The Tech Boy's Blog

This Project Line Following Autonomous Robot is based on 8 bit Microcontroller. This Robot follows the black line which is drawn over the white surface or it follows the white line which is drawn over the black surface. The infrared sensors are used to sense the line. When the infrared signal falls on the white surface, it gets reflected and if it falls on the black surface, it is not reflected this principle is used to scan the Lines for the Robot. All the above systems are controlled by the Microcontroller. Microcontroller gets the signals from the infrared sensors and it drives the motors according to the sensor inputs. Two stepper motors are used to drive the robot. THEORY OF OPERATION-:  How to sense a black line The sensors used for the project are Reflective Object Sensors, 0PB710F that are already ready in the Electronic Lab. The single sensor consists of an infrared emitting diode and a NPN Darlington phototransistor. When a light emitted from the diode is reflected of...

With  the  alarming  rate  of  depletion  of  the  major  energy  resources worldwide,  it  has  become  an  urgent  necessity  to  seek  for  renewable  energy resources  that  will  power  the  future. In  this  context  we  have  concentrated  our focus  on  the  research  of renewable energy. Among these renewable energy resources solar energy is one of a kind. Solar  power  (photovoltaic)  systems  are  a  sustainable way  to  convert  the  energy  of  the  sun  into  electricity.  The expected lifetime of a system is 25-30 years. With  all  the  above  information,  the  rapid  depletion  of  the  natural resources of  the  world,  we  would  soon...

A group of Chinese tech powerhouses led by Golden Brick Silk Road has made an astounding offer to buy Oslo-based Opera Software ASA’s top-selling product, the Opera web browser, for a little over a billion dollars. The offer, which the board unanimously recommended to its shareholders, would pay out to investors more than 40% higher than the last per-share closing price. Opera is the world’s fifth most widely used web browser with 7.3% of the mobile browser market, a ranking made possible mostly due to its incorporation on mobile devices like smartphones made by Xiaomi Corp and Samsung. The company says that Opera is currently running on more than 280 million devices worldwide… except China. This deal would open up the user base that Kunlun and Qihoo–two of the tech companies involved in the acquisition–currently enjoys in the country. China has an interesting internet-using demographic in that the majority of its population is considered mobile-first or even mobile-only in that ...

Or rather, International Business Machines has announced that it will be making a big push to utilise the same blockchain technology that underpins crypto currency BitCoin. In a statement on its website, IBM unleashed a slew of  announcements  and investments yesterday all centred around the how it will look to find business solutions based on the emergent and rapidly evolving  blockchain technology as a service IBM has  thrown its hat and its considerable  weight  behind  “distributed ledger or blockchain technology for real world applications. ” Altogether IBM has  said  that there are more than 100 technical architects working  on trying to fast-track blockchain applications for businesses. The announcement is seen by many as just the  first round  by IBM to try and charge into the blockchain industry with a working gambit that its offering is better than anyone else’s. It hopes to be at the forefront of what it th...

A new study by Duo Security uncovered some alarming but sadly unsurprising news: more than half of the 2 million devices they looked at for a report were running out-of-date, unprotected software. Whether it was lack of antivirus protocols or operating systems and apps that hadn’t been updated when a patch was released, these devices were therefore vulnerable to hacking, data breaches, ransomware, and more. According to an  article on the study by eSecurityPlanet , “The two million devices we saw are devices used by our customer’s employees to access one or more enterprise applications,” Ash Devata, vice president of Product at Duo. Sean Michael Kerner of eSecurityPlanet added, “The Duo research found that 80 percent of the devices scanned were using Flash, while 32 percent of employees were running older unpatched versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In addition, 22 percent of the scanned devices were running outdated versions of Java.” One of the pieces of informati...

The French government is known for some of its more people-centric privacy laws, which is part of the reason so many celebrities choose to make their home in-country. Now, the government is cracking down on some seemingly innocuous terms of service in Facebook’s system, claiming that the current terms violate their privacy laws. Facebook, like many other internet entities, uses cookies that it tracks for up to two years, even on people who are not members of the site and therefore did not agree to the lengthy terms of service. If an internet user clicks a link and watches a video that was uploaded to Facebook instead of YouTube, for example, that individual can view the video without being a member, and that person’s web behavior is tracked. France has said that’s against their laws. While issuing the desist order that Facebook must comply with within three months (at the risk of facing heavy fines), the government also took some further steps to safeguard its citizens privac...

You know you’re supposed to be doing it, but it’s just such a bother, isn’t it? All that typing and the memorizing and the keeping it all straight…it’s such a hassle. Unfortunately, that’s the all-too-common sentiment behind most internet users and their reluctance to create strong, unique passwords. Heck, if “password” was good enough for the folks at Sony Pictures, it’s good enough for me, right Oh wait…they got hacked. Never mind. In all seriousness, username and password combinations are no laughing matter. With even just your email address and password, an identity thief can ruin your life. Once he’s got that combination, it’s nothing to go to all of your online accounts (a quick search through your old emails will tell him where you bank, where you shop, and more), click “forgot my password,” and then change all of them to whatever he wants, after changing your email password and locking you out, that is. Fortunately, LastPass makes it possible to have lengthy, multicha...