8 strange places to find USB ports
USB ports have become the universal computer interface. Why do we care? Because microcontrollers control the world, making the question of who controls the microcontrollers very important. Your car has dozens of microcontrollers -- possibly more than a hundred. Farm machinery, appliances, toys, weapons, home theater equipment, cameras, model trains, industrial robots, dog collars, surveillance gear -- they're everywhere.
There has to be a way to interface with microcontrollers. Sometimes this is the realm of programmers and engineers with specialized equipment. Sometimes they are user-accessible, and an easy and common interface is the good old USB port. For this I am happy, because I remember the painful bad old days of device connectivity. You young'uns won't believe me, but we couldn't just plug external hard drives or USB sticks into computers. We couldn't plug cameras and smartphones into computers, or turntables, speakers, headsets, multi-channel recording interfaces -- not even keyboards and mice. No, this was a strange and difficult task, and involved hassling with PS/2 ports, serial ports, parallel ports, IDE ports, and other primitive technologies.
Now there are USB ports everywhere, and here are eight of the strangest places I have seen them.
Dead Drops
A jaunty purple USB stick embedded in a fencepost in a public park, waiting to share random files from random people.
Dead Drops is "an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space." Translated from art-geek-speak, that means planting USB sticks in public places and encouraging people to share files on them. You're probably thinking, "But what if someone steals it? What if they put malware on it?" Both are possible. On Deaddrops.com, you'll see USB sticks mortared into walls. If someone really wants a $10 USB stick they'll chip at that mortar for days. I use a blob of silicone caulking, which holds it securely and is reasonably removable. The safest way to view files from untrusted sources is to boot a Linux live CD-ROM, such as Ubuntu. Most malware is Windows malware so Linux is immune, and a CD-ROM cannot be infected.
Aram Bartholl is the artist who conceived this project. He installed five USB sticks in different locations in the New York area with a single file on them, a README explaining the project. The project captured the imaginations of many, as you can see on the Dead Drops worldwide map. You can add your own Dead Drops to the database and map.
The convenient USB Fridge chilling a refreshing beverage.
Desktop beverage cooler
The USB bus carries a little bit of power, so low-power devices can draw power from it without needing a separate power cord. And so we can have essential comfort-enhancing appliances like the genuine USB Fridge for keeping a single can of juice or soda cool right on our desks, thereby saving us that long trek to the kitchen. It claims to lower beverage temperature to 47° in five minutes. There is a blue LED inside that doesn't really illuminate anything, but it looks cool.
You don't have to settle for a boring doorbell with the sleek, programmable iChime.
While we're on Thinkgeek, why not a the ichime Programmable Doorbell? It comes with a set of tones, but why settle for those when you can put your own custom sounds on it? Just think of the possibilities: scary sound effects for Halloween, special creepy tones for unwanted solicitors, your favorite symphony in tinny doorbell tones, or maybe even something welcoming, if you really must have that.
The Fender Mustang III programmable guitar amplifier: 100 watts, 12" speaker, 100 presets.
Fender Mustang guitar amp
The Mustang line of guitar amps from Fender is an imaginative use of microcontrollers and USB: user-customizable amplifier modeling. Modeling means simulating the sound of beloved vintage amplifiers, or re-creating British, American, and metal tones. The Mustang I and II amps come with 24 preset models, and III, IV, and V bundle 100 onboard presets. There are controls for volume, gain, tone, and effects such as reverb, delay, modulation, and stomp.
But that's just the beginning of your modeling and special effects fun. If you want to control the amp from your computer, these amplifiers come with Fender's FUSE software for Mac and Windows, and Linux users can try the PLUG software. A software-controlled amp opens up a vast world of creativity. With FUSE or PLUG, you can create and store as many presets as your PC can hold, and share them with other Mustang users. Fender's FUSEcommunity is a central meeting place to download and share presets.
It looks like tasty fresh ikura sushi, but it's really a 2 GB Flash drive.
Photo courtesy of Tokugawapants and Wikimedia Commons.
USB sushi
Flash drives come in multitudes of shapes and sizes. I like sushi, so here is my favorite: USB fake ikura sushi. Ikura is salmon roe, and it is tasty -- when it's real, that is, and not fake. You can find these in many sushi forms on Amazon and other online stores.
A big real spider inside a nice 3-button USB mouse.
Spider Realbug mouse
Want a real spider embedded in your mouse? Or a green beetle, or some cute starfish? If you're into critters inside your mice, they might as well the be real deal, and Edmund Scientific has them all.
Viewing Boreal Microscope images on a computer screen.
The company has all kinds of other great science toys and gadgets too, like the Boreal Digital Standard Zoom Stereomicroscope. This plugs into a computer (via USB, of course) so you can view slides on a nice big screen instead of squinting into the microscope eyepieces. You can store still and moving images on your computer.
Electronic drum kits
An electronic drum kit is lighter and more compact than an acoustic kit, and crammed full of extra functionality.
The earliest electronic drum kits didn't sound like much, but they've come a long way from those long-ago days. The higher-end Yamaha and Roland kits sound and play like acoustic kits, with the extra advantages of smaller size, lighter weight, and sophisticated digital sound processors (DSPs). These sound processors are little computers, so their functionality is limited only by processor power and storage. So anything is possible: modeling different acoustic kits, MIDI support, recording and playback, sound effects, overdubbing, and multiple outputs for miking each drum and cymbal separately. Some kits can connect to a computer for additional storage and functionality, and with some models you can plug any USB storage device into the DSP and play along to music.
[ See also: USB 3.0 vs. eSATA: Is faster better? ]
