Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2016 i Popular Mechanics South Africa

In 2003, an odd house appeared in Urbana, Illinois. The walls were 45 centimetres thick. It was pieced together with the precision of fine furniture. And it included a device just for exchanging air with the outdoors, called a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV). The house belonged to Katrin Klingenberg, the architect who, in 2007, co-founded Passive House Institute US (PHIUS), which certifies domiciles as passive houses, one of the most rigorous and increasingly popular green building standards in the USA. About half of an average home’s energy budget involves space heating, cooling and air conditioning. Passive houses can cut this by 60 to 75 per cent just by tightly sealing the building envelope, using insulation with high R-values and eliminating thermal bridges – structural pieces like windows that allow heat…

André Fourie admits that, as a professor at Wits, he felt a little inferior when first exposed to international counterparts in his chosen field. It soon became clear, though, that local research was at least equal and often better. Popular Mechanics talked to Fourie about wireless’s place in today’s world. Q. How did South Africa come to be leading the world? Somehow in South Africa we have a group of antenna engineers. I think it’s a function of the university system (and to an extent) from the old military background, where there are very strong skills. Of course, we supply to the world, but that doesn’t mean we will move. For instance, our new antenna is sourced from China. I have been able to speak Mandarin for the past three…

Volata Bicycles are expensive so value has driven many to the saddle of a do-it-all cyclocross or gravel bike. Volata took this versatile mix of relaxed geometry, fat tyres and disc brakes and added in a maintenance-free drivetrain and regenerative power. A dynamo charges up the automatic headlamps, tail-light, Bluetooth-connected GPS bike computer and electronic shifter. The built-in bike computer connects to your smartphone and lets you receive notifications and control your media. There’s also a chainless lock system that uses GPS and the smartphone link. Shimano’s internal gear hub keeps the transmission away from the elements and a Gates carbon belt means you’ll never need grease. Other features include internally routed cables and a carbon fork – which keeps things comfortable when the going gets rough. The frame is…

IT ALL STARTED WHEN A BOY MET A GIRL. An English-speaking man met a French-speaking woman. Neither could speak the other’s language, making communication, well, difficult. Out of this unlikely union was born a wearable device. Why wearable and not an app? Well, says Andrew Ochoa, the CEO and founder of Waverly Labs, using app-based translating systems impedes the natural flow of real-world interaction. To overcome this he came up with a concept called the Pilot. The device, which translates the spoken word in close-to real time, works in conjunction with a specially developed cellphone app. (Clearly, an app has its uses.) Technology wearable technology + speech recognition + machine translation + voice synthesis The Pilot is a smart earpiece that uses specially designed dual noise-cancelling microphones to filter out…

What is solar power? Solar power is the conversion of sunlight into electricity, either directly via photovoltaic (PV) cells, or indirectly via concentrated solar power (CSP) systems. The solar technology used in the Sasol Solar Challenge is PV. How does solar technology work? In a PV cell, the sunlight puts electrons in movement to directly produce electricity. The main component of the PV cell is the semiconductor. The electrons in the semiconductor are charged by sunlight and move to their corresponding electrode – producing an electrical current. CSP systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam that heats up molten salt to create steam to drive a turbine that produces electrical power. What are the advantages of solar power?…

These days, organisations can’t simply throw storage media in the trash. Increasingly, they’re being obliged by government regulations, industry standards and internal risk mitigation policies to sanitise media prior to disposal or reuse. The stringent legislative requirements – and there’s no reason to believe they won’t become tougher – include compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act 2013 (PoPI 2013), the National Environmental Waste Management Act 2008 (NEMWA 2008) and the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (CPA). To move beyond mere wiping to destruction of data – or even of the media that contain data – Xperien takes hard drives apart and then runs a degausser over the platters. This obliterates data and destroys hard drives. The Xperien degausser combines proven technology with a failsafe reporting system, ensuring…

WHY IS VB A GOOD IDEA? No security approach is 100 per cent infallible, but VB has consistently demonstrated that it is significantly more effective than PINs, passwords, tokens or other authentication methods at providing legitimate users access to customer care systems, and also at preventing malicious users from accessing these systems. VB has also been used in government organisations to properly authenticate pensioners, reduce fraud and improve the experience for legitimate pension recipients. WHAT MAKES VOICE BIOMETRICS BETTER THAN OTHER METHODS OF AUTHENTICATION? Any type of authentication method that needs users to remember something or carry something is prone to credentials being forgotten, misplaced, shared, stolen or otherwise compromised. This is why organisations that have deployed VB have seen a dramatic reduction in fraud (in some cases, up to…

The first laser was fired up nearly 60 years ago. Since then the properties of Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation and the resulting narrow, tightly focused and single-wavelength beam of photons has done duty in applications as diverse as CD players, cutters and light shows. Traditional lasers have operated on the principle of exciting light in CO2 tubes much like fluorescent and neon tubes. A very high voltage the makes the gas inside that tube plasma, which emits photons. The light is collimated – made linear – and focused into an intense, narrow beam. Fibre lasers create light using banks of diodes and then transmit and amplify that light through fibre-optic cable doped with rare-earth elements, before collimating and focusing it on exit. Advantages of fibre lasers compared…

Recently, a few designers and product heads from places such as Apple, Microsoft and Nest created Eero, a router system that uses multiple units to repeat your Wi-Fi signal up stairs and around walls like a satellite relay. At around R7 500 (US price) for a three-pack, they’re expensive. You could buy two R1 500 routers to produce a similar effect, but you would need to actively drop the weaker network and rejoin the stronger one every time you walk your iPad between rooms. Eero routers, besides being pretty enough to almost blend in with a countertop, automatically connect you to the strongest signal. We had two of them running in less than a minute, with immediate results: an ageing iMac in a brickwalled home office loaded web pages like…

Expertise from the automotive world is being used to investigate driver behaviour and sailing performance using machine learning to seek out patterns in large volumes of data. 2 YEARS OF DATA LOGGING 1.5 GB SIGNAL DATA COLLECTED EVERY DAY, PER VEHICLE 5 801 471 DATA POINTS COLLECTED EVERY DAY, PER VEHICLE 3 146 DATA POINTS LOGGED 1 875 995 TOTAL KILOMETRES RECORDED 117 VEHICLES RECORDED 2 YEARS OF DATA LOGGING 16 GB UNCOMPRESSED DATA 0.5-1 KNOTS PERFORMANCE GAIN IN STRAIGHT LINE SPEED 350 UNIQUE DATA POINTS 500 TIMES A SECOND: FREQUENCY OF DATA POINTS LOGGED 189 MILLION DATA POINTS COLLECTED EVERY TEST SAIL, PER BOAT 3 TEST BOATS LOGGED…

ON ANY NORMAL JULY AFTERNOON, we’d be glad for the gentle warmth radiating on to our backs from the giant copper stills behind us. But ahead of us, on the other side of the glass wall, the Boland is basking in another of those unseasonably sunny 2016 midwinter days. At any rate, it’s clear enough so you can see all the way to where Andy Watts is pointing out the Pass on the distant jagged blue line of mountains. Andy is holding forth about another Andrew, name of Bain, a roadbuilding legend with some towering feats of construction on his CV. In 1853, Bain completed the pass from Wellington to Ceres that bears his name and a national monument plaque. The Watts CV is not without its own towering feats,…

I’M RARELY COMFORTABLE BEING A STATISTIC, but each day I’m one of 22 million people who commute by rail. Although it isn’t comfortable or world-class by any stretch of the imagination, it beats the hell out of traffic and works out a lot cheaper than driving. It will get better, though, or so I’m being told. The passenger rail agency’s service rejuvenation plan is a two-pronged attack on poor delivery. First, it secured a rolling stock overhaul agreement with Gibela and Alstom worth around R52 billion over 10 years. Then Siemens climbed on board to upgrade the signalling system and, in the case of the room I’m in now, connect all 10 000 km of Gauteng passenger rail infrastructure to a single control centre. From the desks at the Gauteng…

1 Mix 1 ½ ounces pisco, 1 ounce Aperol, 1 ounce sweet vermouth, 1 dash Peychaud’s bitters and 1 dash Angostura bitters. Chill. 2 On a cedar grilling plank (available at kitchen stores), crumble canela (Mexican cinnamon quills) in a small cone-shaped pile. 3 Hold a propane torch (available at hardware stores) about 10 centimeres above the canela, burning it in a circular motion. 4 Immediately after removing the torch, invert a cold rocks glass over the canela. Let the glass fill with smoke. 5 After 30 seconds, turn the glass right-side up, add a 5-centimetre iceblock and pour in the premixed cocktail. Garnish with a piece of orange peel.…

Passive magnetic levitation and smart materials play significant roles in the vision of another big player in the Hyperloop scenario, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. Founded in 2013 by crowdfunding-based JumpStarter, HTT has licensed the passive magnetic levitation technology originally developed Dr Richard Post and his team at Lawrence Livermore National Labs. HTT and Lawrence Livermore have been working together over the past year to develop and build test systems using passive magnetic levitation. “I had the honour of meeting with Dr Post in 2014 prior to his passing,” said Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of Jumpstartfund and HTT. “He saw the Hyperloop transportation system as the perfect fit for this technology and was excited to see it become part of the project.” Passive magnetic levitation was developed at Livermore National Labs over a…

One man’s affordable housing is another man’s dream home – it all depends on income. That’s where Cape Town entrepreneur John Venter has stepped in: he believes his eco mobile home concept will satisfy affordability and at the same time be desirable enough that people will want to live in it. A bonus is that the homes are designed from the outset to be suited to off-grid living. Venter’s ambitious idea is based on “upcycling” 12-metre shipping containers and turning them into 30 m2 homes costing R359 000. When we spoke in July, Venter said his company, Umnyama Ikhaya, had already started production at a facility in the Boland town of Paarl. Each pod home is based on a 12,19 metre x 2,9 metre x 2,5 metre container. “We integrate…

One way of countering identity theft is to use our unique personal identifiers – biometrics. Biometric verification is a process of identity authentication that is used to confirm identity through uniquely detectable biological traits and may be an effective tool in the war on crime. With the drastic rise of identity theft, it has become more difficult to prevent unauthorised access to information resources and installations. Methods of positively verifying and authenticating people may mitigate the current identity theft crisis. However, to combat this ever-growing threat, Ideco (ideco.co.za) is launching its new all-in-one mobile biometrics unit in South Africa. The Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) enables biometric identification across a range of modalities, from fingerprint through to iris scanning. BIMS is highly mobile, readily configurable and can be rolled out…

RICHARD “deviaNt” GROVES has spent more than a decade playing Counter-Strike and has played for three gaming organisations, including Bravado Gaming. In June, Groves joined Aperture Gaming’s CS:GO team after a brief break. Groves shared some insights into gaming, how he started and what he expects the future holds for the local eSports industry. HOW WERE YOU INTRODUCED TO GAMING? My dad came home with a computer when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I initially played Age of Empires, which got me hooked on games. Soon thereafter my dad bought me Medal of Honor – this was my first exposure to the online multiplayer experience. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST EXPOSURE TO COMPETITIVE GAMING? I first competed in online friendly games playing Medal of Honor at the age…

It’s not just what’s on the outside “The term lithium-polymer is a reference to the packaging material, which is a polymer aluminium laminate. The inside is still lithium-ion, but the complete battery is dramatically different compared with a production electric car’s lithium-ion battery.” Longevity required “One of the major differences between consumer electronics and automotive cells is robustness. At Chevrolet, we need to have a ten-year warranty on our packs. An RC or consumer-electronics cell is typically good for three or four years in regular use. That’s the other thing: Our vehicles use the batteries far more than an RC hobbyist will.” Squares fit better “Rather than cylindrical cells, auto-parts manufacturers generally use squareish prismatic pouch cells. Square things fit into square boxes better. So there’s better pack density.” Density…

One day, I hope that my kid’s kid’s kids will sit beside my wall. That they’ll cast shadows against it in the long light of late summer evenings, just like we do now. That they’ll boast to friends about the outdoor shower tucked into a nook at the far end, just like we do now. And that, every once in a while, they’ll appreciate the thing that swallowed entire vacations and summers and more than a few frozen weekends of my time. It started with a sales brochure I saw at a landscaping place in the late 1990s. The company was called Rockwater Ltd, and they built beautiful stone walls and benches. We didn’t need a stone wall or a bench, but for some reason I held on to that…

I just started using these Bowers & Wilkins P5 wireless Bluetooth headphones (about R8 000). They’re really high end, with detailed sound and strong bass. Even though they’re not noise-cancelling, I’m crazy about them. I always get an aisle seat on planes, which means that whenever someone in my row had to get up, I unplugged the cord, gathered everything, put the tray table up, then stepped aside to let them out. Now when someone has to get up, I pick everything up and keep the headphones on. All I have to do is stand.…

Q If we want to increase the shade over our pergola, is lattice our best option? A Lattice works, but it does have some drawbacks. First, it will catch seeds, pods and leaves. Second, it’s bulky and difficult to remove and store should you want more sun and less shade during cooler times of the year. If you are going to use it, go with a vinyl product and secure it with latches, even if each latch is nothing more than a block of wood with a single screw through the centre. That way, you can easily take the lattice down for cleaning or removal. In northern climates, it also makes it easier to avoid snow and ice damage during the winter. For me, though, a precut piece of sun…

WINNING TIP TODDLER-FOILER Ever needed to secure your under-sink counter cupboards from toddlers due to the cleaning products and poisons stored there? There are many products on the market, many of them not so easy to use and some quite expensive. My way: an old carabiner and old shoelace. Tie the shoelace in a loop through one of the handles on the cupboard and secure it with a tight knot. Hook the carabiner through the other handle and connect it through the shoelace. Problem solved – your toddler will not be able to open the cupboard and it is very easy to open yourself. For extra security, buy yourself a screw-closure carabiner. I have had no problems with three toddlers, using the normal push-to-open cheap variety of carabiner. MURRAY MCWILLIAMS…

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY 1 Four days of music, camping and general good vibes to be had on the banks of the Hartbeespoort Dam during Woodstock SA, which runs until the 4th. 2 WAR DOGS opens in cinemas; see below for an opportunity to win a R1 000 hamper. 3 At Inanda Country Base, Kyalami, barons, knights, dragons, unicorns, fair maidens and their steeds will mingle with strolling players and all manner of buskers at the 2016 Magical Medieval Fayre. 4 This day in science history: Google is incorporated, 1998. 9 Until the 30th, you can see the spectacular images in the Underwater Photographer of the Year 2016 exhibition at the Chavonnes Battery Museum in Cape Town’s Waterfront. 11 Judgment day for the inaugural Concours South Africa,…

IN DECEMBER, lift company KONE opened a 36-storey tower in Kunshan, China, containing a skydeck and 12 lift shafts, but no offices, apartments or retail space. The tower, one of eight facilities the company operates around the world, has a different purpose to those of most buildings: it – and its fully customisable lifts – exists solely to test the coolest new lifting technologies on Earth. One of the concepts being tested in the Kunshan tower is UltraRope, a ribbon of carbon fibre embedded in epoxy and coated with high-friction polyurethane that could enable architects to design skyscrapers that are taller than ever. Traditional steelroped lifts are limited to heights of about 500 metres, requiring passengers in supertall buildings to change shafts halfway up. Limiting factors include not just the…

The X’Trapolis Mega is designed to serve up to 30 000 passengers per hour per direction. It is compliant with the EN 15227 crashworthiness standard, and is equipped with an automatic train operation (ATO) signalling system, which enables it to navigate through high-density networks easily, helping to optimise the flows over the line. The train offers a range of modular options, varying in train lengths, singledecker/double-decker, variable width and number of doors. When production starts locally, Prasa is aiming for 90 per cent recyclable materials and 70 per cent local component sourcing. It consumes 31 per cent less energy compared with its counterparts thanks to its lighter weight, which is achieved by using a stainless steel body and insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) regenerative braking system. A typical six-car train…

Although it looks like the smoke floats out of the glass, some elements are left behind. A cold glass condenses water from the atmosphere very quickly. So when a cold glass covers a burning mound of canela, the smoke comes in contact with condensed moisture on the sides of the glass. The water-soluble molecules in the smoke – pretty much everything except the tar and carbon particles – dissolve in that moisture, imparting their smell and taste to the eventual cocktail. The film of water on the surface of an ice cube similarly attracts and bonds to the smoke.…

SPECIAL-PURPOSE ROBOTS that cohabit your home are rapidly gaining popularity in the maker space. This year alone, we have seen a rash of models on the consumer market, each catering to specific personal needs. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when we tell you that an all-new health and wellness robot companion called Pillo might soon come to a living room or kitchen near you. The product of personal experience in dealing with critical care and medication adherence, Pillo has grown from a tablet-dispensing product to a feat of technological wellness management. The team of engineers, health experts and entrepreneurs behind the robot has integrated several new and existing health tools into one Android-based platform to meet an array of personal needs, while also reminding you of…

HELL-RAISER HONOURS THE LEGEND Useful advice for wannabe drag-racers: when someone advises you to disengage the diff-lock, hold down the brake pedal with your left foot, then release it and floor the gas pedal as the light turns green, first make sure the dragstrip isn’t still wet from the morning shower. Having failed to carry out this simple check myself, I had enough time to bang off a few emails from my mobile, finish my morning coffee and contemplate the vicissitudes of fate before the front wheels of the Golf GTI Clubsport stopped their chattering and gripped the asphalt to send me hurtling down the quarter-mile strip. My elapsed time for the run was well under a minute, which may or may not be a record. Personal sprint skills aside,…

Owner: Anthony Doman Location: Cape Town, South Africa Years owned: Nine Car name: Unprintable when it’s due for the 100 000-km cambelt change It suddenly went really quiet in the car, which is what can happen when you take a shortcut via a gravel road that turns into a rock-strewn rollercoaster track. I got the feeling that my fellow travellers thought the drivetrain was about to smash itself to pieces. That we would be forced to strike out on foot in an alien landscape a long way from cellphone range. And that, therefore, we would either starve or be devoured by wolves. Which is kind of ridiculous, given that wolves are to the best of my knowledge not particularly common in the Bot River area. It’s beyond ridiculous actually, given…

Volkswagen master technician Charles Sanville, known to the Internet as the Humble Mechanic, comes across as affable, friendly, and, yes, humble. But that’s not why he chose that title. “It’s about getting humbled, not being humble,” he says. “When I got started as a mechanic, an older guy told me, ‘About the time you think you know what you’re doing, there’ll be a car that’ll eat your lunch.’ Sure enough, soon thereafter I spent about two weeks trying to fix a Touareg.” In the name of minimising your own mechanical frustrations, we asked Sanville to show us the foundational tools for a weekend mechanic. Here are his picks, informed by hard-won experience and many a Touareg. Hydraulic floor jack and jack stand “Working with the jack that came with your…

Lithium-ion batteries have four basic components: a nickel-rich cathode, a graphite anode, a separator, and an electrolyte, the liquid through which lithium ions travel. Lithium ions are molecules that have more protons than electrons, giving them a positive charge. When you plug a battery into an outlet, electrons flow into the anode. As the electrons make the anode even more negatively charged, the lithium ions are attracted to the anode. The ions move from the cathode through the electrolyte, into the anode, increasing the battery’s voltage. The lithium ions remain in the anode until the battery is connected to something that draws current – like an electric motor. During discharge, the electrons flow out of the battery and power the motor. Once the electrons are gone, the lithium ions naturally…

YEARS AGO when you flew, you had to watch whatever crappy movie the plane was showing. Now we just bring our entertainment with us. Look around, and everybody is power-watching a show or movie on a tablet or laptop. Problem is, most video services are streaming only, which is an issue for anyone who travels. We think that Wi-Fi is going be everywhere soon, but it’s not. Trains, planes, hotels, and cars say they have Wi-Fi, and tablets and phones have data, but I don’t trust any of it. Even when the Wi-Fi works, airlines make it clear: you can email, but forget about trying to stream movies, even if you pay extra for the faster connection. What B.S. Until streaming is fully integrated and strong Wi-Fi is everywhere, if…

A SOG PowerPlay FOLDED SIZE: 105 mm by 30 mm TOOLS: 18 LIKES: A lot of tool for the money. The only Chinese-made option we tested, the SOG displays good fit and finish and a powerful, geared pliers head. A magnetic seat grips any of the tool’s 12 screwdriver bits. Knife-centric users will appreciate the two different blades, straight and serrated. DISLIKES: All of the tools and blades lock securely, but the button latch that unlocks them pokes directly into your palm. It can be uncomfortable to hold. PRICE: R1 250 B Gerber Multi-Plier 600 FOLDED SIZE: 125mm by 30 mm TOOLS: 14 LIKES: Designed for the industrial user, this knifeless tool is equipped with a replaceable carbide-grit jigsaw blade that allows it to function as a mini hacksaw. Triangle-shaped…

Send us your best home, garage workshop and general DIY hints – and win! This month’s winning tip will receive a Makita 4329K Jig Saw valued at R1 629. The Makita 4329K Jig Saw is the perfect tool to use when you need to cut curves (even intricate ones) and odd shapes into materials such as wood (65 mm) and metal (6 mm), but it will also cut straight lines. It’s equally good at cutting a hole in your counter top to fit a sink, making toys or cutting metal sheeting… the list goes on and on. This variable-speed jig saw has three orbital settings as well as the standard straight cut. The 450 W variable-speed motor will provide you with 500 to 3 100 strokes per minute. Its ergonomically…