Hasta La Gadget!

The tenth James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me will forever stand out as the movie that had the submarine car in it. Now you can own part of pop culture history: RM Auctions will be putting the bizarre underwater vehicle up for grabs this September. If you’re more of a Transformers fan, think of it as an Autobot that only has alternate modes. Eh? Eh? Sold you with that bit didn’t I?

The submarine was based on the 1976 Lotus Esprit, which was Bond’s signature ride in The Spy Who Loved Me. Apparently the prop makers built different models for the famous transformation scene, which you’ll see in the video below courtesy of YouTuber Maccastreisfan.

RM Auctions will be selling the fully transformed submarine model. According to Lotus Esprit World, the submarine has four fixed fins and four propellers with steering vanes. Apparently it even shoots projectiles. So yeah, it’s a real working sub. The downside? It barely works. It has no brakes and has horrible visibility because its windows are sealed. Obviously it doesn’t transform into a car, much less a Lotus Esprit.

Of course moviegoers didn’t care that the sub was actually a lemon. The movie did very well and Lotus made bank off of the publicity. According to BBC, RM Auctions estimates that the car will fetch around $760,000 (USD). Expensive. Too expensive. Especially when you can get an Esprit that actually drives for about 8% of that.

[via Werd, Lotus Esprit World & BBC]

Patrick Priebe is no stranger to laser–based prop weapons, and Wicked Lasers is no stranger to borderline illegal lasers. Put the two together and this is what you get: a minigun replica that fires lasers instead of bullets. It has a laser sight too.

Patrick is still working on the final prop; the one in the video below is just a prototype. The gun has six Spyder 3 Arctic lasers and one Spyder 3 Krypton laser. From what I saw in the video, the gun has an electric motor and a knob that can be used to adjust the barrel’s rotation speed. The Arctic lasers all fire at once though. Might as well call it the Eyebliterator.

He is Priebe Weapons Guy, and this is his new weapon.

[via CNET Asia]

Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology may lead to better mobile gadgets and perhaps even the rise of new kinds of devices, thanks to its low power consumption and cost. But like NFC – another technology with huge potential – as of now only a handful of consumer devices support this technology. But thanks to a small company, tinkerers can incorporate BLE to their projects. All they need is the BLEduino.

Made by Kytelabs, the tiny BLEduino board is based on the Arduino Leonardo. That means it will work with Arduino shields and code. Watch the video below to see examples of devices that can be made using BLEduino.

Imagine that. You can make your own Bluetooth controller! Pledge at least $34 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a BLEduino as a reward. In case you want to make sure that your BLEduino will work with all of your shields, the higher reward tiers also come with Shield-Shield, an attachment that was also invented by Kytelabs. Shield-Shield makes the BLEduino compatible with both the old and new pin layout of Arduino shields.

A few months ago we saw an awesome tie with a built-in equalizer. Bill Porter is working on a more interactive necktie: one that plays Tetris. Bill made it to trump his usual geeky teaching attire, a lab coat with lots of LEDs on it. Even in its unfinished state I think we can all agree that the Tetris Tie is much better than the lab coat.

The tie is made of a DigiSpark microcontroller, 80 RGB LEDs and two Li-ion batteries in a custom 3D-printed housing. Bill originally used the batteries for his wedding suit. Don’t be afraid of clicking that link; it’s much better than the lab coat.

All in all Bill only spent four hours and about $50(USD) to make the tie, but as I said, it’s still unfinished. Right now the tie only displays random movements. I’m pretty sure he’s also going to trim the cardboard overlay or perhaps get rid of it altogether. Bill is also planning on adding A.I. that can actually play the game as well as a Bluetooth module so that it can be played using a smartphone as a controller.

[via Bill Porter via inStash]

As the recent NSA leaks have proven, a lot – if not all – of what you do, say and store online can be examined and archived by other people and organizations without your knowledge or approval. That’s why Adafruit Industries put together a DIY kit for those looking to add an extra layer of anonymity and security to their online activities. It’s called the Onion Pi, a plug and play device that creates an anonymous access point.

As you may have guessed, the device is based on the popular Raspberry Pi computer. When you connect it to the Internet via an Ethernet cable, it creates a Wi-Fi access point that is connected to the Tor network. In simple terms, the Tor network encrypts your connection and routes it through a random series of relays. This makes it harder – but not necessarily impossible – to identify your location as well as the data that you’re sending or receiving. You can listen to the folks at Adafruit talk about the Onion Pi at around 11:50 in the video below:

Stage a PRISM break and order the Onion Pi kit from Adafruit Industries. The kit with a small antenna is available for $90 (USD); there’s a kit that comes with a large antenna but it’s out of stock at the moment. Adafruit donates part of the proceeds from the sale of the Onion Pi to the Tor Foundation. Sadly the Onion Pi logo is not included in the kit.

[via OhGizmo!]