Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re a fan of deadmau5, and have a massive budget for your Halloween costume, here’s something that’ll blow all your friends away. It’s a replica of the performer’s famous light-up stage head, and it can be yours for the low, low price of $2750 (USD).

It was made by Etsy artist Jeffrey Nappi, and it has an orb-shaped helmet, covered in 168 RGB LEDs, along with electroluminescent mouse ears. It’s operated by a San Devices E680 pixel controller and Madrix computer lighting control software which can be programmed to display any imagery you’d like. While it’s not quite as awesome as this guy’s version that uses over 760 LEDs, you can’t buy that one.

In case you’re wondering how you see out of this thing, the helmet is actually made from a see-through acrylic globe, so I can only imagine the trippy, rave-like experience you’ll get wearing this thing. Here’s a video montage showing Jeffrey’s build process, as well as the helmet in action:

And some more footage of the head reacting to music (and playing a little Tetris):

If you can’t spare the nearly $3000 to buy a pre-built one from Jeffrey, you can attempt to build your own from the parts list and source code provided up on GitHub. But for those of you with the budget, and the lack of technical skill, you can order one over on Etsy now.

Peter Olt nearly got into an accident when a car suddenly cut into his lane, unable to hear – or perhaps ignoring – his honking and cussing. The incident prompted him to make some noise, so to speak. Olt invented a loud vehicle horn called the Screaming Banshee. Now he’s raising money to produce a smaller variant, the Whining Siryn the Plug & Play Screamer.

When installed, the Plug & Play Screamer gives you two horns. Tap your car or motorcycle’s horn button and you’ll get the standard sound. But if you hold it down you’ll get a 120dB sonic attack and your headlights flash for a split second.  The Screamer is quieter than the Screaming Banshee, which can go as loud as 139db, but it’s also easier to install. It has four wires – two connect to the stock horn, one to the battery and one to the high beam lights. Olt will also make easy to follow video instructions for newbies.

Pledge at least $79 (USD) on Olt’s Indiegogo fundraiser to reserve a Plug & Play Screamer. The only thing I don’t like about this invention is that it could be abused in the wrong hands. We have enough obnoxious drivers as it is.

[via Autoblog]

The explosion of touchscreen devices have not made the mouse obsolete. But what if you could use your finger as a mouse on any surface? That’s the point of Magic Finger, a concept device made by a team from Autodesk Research and the University of Toronto that can sense touch, motion and texture.

The Magic Finger is basically a micro RGB camera, an LED and an optical mouse sensor cobbled together. Talk about ripping off the mouse. Contrary to its name, the magic here seems to be in the software. Aside from letting you point and click on any surface, the camera can also recognize different textures, which the researchers use in a variety of ways, such as reading data, launching applications and controlling other devices. Watch the dorky demo in the video below:

I’m not too sold on the Magic Finger for a couple of reasons. First of all the Magic Finger is intrusive; the finger or hand wearing the device will be of limited use because you don’t want to damage the Magic Finger. Second, I don’t think the data matrix or the Morse code transfer is practical. That said, the shortcuts and its use as a mouse could be very practical. Perhaps those two functions could be integrated in a less intrusive device like Google Glass or Digits.

[via Autodesk Research via MAKE]

One of my favorite guns in the history of video games has to be the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2. Perhaps my second favorite is the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, which admittedly is more of a tool than a gun. Now, the smart guys over at Hack-a-Day have combined them both – sorta, kinda.

How, you might ask? Caleb Kraft took his off-the-shelf model of the Portal gun, and added a levitation device to the front of it – currently capable of lifting a small model of the weighted companion cube. He achieved this by hacking his StellaNova magnetic levitating globe and tearing the magnetic coil from the desktop plaything (throwing the Earth off its axis and ripping a hole in it in the process.) He then attached the coil to one of the arms of the Portal gun, and attached the magnet from inside of the globe to a foam model of the companion cube.

Check it out in action in the video below:

Cool, no? Unfortunately, the magnetic levitation field doesn’t hold up well to movement, and can’t really lift anything very heavy. Too bad. I was really looking forward to picking up some circular saw blades and flinging them at zombies this Halloween.

[via Hack-a-Day (Thanks for the tip, Caleb!)]

If you watch Ben Heck’s online show you’ll notice that the master modder has branched out beyond the gaming mods that made him famous. For his latest episode, Heck shows us how to make a very practical gadget: sunglasses that automatically raise or lower a pair of polarized clip-on shades depending on the ambient light.

Heck used an ATtiny board, a photo cell and a servo to modify his own sunglasses. Lesser mortals not versed in tinkering and programming will most likely zone out within two minutes of the clip; you can skip to about 11:55 in the video below if you’d just like to see the finished product.

I guess now we know what Dwayne Wayne could look like… in a different world. YEEEAAHHHHH