Hasta La Gadget!

Show off your love for retro gaming with this animated pixel art frame. Similar to the Pixel and Pixel V2, Game Frame is a digital canvas that can be loaded up with hundreds of your favorite 8-bit video game characters and symbols. Time to show off some 8-bit art in your home.

Basically the frame is a grid of 256 ultra-bright LED pixels, for showing off all kinds of geek art. In fact, Game Frame comes with over 40 brand new animations from eBoy. The hardware is Arduino-based, and the complete source code will be released once they ship. Thousands of images & animations can be stored on SD and played back the way you want, configured by two buttons on top.

While it’s not as high resolution as the Pixel, there’s something to be said for the chunky square LED pixels on the Game Frame.

A pledge of at least $230(USD) will get you a completely assembled Game Frame, while you can pick up a kit version with all components but the frame for $150, or without the LEDs for $60.

[via This is Why I’m Broke]

Sure, alarm clocks are a dime a dozen these days – and many people even use their mobile gadgets instead of a traditional alarm. But if you’re looking for a truly geektastic looking alarm clock, you’ll want to check out the Xronos.

This custom-built alarm clock has a unique style that would look perfect in a home game room or a geeky bedroom. It’s got a large LED dot-matrix display that can display time in green, red or orange, as well as in several fonts. Adding to its gamer style is the fact that it’s programmed and snoozed using real arcade buttons. The clock offers both 12- and 24-hours modes and can also speak the time or date, as well as provide audio feedback when setting the time. You can even set independent alarms for each day of the week.

In addition to offering alarm functionality, the Xronos offers a built in temperature sensor. And since it’s built on the open source Arduino platform, you can customize the programming to your liking. But the customization doesn’t end there. Alarm sounds are stored on a MicroSD card, you can change those if the 10 built-in sounds don’t entice you to get out of bed.

You can check out the Xronos clock in action in the video clip below:

If you like what you see, head on over to Len’s Digital’s Etsy shop, where you can order the Xronos clock for $200(USD).

There are a lot of things to be sad about these days. Inflation. War. Poverty. A beaten-down spirit is no good in these trying times. Brendan Dawes knows this, which is probably why he came up with this awesome project called ‘The Happiness Machine.”

It’s basically an Internet-connected printer that scans the world wide web for snippets of positivity from We Feel Fine. It’s been programmed to only print stuff that contain the word ‘happy’, hence, its name.

However, it can also be programmed to print other stuff like train schedules or the daily news. Pretty nifty, right?

Brendan showed off an updated version of The Happiness Machine at the London Design Festival 2012. Instead of just printing happy stuff, people could also choose to print sad feelings by selecting their preferences on the printer’s capacitive touch buttons.

[via The Creators Project via BitRebels]

The Synapse is Nixon’s touch-activated digital watch that’s futuristic-looking enough to please sci-fi junkies (and robots) everywhere. This LCD watch is waterproof up to 100m, and has a digital movement with a touch-activated face. It includes an alarm chime timer and the usual features you’d expect from a digital chronograph watch.

I like how the main face of the watch displays a lot of information at the same time, with minimal use of graphics. Time, alarm, chronograph and date information is all displayed simultaneously using stylized dot-matrix digits.

Its all-chrome look is definitely modern, but if you’re retro-obsessed, go for the golden version. If that doesn’t rock your boat, then the stealthy gunmetal version might work for you.

The Synapse watch is available for $200 to $250 directly from Nixon.

[via HiConsumption]