Hasta La Gadget!

Man who catch fly with chopstick, accomplish anything. Man who catch most sushi with chopstick, become ChopsticKing. That idea behind – I mean that’s the idea behind Chopsticking, an Arduino-based board game made by NYU ITP students Christina Carter and Jess Jiyoung Jung. It’s a two-player game where you compete to grab the greatest number of sushi.

Chopsticking consists of two pairs of chopsticks, a board with a circular receptacle and tokens that look like sushi. There’s a metal plate that obscures part of the bin as it rotates, making it harder to fish out the tokens. Before you play the game, you first have to hold the chopsticks in the proper manner – your index finger and thumb must be resting on the upper stick while the lower half of your thumb anchors the lower stick in place. The Chopsticking sticks have sensors that detect if your fingers are in the right areas, so no cheating by using a fork or your fingers.

When the game begins, you pick up sushi tokens as fast as you can, but you also have to dip them in “soy sauce”, which is actually an RFID reader that detects the tags on the sushi. The player is awarded two scores at the end of the time limit. One is for the number of sushi you were able to dip in the sauce while the other is for how well you held the chopsticks.

Christina and Jess showed off Chopsticking at the World Maker Faire in New York City. It must have been a hit-and-miss affair.

[Chopsticking via MAKE]

I don’t know about you, but I have always wanted to have my own Speeder Bike from the Endor forest in Return of the Jedi. I never thought to make one using Power Wheels. Well, Instructables member miketherdaintx has done just that. He has built a 74-Z speeder bike using a Power Wheels toy car.

It may not go very fast, but it looks pretty awesome. Any kid would love this. If you want to build one for yourself, you can check out all of the photos and instructions at the link above.

Too bad an adult would totally destroy this. That wouldn’t keep me from riding it through. It just would be the slowest Speeder chase ever.

[via Neatorama]

YouTuber roboband used a Raspberry Pi and his own software to “translate” the audio from some of Nintendo’s classic games. The transcriptions were then relayed in real time to two musical instruments: a self-playing piano aka a player piano and a robot percussionist. The result? Live background music and sound effects!

I know roboband’s idea is hard to describe, so it’s best if you just watch these robros in action:

More please! But robo percussionist needs to step his game up. Maybe he should take lessons from StickBoy.

[via Devour]

The Tooth Fairy is one busy lady! She flies from house to house every night, collecting teeth that kids have left under their pillows and leaving a dollar or two (or a special surprise) in exchange for it.

So that’s the story our parents told us, and I’m sticking with it.

But with the growing population, the Tooth Fairy is probably having a hard time keeping up. Awesome dad Jeff Highsmith wanted to make sure his kid’s teeth are received in a timely manner, so he built a vacuum-powered pneumatic tube system that’ll “send” them straight to the Tooth Fairy. An adult can hang out at the receiving station to return some cash or gifts back to the child waiting on the other end of the line.

Jeff built an easy-to-navigate interface using Hype and used Raspberry Pi to power the whole thing. Aside from the Tooth Fairy, other recipients to choose from include Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, so just think of all the wish lists and letters your kid will be sending when those holidays roll around.

[Make: via Hack a Day via Neatorama]

About three years ago, I talked about Table Connect, a 58″ touchscreen display that mirrors the screen of an iPhone. Or not. It turns out that the display we saw in the video wasn’t even a prototype; the “demo video” we saw was made using special effects. But now the same people behind that viral video claim they can make a real device.

Now called TableConnect – the lack of a space tells you they’re serious this time – is more or less the same idea, except now the final product will supposedly work with both iOS and Android devices. As with the fake product, you’ll be able to navigate and control your mobile device from the screen itself. The table can even be propped in an upright position to mimic the portrait mode of mobile devices.

TableConnect is expected to have an edge-to-edge 1080p LED touchscreen and come in two sizes: 60″ and 32″. It will also have several “Smart Areas” – i.e. home buttons on every corner and orientation buttons on the edges.

TableConnect will also supposedly support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and HDMI connectivity, although this part is confusing because the prototype shown in the video below connects to an iPhone 4 using a 30-pin cable. TableConnect will also require a jailbroken iOS device, although the final product will supposedly come with a “pre-configured” iPhone or iPad. There’s currently no word on exactly which Android devices it will work with.

TableConnect is currently asking for money on Indiegogo to help with the development of the final product. Unlike most fundraising projects you cannot get a TableConnect as a reward, but even if they did offer one, most of us won’t be able to afford it anyway. The projected final cost for the 60″ version is a jaw-dropping €25,000 (~$33,000 USD) while the 32″ version will cost €15,000 (~$20,000 USD). There goes my dream of playing epic sessions of Spaceteam.

[via TableConnect]