I’ve already got more flash drives than I know what to do with, but every once in a while I’ll see some that I need to add to my seemingly endless collection anyway. With these cool flash drives made out of old vacuum tubes, you’ll be able to send your data back in time.
They’re made by Latvian steampunk artist Slava Tech, and use old Pentode tubes as containers for USB flash memory. The coolest part is how they glow from the red, green or blue LED inside. It would be really cool if he made one with an orange LED for a more authentic look, though the red one is pretty close.
Each one is based on a high quality SanDisk flash drive, set into an old Russian vacuum tube from the 1980s, and accented with copper details.
Prices for the vacuum tube flash drives range from $69 to $79(USD), and they’re currently available in either 8GB or 16GB storage options.
We’ve already seen how the fashion industry can make use of robotics to make life easier for shoppers. But a Japanese clothing chain called United Arrows also found a way to use robots to make things more fun for window shoppers. The company installed a robotic mannequin in one of their stores that mimicked the movements of the person in front of it.
The mimicking mannequin is called MarionetteBot. It uses a Kinect to capture and help analyze the movements of a person. A motor moves a total of 16 wires to match the mannequin’s pose. MarionetteBot isn’t fast or limber enough to perfectly mimic the moves of a person, but it still proved to be a hit.
Many people have a home theater PC sitting right next to their HDTVs. It’s not always the best-looking solution to manage your media, but oftentimes it’s the most functional. There’s no reason why your HTPC should look ugly. Check out this awesome design that Jeffrey Stephenson came up with.
Project Ayr is a fanless home theater PC that’s encased in an Art Deco-inspired mahogany shell. It’s definitely a nice retro style case and would look great sitting in your living room. Inside the wooden case, which has an aluminum frame, there’s an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, an Intel Cherryville SSD, 150W Pico PSU and an illuminated Silverstone HE02 passive heatsink, which occupies the majority of the case, and is cleverly integrated into the design.
Jeffery states that his custom design is “a solid state, fanless, no-moving-parts, dead silent home theater PC,” cutting down on the drone of fans while Jeff watches his favorite movies.
There was some uproar about the possibility of using unarmed drones over US soil to locate that cop turned killer fugitive, but maybe that’s because drones have a bad rap because of all of the bombs they’ve been known to drop. Now, engineers at FliteTest are trying to make a kinder, gentler drone, the kind that captures artsy images.
The Lomo-Copter is a remote-controlled tricopter, outfitted with a medium-format Diana F+ Lomography camera with an instant back and remote-triggering mechanism. This brings fuzzy, light-leaky, and vignette stylized imagery to secret spy footage.
The Lomo-Copter also has another camera mounted to the Lomo-cam’s viewfinder, which transmits real-time footage to the operator’s stylish goggles for first-person-view operation of the drone, so they can snap pictures remotely with the old-school analog camera. Here’s a comparison of the FPV goggles and a Lomo print:
So if you’re worried about drones flying over your neighborhood, don’t be because some of them are actually pretty nice, and they might just Instagram you some photos of your garden gnomes.
I’m sure that chess has dozens – if not hundreds – of virtual versions that let people play against each other online. This project by YouTuber FunGowRightNow12 and his fellow students at Northeastern University also offers online multiplayer, but it’s not a videogame. It uses a couple of physical boards along with chess pieces that move on their own.
FunGowRightNow12 and his group-mates made the wireless chess boards for their senior project back in April 2012. The end result of the project is nothing short of magical: you move your chess piece, and the corresponding piece on your opponent’s board does the exact same move and vice versa. It even takes captured pieces out of the board for you. Since the commands are transferred via the Internet, you and your opponents could be anywhere across the globe and you’ll still be able to play with the pieces.
Sadly, FunGowRightNow12 didn’t go into details about the intricacies of their project aside from what he and his group-mates shared on Reddit, but they did post a couple of additional videos. This one shows what’s inside the board:
It looks like there’s a robotic X/Y arm with a retractable magnet on it for moving the pieces around, which is similar to how those Phantom Force computerized chess sets work. The big difference here is that you can play with another human on the other side of the world using this system.
The video below shows how the system handles less straightforward maneuvers such as castling and rescinding illegal moves. In the case of the latter, FunGowRightNow12 and his pals hooked up a computer with a program that determines what the valid moves are at the start of every turn. If it detects an illegal move, the turn will be suspended until the player makes a correct move. Only then will the turn be sent to the other board.
If you’re like me, you probably spend way too much time staring at a computer screen. There are some ways to reduce eyestrain, but I have to say that using IKEA’s Dioder LED light strips is one of the most effective since it’s kind of a low-tech, low-cost way of hacking your monitor into a Philips Ambilight.
IKEA Hacker Skipernicus did this, by mounting the $30 Dioder lights on the back of his monitor. He used an Ergotron arm to prop his monitor up, but this should work with any type of monitor, including HDTVs. He also Velcroed the controller the back of the monitor, for easy access, and zip-ties were used to connect the wiring to the monitor arm.
While they won’t match the on-screen colors like an actual Ambilight, the Dioder strips can cycle through colors, and the the backlighting can reduce eyestrain, which is definitely a plus.
And for those of you who are more electronically-inclined, there actually is a color-matching hack available here.
What’s this? Two Q*bert posts in a week? Yeah, you got me. I guess I’m on a roll.
Remember how Q*bert used to let out that weird stream of gibberish expletives when one of his enemies got him? Well, one electronic musician decided to build himself a gadget which solely swears like Q*bert.
The Mr. @#?%! obscenity generator uses a variety of audio chips, including the classic Votrax SC-01A analog speech synthesizer. It was made by Count Funkula, using entirely parts that were available back in 1982, at the time the arcade machine came out. Check out some of the wondrous obscenities that stream forth from the orange guy’s proboscis…
Man, that little dude can swear like a truck driver. You can check out the schematics and read more about how Count Funkula built the Mr. @#?%! obscenity generator here. I’ll give you a hint – it doesn’t involve dropping balls and coiled-up snakes on anything.
Aside from generating heat, most electronic devices also emit electromagnetic fields. A rapid prototyping enthusiast named Dennis Siegel has found a way to tap into those fields and store them as usable energy by way of AA batteries. Think of his harvesters as the real life equivalent of the mutant Bishop.
Siegel wrote about his project on his website but he didn’t go into detail about his build process, only that he used “coils and high frequency diodes” to capture the electromagnetic fields. He also said that he made two different types of harvesters that convert electromagnetic fields of different frequencies. Using the harvesters couldn’t be simpler. They’ll automatically gather and store energy as long as there’s an electromagnetic field nearby. The harvesters also have an LED that glow in proportion to the strength of nearby electromagnetic fields. If you still can’t follow that, watch this creepy dude:
Siegel didn’t mention if he’s interested in making a commercial version of his project. But even if he is he still has a long way to go – his current prototypes need literally an entire day to charge one AA battery. Still, it’s nice to imagine that someday our gadgets will be powering each other and even themselves.
Developer Mike Leslie is working on what he calls Project Rita, a device that “keeps track of all of the information that the user is personally interested in” and ultimately “present the user with the right information at the right time.” Mike is giving us a taste of this Jarvis-level wizardry with one of Rita’s components, an Android app that toggles lamps on or off in a bad-ass manner.
Mike calls the app the Universal Geospatial Light Switch. When he points his phone to one of his lamps, the app sends GPS and compass data from the phone to a script that “understands the layout of the room.” The script will then order the lamp to turn itself off or on using the good old X10 home automation standard. Now on to the fun part!
Imagine if you could do this with any appliance. Now that’s would be a true universal remote control.
They don’t look stable, but I’m sure some Star Wars fan out there would risk falling over just for the chance to wear these one of a kind pair of shoes made by Mike Warren, a Play Editor at Instructables. As you can see, not only do they have Artoo’s uh, face, at the toe, they also use R2-D2 toys as their heels.
As you can see in the picture above the shoes each have a blinking LED on the toe area. The heels also retain their toy features, i.e. they can also light up as well as make Artoo sounds.
Use the Force of your browser and head to Instructables to find out how you can make your own astromech heels.
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