Hasta La Gadget!

What party would be complete this time of the year without the a sound system made from pumpkins? Don’t let its looks deceive you, because these speakers pack a powerful punch.

They’re essentially hollowed-out pumpkins that have been outfitted with a car stereo by Steve Meade. It might look like a simple process, but a lot of work actually went into assembling these things. Aside from hollowing out the pumpkins and carving them with the shapes of the car stereo parts, there’s also the matter of installing the actual parts and wiring everything up.

The result, of course, is nothing short of amazing. Too bad this sound system will rot within a couple of days after it was put together.

Here’s a video of these 500-watt speakers in action:

Have a thumpin’ Halloween!

[via Obvious Winner]

Still not living up to its name, Evil Controllers is back with another invention that should be very beneficial to Xbox 360 gamers. The company has come up with an Xbox 360 controller with a built-in rechargeable battery, just like the PS3′s controllers.

I’m actually surprised that Microsoft hasn’t released a controller like this, although to its credit it has released external rechargeable battery packs that can last for an entire day of gaming. But as Evil Controllers mentions in its Kickstarter video below, a controller with an internal battery is more environment-friendly and much lighter. Plus, Evil’s version is a long-lasting Lithium-ion battery, so you can play for up to 10 hours straight without recharging. You can skip to about 1:10 in the video for the meat of the pitch:

Here’s a quick look at the controller:

If you watched the Kickstarter video then you know that Evil Controllers is very considerate with their reward tiers. Pledge at least $80 (USD) and you get an Xbox 360 controller with their custom backplate built-in, or just pledge $50 to get a DIY kit so you can install the backplate on your own controller. You know where to go.

[via Joystiq]

We can always count on the geeks over at iFixit to buy the latest and greatest gadgets and then tear them up so we can see what they look like on the inside. It’s nice to see someone else open up their gadgets giving us a glimpse at how things are packaged and how repairable the device might be should we ever need to get into it on our own

iFixit used a heat gun, plastic opening tools, a spudger, and a T4 torx screwdriver, a T5 torx, and a set of iFixit Guitar Picks to open the tablet up.

Under its hood, iFixit found the following chips:

• NVIDIA 1.4 GHz Tegra 3 Processor
• Samsung KLMBG4GE4A 32 GB NAND Flash
• Micron 2RE22 D9QBJ 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Texas Instruments TPS659110 power management IC
• Marvell 88W8797-BMP2 wireless MIMO SoC
• Wolfson 8962E low power audio codec
• Cypress Semiconductor CY8C20466A capacitive touchscreen controller

In fact, they found multiple touchscreen controllers – presumably to help detect inputs from the touch cover keyboard as well as the screen. One of the components that’s most likely to fail over time in any gadget is the battery. It appears that while the battery is glued in, it is removable and said to be easier to remove than the battery of the iPad. Though that certainly doesn’t mean that the Surface tablet is easy to repair. iFixit rates the Surface tablet on repairability scale as 4/10 with 10 being the easiest to repair and 1 being the hardest. This is only slightly better than the nearly impossible-to-service iPad series.

I can’t help but wonder each time I see one of these tear downs of a new gadget if they’re able to put it back together so it works again.

[via iFixit]

There’s nothing more obnoxious than one of those guys with a pair of camouflage party pants and a hat that you can sip beer out of. But leave it to the geeks of the world to make drinking beer from a helmet just a little cooler.

Instructables contributor DucttapeNinja decided that the tacky sportsfan beer helmet needed a proper LARP-ing, and created this beer-sipping helmet thats’ based on Gimli’s helmet from the Lord of the Rings movies.

I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve seen armor that provides both head protection and ready access to alcohol – which is always a good thing to have around should you find yourself on the losing end of an axe fight.

DucttapeNinja thinks his helmet design could easily be applied to any helmet you’d like, so you could go for anything from a Beerba Fett, to a Sh*tfaced Spartan to a Daft Drunk with the proper helmet, and DtN’s Instructables beer helmet tutorial in hand.

[via DressedLikeMachines via Design You Trust]

I lack any of the skills you need to make cool mods and DIY projects of just about any type. That is certainly not true when it comes to modder Ben Heck. This geek took his hobby of building modded consoles and other items and turned it into his own web series. On the latest episode of his show, Heck returns to his console-modding roots showing us how to build one of his portable Xbox 360s.

Heck’s latest Xbox 360 Slim laptop has a 16-inch LED backlit display and a custom-routed and 3D printed enclosure housing the electronics from the gaming console. I’m not sure how easy something like this would be to pull off for your average DIY person with nothing but everyday tools. The fancy custom enclosure that Heck made required a computer-controlled router and a 3D printer, so unless you have ready access to those tools, you might be a little behind the curve. You can decide how difficult it might be by checking out the entire episode below:

I guess you could build something out of plywood to put your own portable console mod together. Still, even if you can’t pull off such a mod on your own, it’s very cool to see an Xbox 360 that can be played anywhere you happen to be – assuming an electrical outlet is nearby.