Welcome to the world of drones This book will show you everything you could ever want to know about buying and flying your first drones. From getting to grips with the jargon you'll need to speak to other flyers, to how you can design and build your own drone with advanced features like live video feedback and programmable autopilot. You'll even learn how to read a sectional chart (that's a pilot's map-see, you're learning already )

This book is your gateway to the fun (and the learning) that awaits, and it'll keep you safe in the skies too.

An illustrated field guide to the technology that keeps our cities and towns working.

The Spotter's Guide to Urban Engineering is a useful identification tool to the mysteries of how our cities are built and work.

Each spread identifies an example of urban engineering and describes what it is, how it works and why it is there. Annotated diagrams explain the technology, and location maps indicate noteworthy real-world examples. Most importantly for spotters, the book gives advice on how to identify these features and tips on where to spot them.

The book covers the main areas of engineering infrastructure. Concise descriptions begin with a brief introduction, a timeline tracing that area's development and a synopsis of facts and figures. More than 300 illustrations and a durable flexibound format allow for easy reference in the field.

The book covers:

• Managing raw materials, including mining, agriculture, waterworks and manufacturing
• Making power, including electricity grids, oil and gas extraction and distribution, and renewable energy
• Transport, including highways, railways, bridges, tunnels, canals and aviation
• Communications, including telephone, radio, television, satellites and digital technology
• Waste, including sewers, industrial and residential waste management, recycling.

The Spotter's Guide to Urban Engineering provides lay readers with a fascinating introduction to the technology that underpins modern life. Those contemplating a career in civil engineering will find the book of particular interest.

Humans have always sought to change their environment--building houses, monuments, temples, and roads. In the process, they have remade the fabric of the world into newly functional objects that are also works of art to be admired. In this second edition of his popular Existential Pleasures of Engineering, Samuel Florman explores how engineers think and feel about their profession.

A deeply insightful and refreshingly unique text, this book corrects the myth that engineering is cold and passionless. Indeed, Florman celebrates engineering not only crucial and fundamental but also vital and alive; he views it as a response to some of our deepest impulses, an endeavor rich in spiritual and sensual rewards. Opposing the "anti-technology" stance, Florman gives readers a practical, creative, and even amusing philosophy of engineering that boasts of pride in his craft.

A hidden history of the twentieth century's brilliant innovations--as seen through art and images of electronics that fed the dreams of millions.

A rich historical account of electronic technology in the twentieth century, Inside the Machine journeys from the very origins of electronics, vacuum tubes, through the invention of cathode-ray tubes and transistors to the bold frontier of digital computing in the 1960s.

But, as cultural historian Megan Prelinger explores here, the history of electronics in the twentieth century is not only a history of scientific discoveries carried out in laboratories across America. It is also a story shaped by a generation of artists, designers, and creative thinkers who gave imaginative form to the most elusive matter of all: electrons and their revolutionary powers.

As inventors learned to channel the flow of electrons, starting revolutions in automation, bionics, and cybernetics, generations of commercial artists moved through the traditions of Futurism, Bauhaus, modernism, and conceptual art, finding ways to link art and technology as never before.

A visual tour of this dynamic era, Inside the Machine traces advances and practical revolutions in automation, bionics, computer language, and even cybernetics. Nestled alongside are surprising glimpses into the inner workings of corporations that shaped the modern world: AT&T, General Electric, Lockheed Martin.

While electronics may have indelibly changed our age, Inside the Machine reveals a little-known explosion of creativity in the history of electronics and the minds behind it.

Dubai's Burj Khalifa--the world's tallest building--looks nothing like Microsoft's Office Suite, and digital surround sound doesn't work like a citywide telecommunication grid. Yet these engineering feats have much in common.

Applied Minds explores the unique visions and mental tools of engineers to reveal the enormous--and often understated--influence they wield in transforming problems into opportunities. The resulting account pairs the innovators of modern history--Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, Steve Jobs--with everything from ATMs and the ZIP code system to the disposable diaper.

An engineer himself, Guru Madhavan introduces a flexible intellectual tool kit called modular systems thinking as he explains the discipline's penchant for seeing structure where there is none. The creations that result from this process express the engineer's answers to the fundamental questions of design: usefulness, functionality, reliability, and user friendliness.

Through narratives and case studies spanning the brilliant history of engineering, Madhavan shows how the concepts of prototyping, efficiency, reliability, standards, optimization, and feedback are put to use in fields as diverse as transportation, retail, health care, and entertainment.

Equal parts personal, practical, and profound, Applied Minds charts a path to a future where we apply strategies borrowed from engineering to create useful and inspired solutions to our most pressing challenges.

From the streets of London to subway stations in New York City, hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras ubiquitously collect hundreds of thousands of videos, often running 24/7. How can such vast volumes of video data be stored, analyzed, indexed, and searched? How can advanced video analysis and systems autonomously recognize people and detect targeted activities real-time? Collating and presenting the latest information Intelligent Video Surveillance: Systems and Technology explores these issues, from fundamentals principle to algorithmic design and system implementation.

An Integrated discussion of key research and applications

Written and edited by a collection of industry experts, the book presents state-of-the-art technologies and systems in intelligent video surveillance. The book integrates key research, design, and implementation themes of intelligent video surveillance systems and technology into one comprehensive reference. The chapters cover the computational principles behind the technologies and systems and include system implementation issues as well as examples of successful applications of these technologies.

Builds a foundation for future developments

Changing appearance caused by changing viewpoints, illumination, expression, and movement, self/cross body occlusion, modeling of cluttered background capable of efficient background subtraction for object detection, and spatial and temporal alignment of multiple cameras are just a few of the challenges that remain in further developing and refining intelligent video surveillance technology and systems. Fully illustrated with line art, tables, and photographs demonstrating the collected video and results obtained using the related algorithms, including a color plate section, the book provides a high-level blueprint for advances and insights into future directions of the field.

Now completely revised, Practical Electronics: A Complete Introduction covers the key areas of electronics you need to be confident in, whether you are a keen amateur hobbyist, an engineering student or a professional who wants to keep up to date. It outlines the basics in clear jargon-free English and provides added-value features like key ideas, memorable quotations and even lists of questions you might be asked in a seminar or exam.

It's finally time to do those electrical projects, and to do them to code with BLACK+DECKER: The Complete Guide to Wiring, Updated 6th Edition.

BLACK+DECKER: The Complete Guide to Wiring has led the pack as the United States' best-selling consumer wiring book for more than a decade now, with previous editions selling over one million copies collectively. Simply put, you won't find a more complete and up-to-date book on home wiring.

This all-inclusive guide features sections on:

• Basic skills, including an overview of electricity and wiring safety
• Wire, cable, and conduits
• Boxes and panels
• Switches
• Receptacles
• Foolproof circuit maps for 30 common wiring set-ups
• Step-by-step walkthroughs of essential home wiring and electrical repair projects

Now in its sixth edition, it has most importantly been updated to comply with 2014-2017 National Electric Codes, but in addition, nearly 1,000 accompanying photos offer up-to-date depictions of modern materials and fixtures. Complete with the most current wiring information available today, and presented in our long-renowned, fully illustrated how-to format, BLACK+DECKER: The Complete Guide to Wiring guarantees you'll never be caught in the dark.

Barely fifty years ago a computer was a gargantuan, vastly expensive thing that only a handful of scientists had ever seen. The world's brightest engineers were stymied in their quest to make these machines small and affordable until the solution finally came from two ingenious young Americans. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce hit upon the stunning discovery that would make possible the silicon microchip, a work that would ultimately earn Kilby the Nobel Prize for physics in 2000. In this completely revised and updated edition of The Chip, T.R. Reid tells the gripping adventure story of their invention and of its growth into a global information industry. This is the story of how the digital age began.