Mosquito Repellant Plant in India

Here comes a plant which has 10 times more mosquito repellent property than a popular mosquito repellent DEET. Mosquitoes are repelled by the scent of this plant.This plant has strange effect on cats.If not controlled this plant is quick to spread and can be invasive.It has attractive blue/purple flowers.

Scientific Name: Nepeta Cataria

Requirements: Grows well in poor soil

Time to Bloom : July to November

Native Place : Europe,Central Asia

Buy it for just (Rs 129) from National Seeds (ebay.in)


Buy it (Rs 99 + Rs 30) directly from Florafields.

Bird of Paradise seeds available in India

The magnificent top selling flower is out for sale in India

for just Rs 69 + Rs 39 (shipping ).This plant is fairly easy to grow.

Scientific Name: Strelitzia Reginae

Requirements: Rich loamy soil,ample water throughout the year

Time to Bloom : 3-5 years after germination

Native Place : South Africa

This is a slower grower so you may have to wait 5 years after

planting to see its beautiful flowers.Currently they ship 2 seeds.

Buy it from Evergreen Gardens (ebay.in) 

Online gardening e-shops in India

Ebay.in Shops

1. Indian Gardening
Items start from Rs 99
Free shipping on each item

2. The IT Planet
Items start from Rs 40
Minimum Rs 29 shipping

3. Pepper Agro
Items start from Rs 82
Free shipping on each item

4. Poppy Gardens
Items start from Rs 75
Free shipping on each item

5. 2012-12 Super-sale
Items start from Rs 45
Rs 30 minimum shipping

6. Evergreen seeds
Shipping - Rs 39

7. Evergreen e-shops
Shipping - Rs 49

8. Yahoo Deals
Shipping - Rs 39

9. National Seeds (florafields.com)
Shipping - Rs 39

10. Rose Milian Orchids
Rree shipping ,items start from Rs 99

Ebay.com shops (located in India)

1.Simbalovesfriends
Items starting from $ 1.25
Free shipping on each item

Other websites

1. Agricart
Minimum order of Rs 500 order
Free shipping

2.  Bio Carve
shipping -  Rs 52

3. Plants Mans
Minimum order Rs 50,shipping Rs 50 upto 0.5kg

4. Kraft Seeds 
Items start from Rs 50
Rs 50 minimum shipping

5. Garden Guru
Items start from Rs 40
Rs 45 minimum shipping

6. Flora fields
Shipping - Rs 39

Electronics Hobbyist supply websites in India

Electronics components are mostly bought from shops in India.But some times some components are unavailable or at remote places no such shops are available to the hobbyists.Here is the list of good electronics E-Shops with location and shipping costs.

Before that, this site is worth mentioning, for check the average cost of any electronic components.

Octopart : Search Engine for Electronics Parts

Biggest and cheapest stores on Ebay

Blitz TechWorld
Shipping Charges: Rs 49 (all over India)

Hacktronics
Shipping Charges: Starting from Rs 55


The List of E-shops :


Bhasha Technologies
Location:Pune
Shipping Charges: Rs 11 (all over India)
*Listed by freeduino website


Probots Techno Solutions
Location:Bangalore
Shipping Charges: Rs 75 to 115
* Listed by arduino website


Extreme Electronics
Location:Jamshedpur,Jharkhand
Shipping Charges: Rs 70


Kits N Spares
Location: Delhi
Shipping Charges: Rs 150


Embedded Market
Location:Pune
Shipping Charges: Rs 117
* nice interface
* Good  Mircocontroller Range
* Competitive Price


Ventor Technlogies
Location:Kolkata
Shipping Charges: Rs 60
* Very cheap for small components


RhydoLabz
Location:Cochin,Kerela
Shipping Charges: Rs 72
* Listed by arduino website


MG SuperLabs
Location:Nagpur,Maharashtra
Shipping Charges: Rs 100 to 150
* Listed by arduino website


Simple Labs
Location:Chennai
Shipping Charges: Rs 150
* Listed by arduino website


Explore Labs
Location:Jodhpur,Rajasthan
Shipping Charges: Rs 50 (All India Flat rate)
* Listed by arduino website


Sumeet Instruments
Location:Kolkata
Shipping Charges: Rs 100
* Listed by arduino website


Proto Central
Location:Bangalore
Shipping Charges: Rs 100
(free shiping above Rs 1500 order)
* Listed by arduino website


Tenet Technetronics
Location:Bangalore
Shipping Charges: Rs 150 + 2 % VAT
*.Listed by arduino website


Robo Kits
Location:Ahmedabad,Gujarat
Shipping Charges: Rs 125


Element 14 (Formely Farnell)
Location:Bangalore
Shipping Charges: Rs 200
* Pan card required
* International Range
* Data sheet for all products if applicable


Mouser Electronics
Location:Bangalore
Shipping Charges: Rs 2160 (40 $)
* International Range

Hobby2Go.com

Location:Chennai
Shipping Charges: Rs 40
* Good Spares Range

Amazing world of opensource Remote Vehicles

Fishpi
This project is powered by solar panels,gps recevier,magnetic compass.It is a boat project and is able to navigate autonomously on water surface.This machine is due to cross the atlantic ocean fully autonomously using just its sensor data.Raspberry Pi board is used as CPU for this project.

Aeroquad
Its a quadrotor based on arduino board.This project use many sensors such as gyroscope,barometer,ultrasonic ranger and gps receiever.Complete design is open source and its being actively developed.

OpenROV
Innovators have not left any possiblitiies yet to be explored - air,land,water all have been traversed by remote controlled rovers and its now turn for UNDER-WATER exploration.Openrov is a submarine and is based on beaglebone board.Its amazing underwater videos could be viewed on it Youtube Channel.

ArdupilotOne
ArdupilotOne is an arduino based autopilot system that can pilot airplanes, quad rotors, boats, and ground vehicles.

ArduPilot-Mega
Its based on custom board APM 1/2 dedicated for autopilot mode.It has many unique advantages like- waypoints could be marked in advance or modified on journey,the entire trip route can be planned.
This project is supported by desktop application,APM Planner for monitiring and controlling the remote drone .It also supports failsafe return when the drone goes out communication coverage.

Projects under it are -

1.Arducopter

2.ArduPlane

3.Ardurover

Forum for ardupilot and ardupilot-mega is located at diydrones.com.

Instant messaging was never so simple !!

Do you use different messengers to connect with your friends ? Quite

possibly YES.We are spoiled for choice in selecting Instant Messaging

service.If some of your friends are on yahoo messenger,you need to

install yahoo messenger.Similarly people download separate clients for

gtalk,MSN messenger for chatting with friends using them.

InstantBird gives you freedom to chat on wide variety of popular IM

services.This software is open source and is based on mozilla's
XUL framework and is very small for its capabilities.

Support for facebook chat,twitter,Windows live Messenger,yahoo messenger and more !!

Download instantbird (9.9 MB)

Incredible compression of images

Digital camera today have become so powerful that they generate very detailed images of sizes as large as 5 MB for a 12 Mega Pixel camera.The problem comes when sending these pics or sharing them.If you don't have then its a big headache uploading them over internet.

JPEG 2000 format allows for high compression with high quality.

For compressing you need to download and install XnView .

Download Xnview version 1.98.5 (4.3 MB)

Download Xnview latest version

Download Xnview portable (4.1 MB)

Run xnview follow the instruction as given in the video below



In this video a 246 KB jpeg image is compressed to 33 KB file at almost same quality.

If viewing problem then Download video file (300 KB)