Hasta La Gadget!

Oh Arduino, is there anything you can’t do when put in the right hands? The hands in this case belong to a guy named Joven of ProtoDojo, and they whipped up the contraption you can see in the video below. Basically, it’s a wired NES controller that goes to an Arduino board, which in turn controls a set of servos. Those servos articulate conductive arms to touch the screen in just the right places. The whole contraption enables a rather playable version of Reckless Racing, making it feel all the more like the RC Pro Am successor it’s trying to be. Check it out in the video below, and then hope that Jovan hurries up and posts the instructions so we can start building our own.

[Thanks, Chad]

Continue reading RoboTouch brings a wired NES controller to a wireless iPad (video)

RoboTouch brings a wired NES controller to a wireless iPad (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TechShop, in San Francisco, is loaded to the gills with high-end tools of all descriptions.

If your town has a lending library for tools, consider yourself lucky. But if your town has TechShop, you’re in geek heaven.

TechShop, founded in 2006 in Silicon Valley, is a workshop filled to the gills with all kinds of tools. Instead of renting the tools, you pay a flat monthly fee and can come in and use whatever you want.

“It’s kind of like a health club,” says CEO Mark Hatch, “but it’s a health club for makers and geeks and tinkerers.”

For $100 per month, you get access to the workshop and all the tools inside it, ranging from the simple (and somewhat archaic) English wheel to the high-end and extremely precise CNC milling machine. They’ve got everything in between too, including TIG welders, table saws, drill presses, laser cutters, sewing equipment and 3-D model prototyping machines.

TechShop also offers classes (what, you don’t already know how to operate a laser cutter?)

The company has locations in Menlo Park, California, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and just opened a shop in San Francisco, in the South of Market district, not far from Wired’s headquarters. New York, Detroit and San Jose, California locations are coming soon, the company says.

Mythbusters star Adam Savage is a fan: In this video, he calls TechShop “the ultimate possibility engine.”

Watch the Wired video below, and let us know what you’d do with a workshop full of tools like this.

This DIY laser pistol can send out a kW-pulse of infrared coherent light.

DIY Pulse Laser Pistol Can Decimate Styrofoam and Plastic
Built by Patrick Priebe, this Pulse Laser Gun sends out a kW-pulse of infrared coherent light. When the beam is focused, it can blaze through plastic, Styrofoam, and even a razor blade—so don’t aim it at any parts you’d like to not see melted. It weighs in at two pounds, is 320mm long, and has a 3m range.

Geek Creates DIY Pulse Laser Pistol [Slashgear]

Logitech’s Z906 Surround Sound Speakers Make Their Debut
The successor to Logitech’s Z-5500 speaker set will be available later this month for $350. Boasting 5.1 channel surround sound and 500 watts (RMS) of power, the Z906 includes digital and analog inputs, a wireless remote, and compatibility with computers, televisions, Blu-ray, DVD, game consoles, and other audio sources through digital coaxial, digital optical, a 3.5mm jack, or RCA audio.

Logitech Intros 350 Surround Sound Speakers [Engadget]

The Book-Like Dodocase Now Has Models for the iPad 2
For $60, you can grab the standard Dodocase, which shares the same looks and traditional bookbinding construction as the original iPad version. But if you want something a little more special, they also have a $90 Limited Edition Dodocase with a solid core of bamboo and a cover of black and white Moroccan fabric.

Dodocase [Dodocase via Crunchgear]

H2O Shower Powered Radio, A Green Way to Jam While You Clean
The H2O Shower Powered Radio, debuting in Europe, gets its power from the flow of water through your shower hose. Water runs inside the case and goes into a micro turbine, which gets a generator spinning; this creates power that’s used to charge up the radio’s batteries. It gathers energy that otherwise would “literally go straight down the drain.” The maker, who previously commercialized another green product, the Wind-Up Radio, claims it’s compatible with 99% of showers.

H2O Shower Powered Radio [Tech Digest via Geeky Gadgets]

RC Bald Eagle Is Basically a Really Expensive Motorized Kite
It’s a gorgeous day outside, you don’t quite feel like the flying the kite, and the neighbors just built some fancy RC helicopter. One up them with this 9.5-foot remote controlled bald eagle. The wings are made of a nylon/Polyester blend and the frame and struts are constructed from carbon fiber. A rechargeable lithium battery allows up to 8 minutes of flight time after 20 minutes of charging. All this for the bargain price of $500.

The 9 1/2 Foot Remote Controlled Bald Eagle [Hammacher Schlemmer via Geeky Gadgets]

Tilt Sensing Quilt: Not Your Grandmother’s Kind of Quilt
This quilt not only keeps you warm when it’s chilly out, it includes 41 textile tilt sensors that can interact to provide a rough height-map so you could figure out what it’s currently draped over or covering (OK, so it’s not super useful, unless you want to discover if your roommate is borrowing your quilt while you’re out). It took a year to complete the quilt, which incorporates 6 tilt sensor petals and 41 tilt sensing beads. Data can be sent to a computer via Bluetooth or a USB.

Tilt Sensing Quilt [Instructables]

Jonas Kroyer’s DIY Ikonette lens takes some dreamy snaps

Today’s big photographic irony is that we take our super high-tech digital cameras — machines that can capture better photos more easily than ever before — and then muss up the results with blur, filters, fake scratches and effects that make it look like we were shooting on decades-old film that had been left on top of the airport-x-ray machine.

Photographer Jonas Kroyer decided to go one better, and took a cloudy, chipped old lens from an old Zeiss Ikonette camera and modded it to fit his Nikon D300. The resulting photos are blurry, lacking in contrast, and have some weird color shifts. They are, in short, fantastic.

It wasn’t quite as simple as ripping the lens off one camera and sticking it on another. After carefully removing the lens and bellows assembly from the camera body, Jonas built a metal plate which screwed into the bottom of his SLR and provided a strip along which the bellows rails could slide.

On the back end went a Nikon lens mount, culled from a donor lens, and brass knobs were added to make the sliding focus action easier to use. Finally, a spring from a ball-pen was used to keep the lens’s own shutter open.

I like to complain about slow maximum apertures in lenses (it’s the reason I own almost no zooms), but even I am amazed that this lens has a maximum aperture of ƒ9. Yes, that’s ƒ9 wide-open. The other choices are ƒ16 and ƒ32, and all three of these diaphragm opening cast a weird square-shaped highlight onto the sensor.

But despite all this, the lens captures pictures that would make Instapaper users jealous. Despite the low resolution, the images have a startling 3-D quality to them, especially the portraits, and the black and white images remind me of the prints I used to make through crappy enlarger lenses back in the darkroom. Most of all, though, is that I’m now inspired to put some junky glass on the front of my own digicams. Garage sales, here I come.

Ikonette a DIY DSLR-lens [Jonas Kroyer. Thanks, Mikkel!]

See Also:

• Review: The World Through a Fisheye Lens
• Plungercam: DIY Tilt-Shift Lens
• DIY iPhone Macro Lens Carousel
• DIY Fisheye Made From Broken Lens
• DVD Lens Makes Great Cellphone Macro Hack

The Reveal line from Phosphor displays time with Swarovski crystals

Gadget Lab Notes is an eclectic roundup of gadget news briefs and intriguing products that catch our eye.

Phosphor Reveal Wristwatches Ditch E Ink for Swarovski Crystals
Phosphor, a wristwatch maker that normally sticks with minimalist E Ink clock faces, has taken a turn for the shiny with their latest line. Using a low power “proprietary Micro-Magnetic Mechanical Digital technology”, colored Swarovski crystals are rotated around to display the time. There are six styles to choose from (two for guys, and four for the ladies) which start at $199.

Phosphor’s Reveal Wristwatch Uses Swarovski Crystals to Tell Time [Engadget]

Samsung’s Galaxy Pro Is Aimed At The BlackBerry Crowd
Samsung’s latest handset reveal is the Galaxy Pro, which features a 2.8-inch touchscreen with a four-row QWERTY keyboard underneath. Designed for business types, the “Think Free” Office Document Editor is included for viewing and editing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs on the go. Other known specs are pretty standard and include an 800MHz processor, a 3-megapixel camera, and that it will run Android Froyo.

Samsung Galaxy Pro [Samsung Hub via Engadget]

Goodbye Paper Charts: Delta Pilots May Be Testing iPads in the Cockpit Soon
The FAA began granting approval for professional iPad use in the cockpit in February, and now Delta Air Lines, the world’s second largest carrier, is looking for approval to try them out next quarter. Over the past ten years, pilots have gotten approval to use bulky “electronic flight bags,” which are computers for aviation use. The iPad would be a much lighter option. iPad flight navigation software is already in development at the request of pilots.

Apple iPads in Cockpits [Bloomberg via Apple Insider]

Western Digital Gobbles Up Competitor Hitachi GST
Hitachi’s hard drive unit was recently purchased by Western Digital in a $4.3 billion deal. Western Digital, currently the largest manufacturer in the hard drive industry, attempted to buy another competitor (Seagate) earlier this year. That plan failed due to antitrust concerns.

Western Digital Acquires Hitachi Hard Drive Unit [All Things D]

DIY Apple-Style Speakers Look Great Next to Your iMac
Since Apple doesn’t manufacture speakers that match their brushed aluminum devices, one DIY-er decided to use a CNC machine to make some of his own. A Dayton Audio amp powers the 2.1 speaker system and a subwoofer is hidden below the table. The gold-finish of the speaker cones does deviate from the color scheme a bit, though.

Apple-Inspired Speakers [Hackaday via Slashgear]

Vague Clock Only Tells The Time When Its Squishy Surface Is Pressed
Created under the principal that time is often the cause of stress, the Vague Clock has a soft white surface that only reveals the time when it’s pressed. Unfortunately, the time is still displayed on your monitor, your smartphone, the oven, the microwave…

Vague Clock [Yanko Design]