Hasta La Gadget!

Microcontrollers and other electronics components have been getting smaller and cheaper. A company called Ynvisible proves that these parts can be made much thinner as well. The company recently launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for Printoo, a set of modular electronics that are paper-thin and flexible.

Ynvisible partnered with other electronics manufacturers to create an open source Arduino-compatible platform. The company has skinny versions of everything from a microcontroller board to a battery.

Aside from finalizing the design of its flexible boards and lining up suppliers, it looks like the company has finished much of the work even before they set up the fundraiser.

Pledge at least $45 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Printoo kit as a reward; higher pledges have more robust kits as rewards.

[via Gigaom]

Digital audio software lets you emulate the sounds of instruments that you don’t own or know how to play in real life. But these programs don’t eliminate the learning curve. They’re still not intuitive. Imitone can change that. It’s an Windows and OS X application that helps your computer convert your voice into a signal that music creating software can understand. With Imitone, you can sing a piano track. Whistle a guitar hook. Fart a string section. I hope.

Imitone is a software MIDI controller. In simple terms, a MIDI controller turns your input into MIDI, a format that many music and sound creation programs can understand. Common examples of a MIDI controller include keyboards and drum machines. Obviously, with those MIDI controllers you still have to know how to play drums, piano, etc. in order to create a melody. But with Imitone, the only thing you need to know how to use is your voice.

Here’s Imitone inventor Evan Balster imitating a violin in real time with the help of Imitone and Ableton Live:

Imitone reminds me of the Beardytron 5000, but way more user friendly. Speaking of which, Imitone will have two versions. Imitone will be for casual and amateur users, while Imitone Prime will pack advanced capabilities such as multi-channel control, noise cancellation, adjustable tuning and more. Pledge at least $25 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a copy of Imitone as a reward; pledge at least $60 if you want a copy of Imitone Prime.

Many geeks – myself included – have sometimes passed the time by debating who would win if this famous person squared off with this superhero, and so on. The upcoming collectible card game Triptych is a lot like that. The game features characters both fictional and real as well as other entities and geeky concepts.

At the core of it, Tryptich is a game of addition. Each card has a number on the top right corner. Players form a deck of 30 cards, but the total value of the cards in the deck must not exceed 120. Each round players draw three cards, and the player whose cards have the highest total value wins the round. Of course, it won’t be much of a game if that’s all there is to it, so the makers of Triptych added card types and abilities to the mix. For instance, George Washington has an ability called Revolution, which lets you subtract 5 to the value of a card with the royal or leader type.

In addition, abilities fall under four classes: Body, Mind, Spirit and Anytime. After players draw their three cards for the round, they play one game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine what abilities can be played that round. Rock is Body, paper is Mind and scissors are Spirit. As its name implies, Anytime abilities can be used regardless of the result of the Rock, Paper, Scissors played.

After playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, each player takes turns playing one card at a time, activating a usable ability if they choose and immediately resolving its effects. When both players have played three cards each, you then add the final value of your cards. As you can see, because of the abilities the individual values of the cards have most likely changed at this point. The player with the highest total card value wins the round.

The loser must then remove cards from his or her deck equal to the point differential between their total card values, e.g. if you scored 20 and your opponent scored 25, then you have to remove 5 cards from your deck. The game ends when one of you runs out of cards, with the winner naturally being the one with a card or cards remaining in his or her deck.

Those are the basic rules of the game, but there are other rules that I didn’t explain here. You can download the rulebook for free on the Triptych website. In fact, like Cards Against Humanity, not only can you download the rulebook, you can also download and print the starter cards and the first expansion for free.

Triptych also shares one of the weaknesses of Cards Against Humanity – some of its cards may offend or unnerve some people. For instance, there’s a Jesus Christ card and a Martin Luther King Jr., card. It’s nowhere near as offensive as Cards Against Humanity, but you should still avoid playing this with certain people.

Pledge at least $27 (USD) on Kickstarter to get the 90-card starter set as well as 12 dice as a reward. As mentioned in the video, the printed cards you’ll get as a reward have a higher quality compared to the free PDF of the same cards, so that’s a nice incentive to buy the set.

There are also higher reward tiers that let you send your own image or artwork to be printed on a card. Can you, Moby Dick and sports beat Albert Einstein, foreshadowing and drugs? Get Triptych and you’ll find out. My money’s on your team.

[via Geeks Are Sexy]

Late last year I talked about the DIY Gamer Kit, which contained all the parts you need to assemble your own handheld game console. In other words, the kit introduces you to video game hardware. Aurélien Rodot’s Gamebuino on the other hand comes fully assembled and is intended to get you into video game software.

The Gamebuino has an ATmega 328 microcontroller, an 84 x 84 monochrome display with automatic backlight, six buttons, a 4-channel speaker and a 240mAh battery. It also has four ports: one microUSB, one microSD and two I2C ports. While the DIY Gamer Kit is also based on the Arduino language, Aurélien made a software library for Gamebuino, which includes a graphics engine, a game engine, sound effects, user interface and more. Coding a Gamebuino game will be easier and faster because you don’t have to start from scratch.

Aurélien says he’s already finalized the Gamebuino’s hardware, the software library and a few sample games. Right now he’s working on a browser that will let you load and switch between games from a microSD card. He’s also going to make tutorials and setup an online community to make it easier for newbies to get help. Pledge at least €35 (~$48 USD) on Indiegogo to get a Gamebuino – and priceless knowledge – as a reward.

[via Kotaku]

Late last year we found out about Looking Glass, a volumetric printing service. Each 3D object consists of printed slices stacked and stuck together in a case. This month the company relaunched with a better and more affordable service.

I talked with Looking Glass founder Shawn Frayne shortly before their relaunch. Shawn said they’ve “made dramatic improvements in the resolution and color-fidelity” of their product since we first heard about them. They can also now make prints out of CT scan data, in addition to .obj, .ply and .skp files. With the help of these improvements, Shawn said that they’re barely keeping up with orders. Doctors in particular have been asking Shawn for prints of CT scans.

The two images above show a Looking Glass print of an injured foot based on CT scan data. Shawn says it’s the first volumetric printed object with varying opacity. Speaking of which, Shawn said that Looking Glass isn’t looking to compete with 3D printing services. The company is focused on making prints that are great to look at instead of ones that are meant to be touched or used.

http://vimeo.com/88536241

In my first article about Looking Glass, I mused that the prints would be much better if the slices were removable. Shawn said he’s gotten requests about that option as well and that it is possible, though his company isn’t going to offer that option anytime soon. I wonder if making the slices removable is a lot more complicated than it sounds.

Shawn did offer an alternative to my suggestion. Instead of one Looking Glass print with removable slices, the company can take a 3D model and split it into multiple prints: “We do however offer cross-sectional prints, where several Looking Glasses can be combined like building blocks to reconstruct, say, a heart or enlarged cell volumetric image.  When these blocks are pulled apart, the internals of the volumetric image can then be examined.”

Looking Glass accepts orders online if your source file is .obj or .ply. Their standard size is 9 cm x 5 cm x 4 cm (approx. 3.5″ x 2″ x 1.6″), and costs $65 (USD) plus $10 shipping anywhere in the world. Email Shawn at smf[at]lookingglassfactory.com for other print requests, such as printing from CT scan data or printing large objects. Shawn says they can make prints as large as a person if they want to. You can also check out and buy customer-submitted prints on the Looking Glass site.