much with this, as it depends on the type of computer you have got, and what the folks at the Picaxe website have updated after I wrote this.
However, go to
http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe (or the easier to remember: picaxe.com - that redirects you)
Depending on your OS, you want either the
Free PICAXE Programming Editor or the AXEpad (which is also free, it is just not in the name ;)
Download and install which ever they claim will make you able to program the Picaxe chips!
Then you want to find the part that says
AXE027 PICAXE USB Download Cable
Install the driver and cable as described, and plug the jack into the board.

Insert all batteries in your robot.. wait.. wait.. sniff.. anything smells funny? No sparks, no smoke? No? OK, go on then.
Most versions of the Picaxe programming software have some form of menu item called "Options". Enter that, and look for a page or tab that says "Mode". Some editors even open this very page for you when you first start up the program.
Here you should find a button that says "Firmware" or "Check firmware version". Click that.
Now what should happen is that the editor talks to the cable, that talks to the microcontroller, and asks it what kind of a Picaxe chip it is. It should return something like "28X1/40X1", and this should be displayed on the screen for you.
If yes, then good; You have contact. Now somewhere in the same screens, you should be able to set the mode of the editor, set it to 28X1/40X1.
(It is a big mystery to me why this has to happen, by the way; Apparently the editor can see what kind of chip is there, so why on earth can it just not set it by itself?. hmm.. let me know if you find this reason one day ;)
OK, if you get any errors, cannot find the microcontroller or something is reported wrong with the cable, I will have to ask you to lean on Picaxe's help and manuals. It's usually very simple, so try again if something is wrong. Or try from another computer, just to see how it should work, and then try the first one again, and bug track that way.
Now, enter the main programming editor; It is like a big text editor. If no project is open, go to "File"; and open "New Basic" / "New".

In here write this:

servo 0, 150
wait 2

This is your first program, and it is very simple. The first line tells the microcontroller that there is a servo on pin 0, and that it should be put in the centre (center) position, which is 150.
The next line tells it to think about life for 2 seconds (which gives the servo time to turn).
And after this, the microcontroller will stop doing anything at all, it will go zombie!
Write it in, and transfer the code to the microcontroller. That is done on some systems by pressing F5. No, wait, I think it is so on all systems. On all that I can test from here anyway :) You could also click "Program".
You should be told that the program is transferring, and then magic should happen; The servo should turn to the centre position.
Perhaps it did not do much, but that may be because it was already in centre.
Try to hold down the "Reset" switch that is placed on the board, while turning the servo to one side. Then let go of the reset, and it should turn back in place.
Perhaps you do not think it is centre, but it is. But maybe your servo "horn" is just mounted awkward. In the middle of it, there is a screw. Unscrew and take of the horn, make sure the microcontroller did put the servo in centre, and then screw on the "horn" (disc, or what ever) again, so it is the way you think it should look like when centred.
Now, let's try to turn the servo to the sides, let's extend the program:

servo 0, 75
wait 2
servo 0, 225
wait 2
servo 0, 150
wait 2

the servo command should only be using values from 75 to 225, which is the most a standard servo can go to either side. Values out of this range are not recommended, may produce funny results.
Every time you run this program (you can unplug the cable, take out the batteries, and turn it on again without the cable), it will start from the top. And every time you press reset, it will.
If you'd like it to go in a loop, you can add a label in the top, and in the bottom make it go back to that label. We make up any name for a label, just a single word, followed by a colon, watch:

servofun:
servo 0, 75
wait 2
servo 0, 225
wait 2
servo 0, 150
wait 2
goto servofun



Now it just goes on and on.. Try to play around some with it, change values etcetera, if you like :)
...
OK, back to building the robot ;)
Plug in the wire to the Sharp, if it was not in from the shop. in other words; Make sure there are 3 wires coming from the Sharp. Your colours may be different, but I have red, black and white, which is pretty meaningful for V, G and Signal.
You may need to add female headers to the wires, like I did below. These can also be in any colour, of course. However, I have soldered 3 of same colours on, so you can trust the ones in my picture  to be leading you to which cable goes to where.
Be careful to check that you are plugging this right in, because the Sharp can fry pretty easily.
In the picture below, you can see what goes to where. The stick and strange set-up is just to make sure you can see the wires and their colours :)


You should have 3 little black things called Shortening Blocks. What they do is simply connect 2 pins next to each other.
If you don't have any, you can always just use a female-to-female jumper cable instead, like I did on the last one, with a little white cable. The blocks are smart because they don't take up any space, a wire is smart, because it can reach from one end to the other of a board.
As you can see I did on the next picture, connect analogue input 1, 2 and 3 to V, using shortening blocks or female-to-female.

Why this? A brief and not very scientific explanation is; these 4 inputs (0, 1, 2 and 3) are analogue. Which means they measure "how much pressure is on the line". However, they are connected, if they like it or not. And so, a little pressure on one of them actually does something to the next. They are "left floating". By tying the 3 that we do not use to V, they are just returning "full value", and they are not left floating. So the last one, number 0, that we use, is way more accurate.
I have not read documentation that tells you to do this, however, I have at several occasions experienced strange readings, until I tied all unused analogue pins to either ground or V. Oh... and in fact I am writing documentation here (sort of :) So now it is written in the documentation to do this! :)

Make sure the servo faces middle, 150!
With a new piece of tape, mount the Sharp IR on the servo horn, facing forward.

Tadaa! :)


You're done building the basics!

The design may vary, you may have used other parts etc... But if you have connected as described, here are some tips to get started programming your robot:

For more videos and updates please follow The Little Ganesha  frequently