Hasta La Gadget!

Do you happen to love all things high tech? If you have answered in the affirmative, then you would definitely fall in love with what Zach Burhop has done, where the has decided to soup up his Christmas tree with 3D printed ornaments, and not only that, he has also ensured that this tree is Arduino-powered for that extra touch of geekiness. Burhop’s day job is an aerospace engineer and industrial designer, and he decided to make use of his own talents in order to devise a special Christmas tree that he calls his own. Since it comes in white, it makes for an interesting backdrop for a variety of 3D printed ornaments, and one of them would be the Superman logo.

Burhop made use of the Solidoodle 3D printer to make sure that whoever drops by his place this Yuletide season will be able to experience a little bit of cheer or have something to marvel at. Neighbors around him, too, would applaud at his clever engineering skills, resulting in a tree that would be difficult to beat where its high tech capability is concerned. Christmas is definitely a season of giving, although here are times when some items which will elicit a good laugh or two helps make it all the more cheerful.

Arduino-Powered Christmas Tree For Geeks original content from Ubergizmo.

A couple of years ago we checked out Ryan Brooks’ replica of Tony Stark’s briefcase suit from Iron Man 2. While the suit did transform and was wearable, it basically looked less like a briefcase and more of a pile of armor squished together. This year Ryan made a smaller but more polished Iron Man prop. It’s a Mk. III helmet that can be opened or closed just by nodding.

Ryan 3D printed the helmet itself. He made it so the flaps at the neck area fold upwards so that he can wear the helmet.

Then he made a servo mechanism based on an Arduino Pro Mini with an Adafruit accelerometer. Ryan rigged the mechanism so that it would open the faceplate if he nodded backwards, and close the faceplate if he nodded forwards.

The servo mechanism also moves the lower jaw of the helmet when the faceplate is opened or closed.

If you’re a fellow tinkerer who’s working on your own Iron Man helmet, you might want to get Ryan’s servo mechanism, which you can purchase from his website.

[via BitRebels]

Pokémon X & Y have lots of hard to find monsters, from highly conditional evolutions to the legendaries that you can only catch after finishing the game’s story. But the most coveted type of Pokémon, the rarest of the rare, are the shiny Pokémon – alternate colors of the game’s creatures. Allegedly you only have a 1-in-8,192 chance of encountering one in battle. That’s why Redditor dekuNukem hacked his 3DS to do the dirty work for him.

dekuNukem’s hack was made for battles started via fishing; I don’t know if it can be modified for the more conventional grass-hunting method. In simple terms, the hacked 3DS automatically casts the fishing rod and enters into battle on its own. If the encountered Pokémon is ordinary, the hack automatically runs away from the battle and repeats the process. But if it hits pay dirt, it emits a buzz to alert dekuNukem. You can read a full explanation in his video, or you can skip to 1:08 to see it in action:

If you think you can build your own Shiny-farming 3DS, download dekuNukem’s code here. Here’s another code you should get: my friend code is 1048-8685-2995. Remember me when you catch those shinies!

[via Joystiq]

When it comes to playing games while you are on the go, the days of when you were limited to just the Game Boy are long gone. Since then, we have had the likes of the Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS and its variants, as well as all generations of the Sony PSP in addition to the PS VIta. Smartphones these days have also gotten powerful enough to run fantastic looking games with enough depth in them, but for those who want something out of the ordinary, here we are with the Gameduino 2, which happens to be a Kickstarter project which delivers a kit that transforms an Arduino board into a portable gaming device.

The developer hopes to raise the intended amount of dough over on Kickstarter, and hope to be able to ship the first units this coming December (making it arrive in time for the Christmas season, we would presume) for folks who have decided to pledge at least $59 to the Gameduino 2’s cause. The Gameduino 2 is not the first of its kind, as this new model is a wee bit more powerful than its predecessor, and is also full well capable of handling most of the games that you see are available on Android and iOS devices. Other specifications of the Gameduino 2 include a 4.3” 480 x 272 resolution TFT touchscreen display, an a-axis accelerometer, headphone output, and a microSD memory card slot for expansion purposes.

Gameduino 2 Transforms Arduino Board Into Portable Console original content from Ubergizmo.

Skee Ball machines are a lot of fun. There is something just so satisfying in the act of rolling a ball and watching it bounce into a target. I played as much Skee Ball as I could when I was a kid. Everytime we went to an amusement park I spent the whole day playing. Good times.

So it’s no wonder that I love this project from instructables user fungus amungus. He loves Skee Ball as much as I do, so he jumped at the chance to make a DIY version. He had some help from the folks at Because We Can who did the design and fabrication of the machine on a Shopbot CNC machine.

It is made almost completely out of plywood. The score board is triggered by a bunch of optical sensors and controlled by an Arduino. He set it up to score more like an arcade game rather than your typical Skee Ball game. The top score so far is 7,777. With that sort of score, you’d think he’d have enough tickets to get the biggest stuffed bear behind the counter.