Clockee Talkee has a simple and compact design. It comes in pairs, but you can buy a whole bunch of them and send a message to all other units from one of the devices. You can also switch to one of eight channels if you need to have a private chat with just one Clockee Talkee user. One unit can reach other Clockee Talkees within 0.6 mi, and you can unplug it and put three AAA batteries inside if you want to use it on the go. Aside from its clock and intercom, it also has a built-in thermometer. You can also set it so that its LED shows the time and temperature when you clap.
Pledge at least $59 (USD) on Indiegogo to get a pair of Clockee Talkees. Over and out.
A couple of years ago Triggertrap released its namesake device, an electronic camera trigger that activates your camera based on a variety of inputs. Recently the company launched a Kickstarter for an improved camera trigger, which they’re calling Redsnap. It’s modular, which not only makes it compact but versatile as well.
The Redsnap has a base block that you can connect to up to two sensors at once. The base block handles long exposure and time lapse shots. At launch, the Redsnap will have the following sensors: a laser sensor (with a built-in laser), a light sensor, a passive infrared sensor and a sound sensor. Triggertrap says they will release more sensors in the future.
Because you can connect two sensors at once, you can set up shots for a variety of conditions. For instance, you can rig your camera to shoot only when the light sensor and the sound sensor are both triggered. Or you can connect two of the same sensor if you wish. The Redsnap also has three trigger outputs, so you can connect multiple cameras or flashes and have them all go off at the same time.
Pledge at least £35 (~$57 USD) on Kickstarter to receive the base Triggertrap Redsnap kit as a reward – which is capable of shooting time-lapse photos. A kit with the light sensor goes for £60 (~$97 USD), and a complete high-speed kit with laser and sound sensors is £90 ($145 USD). Check out all of the available bundles over on their fundraising page.
Kids love to play fight. Just give them a few seconds of idle time and their minds will transform them into all sorts of characters. Soon enough you’ll hear them making sound effects for their movements and weapons. But the problem with being their own foley artist is that they can’t pew pew pew and spew killer lines at the same time. The Mega Stomp Battle can help with that.
The Mega Stomp Battle is composed of a small box and a wand that emit sound effects when you walk, wave the wand or push the wand’s trigger. It has 10 sound banks or character types, such as a knight, a giant monster or a pirate. Each sound bank has at least six sounds for different types of movements like walking, attacking and more.
Someone on YouTube said we should watch the video on mute. I disagree. The guys in the video look stupid even with the sound on. But you might not care about how you look once you’ve tried living a life with sound effects. You can order Mega Stomp Battle from ThinkGeek for $40 (USD).
Hot Wheels’ toy cars let kids pretend they’re hotshot racers. The company’s new Car Maker model kit on the other hand, lets them be factory workers. The kit has a machine that turns a stick of wax into a car body by pressing it into a heated mold. The resulting car body can then be customized with a chassis and stickers.
The molding machine has voice prompts that walk you through the steps for making a car. The machine has a compartment that heats the molds and a chute on top for the wax sticks. It takes about 8 minutes to turn a stick into a car body. There’s a demo video of the kit on Hot Wheels’ website, but in the meantime you can check out the ad below:
The Hot Wheels Car Maker is available on Amazon for $40 (USD). Each kit comes with 10 wax sticks, two molds, three chassis and three sheets of stickers. You can also buy more wax sticks and other kinds of car molds. And if you have a kid, you will buy more wax sticks and car molds.
Tinkerers, hackers, makers, geeks – whatever you call them, craftsmen who specialize in electronics and software want to customize their work environment. It manifests in lots of ways: custom-built computers, hardware mods and software hacks. But unless they’re also good at carpentry, they may find it hard to personalize their furniture or workstation. That’s where the Kickstarter project called MultiMod kit comes in.
The kits are based on two simple parts: PVC-coated steel poles and clamp joints. The idea is that you can combine any number of poles and joints to satisfy your needs. Add accessories like countertops, casters and hooks and you can build anything from a small tray to a portable 3D printer stand to a multi-monitor battlestation, as shown in the images above and below. Like LEGO, you can easily dismantle and reuse the parts, which means their usefulness is mainly limited by your needs and imagination.
MultiMod is actually a bundled version of parts that you can buy piece by piece under the name Fitz Kits. Honestly I don’t why Cody Wilmer and his partners took to Kickstarter for MultiMods when they already have Fitz Kits setup. That doesn’t make their invention any less useful though.
Pledge at least $75 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a MultiMod kit. The Battlestation kit in the images above can be yours if you pledge at least $95. You can also have a look at the Fitz Kits shop if you don’t need a lot of poles and joints at once.
We’ve featured a variety of rapid fire rubber band guns before, but they were either custom made or crazy expensive. XYZbot is here for us poor, lazy and non-mechanically-inclined folks. They launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for a fully automatic and electric rubber band machine gun that’s cheap and easy to assemble.
The gun is made of laser cut wood. All you need is a pair of pliers, a screwdriver and 30 minutes of your time to assemble the gun. Judging from the image and the video, you’ll need five AA batteries as well, which is a bummer. I suppose you can use rechargeable batteries to cut down on costs and waste. The gun only has one mode, rapid fire, which spews rubber bands at about 800 rounds per minute. You can only load 64 rubber bands at a time though. XYZbot said you can try loading two rubber bands per slot for a total of 128, but you’ll have to be more careful – and more patient – when loading.
Now comes the best part: a pledge of at least $49 (USD) on Kickstarter will be enough to get you a kit. You can also pledge at least $59 to get the gun in time for Christmas.
A few months ago we saw the subatomic particle jewelry by 3D printing specialists Mixee Labs. Now they’re making something much much bigger: molecules. Available as pendants or earrings, the molecular jewelry are sure to get a reaction from chemistry geeks and are a great way to strengthen bonds with loved ones.
Mixee Labs has a variety of ready to print templates, which include molecules of popular substances. Adrenaline, testosterone and of course caffeine. The shop also has a link to molecule databases in case the one you want – crystal meth? – isn’t one of the templates. After you’ve chosen a molecule, you can tweak the thickness of the atoms and the bonds. Finally, you can choose whether to have your jewelry printed on nylon plastic, stainless steel, sterling silver or gold-plated brass.
You can order the molecular jewelry from Mixee Labs. Prices start at $10 (USD) for nylon plastic, $60 for stainless steel and $160 for sterling silver and gold-plated brass. Yeah science! Yeah 3D printing!
If you have to ask what an oscilloscope is, Gabriel Anzziani’s invention isn’t for you. The founder of Gabotronics made waves when he created the amazingly tiny Xprotolab oscilloscope. Now he’s working on the Oscilloscope Watch, a more portable and versatile version of the Xprotolab.
Like the Xprotolab, the watch is an oscilloscope, a waveform generator, a protocol sniffer, a frequency counter and a logic analyzer in a device that’s about the same size as a sports watch. It has a 1.28″ e-paper display and a 400mAh Li-ion battery that should last up to 12 hours of continuous use or over 30 days if you’re just using it as a watch. It’s powered by the ATxmega128A4U 8-bit microcontroller and will have complementary PC and Android apps. Gabriel is still figuring out the best form for the instrument’s probes. He’s leaning towards integrating them in a keychain, but he’s also considering turning them into wristbands or even the straps for the watch.
Pledge at least $100 (USD) on Kickstarter to get an Oscilloscope Watch as a reward. Eat your heart out, Tokyoflash.
Apple’s introduction of the Lightning connector means that people like me who have both a new and an old iOS device have more cables to keep track of and less USB ports to plug them into. If you’re looking for a simple and cheap solution, have a look at the Bi-Cord. But just look at it, don’t put down money for it just yet.
The Bi-Cord has a USB connector at one end. Then it splits into two cords, one with a 30-pin connector and one with a Lightning connector. Future versions could have connectors for other devices such as a micro-USB. Its inventor, Patrick Graham, claims that the Bi-Cord can be used to charge two devices at once. What I don’t know is if the cord can also sync two devices at once. The cords are each 6′ long and are made of braided nylon for added durability.
Pledge at least $15 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Bi-Cord as a reward. On one hand, that’s a good deal, considering Apple sells its cables for $19 each. On the other hand, if I were you I’d wait until Patrick reveals more information about the Bi-Cord’s parts, particularly if Patrick uses Apple-certified connectors. Because if the connectors are not certified all we have here could be two broken cables in one.
Yep, the rumors were spot-on. At the 2013 IFA trade show, Sony revealed two of the most unusual cameras you’ll ever see. The Cyber-shot QX10 and QX100 Lens Cameras pack all of the necessary hardware inside a tiny cylinder, save for a viewfinder. Why? Because the two point-and-shoot cameras are meant as an upgrade for people who use their smartphone as their main camera. Now their phones can just be viewfinders, or even ditched altogether.
Remember the WVIL camera concept that appeared in 2011? The QX cameras are a lot like that. As Sony Alpha Rumors leaked a couple of weeks ago, the QX100 (seen above) has the same lens and 20.2mp CMOS sensor as the beloved RX100 Mark II camera while the QX10 (below) shares the lens and 18.2mp sensor of the WX150 point-and-shoot. Both cameras have their own battery and a slot for a microSD, microSDHC or a Memory Stick Micro card.
As you’ll see in the pictures and videos below, Sony is pushing these cameras together with the newly introduced Xperia Z Android smartphone. In fact, Sony is selling a plastic case that makes it easier to attach the QX cameras to the Xperia Z. Makes you wonder about the other Sony device in the images eh? It’s safe to assume that both the Xperia Z and the mystery device support NFC, which is the easiest way to pair the cameras to a phone. But the QX cameras can also be used with other Android phones and even iOS devices via the Sony PlayMemories app and a Wi-Fi connection.
To be clear, both QX cameras can be used on their own, but if you can afford either camera chances are you also have an Android or iOS device. If so, you can use the cameras’ clamp to attach them to your mobile device. Then get the PlayMemories app so you can use your device as a viewfinder, like so:
But as was imagined with the WVIL, you can keep a QX camera detached from your mobile device to make it easier to shoot from odd heights or angles…
…or to include yourself in the shot:
Then you can view, save or upload the photo or video on your mobile device using Sony’s app. The cameras will stay connected to your mobile device up to about 30ft., but the connection will likely be cut off if there are walls or other thick objects between the two devices.
Here’s Sony with more about the QX100 and QX10:
The cameras seem like great ideas for casual users, but they do have a couple of tradeoffs, most notably the way they connect to a smartphone. If you’re fortunate enough to have an NFC enabled phone, connecting to the lens cam is as easy as touching the two devices together, which automatically authenticates and connects them via Wi-Fi. However, if you don’t, you’ll have to manually connect them via Wi-Fi. It’s not clear if this creates an AdHoc Wi-Fi network between the phone and the lens, or if it requires a Wi-Fi infrastructure connection to be available. I’d assume it’s the former, which would mean your smartphone will be temporarily disconnected from any live Wi-Fi connections while connected to the camera. Then there’s the process of taking pictures with the camera. I have not tested either of the cameras, but David Pierce of The Verge did. Skip to about 0:40 in The Verge’s hands-on video below and you’ll see what I’m talking about:
Not exactly smooth, eh? Then again, unless you have the Nokia 1020 the QX cameras are significantly better than your phone’s cameras. Ultimately that should be their main selling point. You can pre-order both the QX100 and QX10 from Sony’s online store or from Amazon. The QX100 costs $500 (USD) (its big brother, the RX100 costs $750) while the QX10 costs $250 (the WX150 costs $400).
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