Hasta La Gadget!

I was very impressed by the LEGO Omniboat, but apparently you can take LEGO vehicles even deeper. An engineering student made this remote controlled underwater robot for a school project. I expect bricks to sink, but I was surprised to see batteries and circuits fare well underwater.

The robot was made by YouTuber roboticsqut, who says that while the vehicle isn’t necessarily waterproof, most of its parts will do fine underwater, including the lead-acid batteries and the motors. Roboticsqut used a pair of XBee PRO adapters to send commands to the robot, which is controlled via an Xbox 360 controller that’s connected to a laptop.

Robotsqut should make more and equip them weapons and minifig crew.

[via Dexter Industries via Construction Toys via Reddit]

Here’s another story about another cool dad. Where were all of the cool dads when I was growing up? Why are dads so cool now? Why do we never hear about granddads doing cool geek stuff? All I know is that this kid is super lucky. The kid in this video not only has a Fisher-Price Power Wheels Lightning McQueen, but he worked with his dad to make some cool modifications.

It started off as a slow boring toy 3 years ago, but little Evan’s ride now has metal rims with rubber tires, an aluminum back half chassis, dual sealed gel batteries with an output of 24 volts, a 500 watt .66 horsepower electric motor, disk brakes, throttle modulated variable speed control with reverse and Sparco battery cut-off switch. Does your car have all that? Check out the new and improved ride in the video below:

Now this kid has an awesome ride to go along with his awesome dad.

[via Dvice via Geekologie]

Unlike the messy controller situation in iOS, Android users have the benefit of workarounds for using controllers with their mobile device. One such solution is the Sixaxis Controller app, which pairs PS3 controllers with compatible Android devices. If you’re using the app, you might want to get the GameKlip as well.

Made by Ryan French, the GameKlip is simply a plastic mount that lets you connect a PS3 controller with an Android smartphone. The result is a semi-permanent, poor man’s portable gaming device.

The idea of carrying a PS3 controller around might seem odd at first, but if you frequently game on your Android device you might fall in love with this combo:

Wow. Now I’m envious of Android users. Again, the GameKlip is only a piece of plastic; you need an app and some tweaking to make the PS3 controller work with your phone, if it’s even compatible with the app. Still, it’s better than nothing.

As for the GameKlip, you can order it from its official website for $15 (USD). There’s also a $23 variant that comes with cables in case your smartphone can’t pair wirelessly with PS3 controllers. The GameKlip only works with the latest Galaxy phones and a couple of HTC models. Check out the official website to see the full list.

[via TechEBlog]

The first four models of the PS3 were backwards compatible with PlayStation 2 games. For reasons unknown, but most likely not related to its customer’s best interests, Sony later removed this feature. Now, the inevitable has occurred: tinkerers have brought the feature back via a software hack.

While there have been gray market USB dongles that gave jailbroken PS3s this ability, this hack only requires software. This method supposedly works with all models of the PS3 (although it hasn’t been tested with all PS2 games), the sources below did mention that it requires users to replace some of the console’s system files.

Seems to me that this hack implies two things: a) this could very well ruin your console, and b) it would be easy for Sony to bring backwards compatibility back. It would also be nice if everyone had pet unicorns, but we don’t. So that’s that.

[via PS3 Developer Wiki via PSX Scene via QuickJump]

Image by Evan Amos via Wikipedia

Sony has DualShock controllers, but Sega has literally shocking controllers. Not by default of course. A modder has made a couple of Sega Genesis gamepads that actually electrocute players via a shock collar. Now that’s hardcore.

The mod is called Genezap and it was made by a modder going by the moniker Furrtek. He connected a shock collar and a microcontroller to each gamepad and then wrote custom software so that certain conditions in the game will prompt the microcontroller to activate the collar. Furrtek then inserted code in several Genesis games to work with the painful experiment. For example, he edited Battletoads so that the player will be zapped if he loses a life. He also edited the original Sonic game to deliver a shock if the player dies or loses rings. Skip to about 1:25 in the video for the demo:

I may not understand French, but pain is a universal language. Head to Furrtek’s website (also in French) for details on this crazy mod.

[via Joystiq]