Hasta La Gadget!

About a month ago, a project launched on Kickstarter called the Light by Moore’s Cloud. Unfortunately, the project failed to meet its funding goal, despite gathering about 2,000 supporters. With the company’s Kickstarter funding plans foiled, it has decided to run its own homegrown crowdfunding project.

The Light is an open-source, computer-controlled cube that has 52 individual LEDs inside that can change to any of 2 million different colors. The light can be configured to produce static colors, or cool animation effects. The Light is also Wi-Fi connected allow you to control it from an application running on the iPad or iPhone. And since it’s running an embedded Linux computer with the LAMP stack on it, you can write your own custom applications for it as well.

Moore’s Cloud is now seeking funding from its own website allowing people to pre-order the Light for $149(USD). That is about $50 more expensive than the device was on Kickstarter. Not only is the device more expensive, but it now has a $10 shipping fee as well. The increased prices will allow them to go into production with about 3,000 of the lights being pre-sold, which is significantly lower than the nearly 7,000 they had to sell to hit their Kickstarter goal. The increased price could be a turn-off to the people who had previously committed on Kickstarter, so only time will tell if they will hit their goal.

Assuming they can make it this time, they’re estimating a ship date of July 2013.

Fortunately, this gummy bear lamp is not actually made of real gummy bears, but 3,000 cast acrylic GummiBears. Not because of security concerns—imagine all those poor bears melting and causing a disaster—but because I would eat the whole thing. More »

Here in the Philippines, we have no real need for a weather app. It’s this simple: the weather here is great. If you’re a plant. I’m not a plant, so I just accept that the weather sucks. That in the middle of a sweltering hot day it’s perfectly normal if it suddenly rains for 6 seconds. But I’d totally buy a weather-telling indoor cloud anyhow.

That’s the Nebula 12, a concept for a lamp that doubles as a weather station. It’s being developed by the Micasa Lab, the same crazy folks who came up with the iRock chair. Like today’s weather apps, the Nebula 12 is designed to provide a visual representation of the forecast, but in a more tangible way.

The device connects to an online source for weather reports. If it’s sunny, the lamp will shine a bright yellow light, but as you can see the fun starts when it’s cloudy. The device will use a controlled combination of liquid nitrogen and hot water to create an indoor cloud. The light can then change the color and brightness of the cloud. Fortunately it won’t create rain or lightning even if that’s the forecast. Below is a short video demonstrating the prototype:

If the device ever gets released, I hope Micasa Lab gives it an “always cloudy” mode. Because that’s the only reason why it will sell.

[via The Nebula Project via The Verge via Cool Hunting]

Remember the classic Pixar animated clip, Luxo, Jr.? You know, the one with the pair of articulating Anglepoise lamps playing around, and shown with the Pixar logo at the beginning of their flicks? Well, in the latest occurrence of life imitating art imitating life, some guys have actually built an animatronic lamp that moves around like the one in the movies.

Well, maybe it’s not exactly like the one in the movies – for starters, this lamp is black, and both Luxo, Sr. and Jr. were white. Plus, this lamp is designed to interact with humans, tracking faces and sounds – not bounce around on a little rubber ball. Using custom code, the lamp is able to express a personality in much the same way that the lamps did in the movie.

The robotic lamp, named Pinokio, was created by Victoria University students Shanshan Zhou, Adam Ben-Dror, and Joss Doggett using Processing, Arduino, and OpenCV. If they ever manage to mass-produce these things and then license them through Pixar, they’ll sell millions.

[via TDW via io9]

So, you have a very soft spot for all of those retro video games that you grew up with, ranging from Centipede to Dig Dug, Asteroids, and of course, the wakka-wakka sound of Pac-Man. Here we are with a blast from the past, although this would mean you are on the bad guys’ side this time around with the £34.99 Pac-Man Ghost Lamp. There is nothing quite as classic as Pac-Man, where this is one of the four ghosts that go around haunting Pac-Man – at least until he gets to a nearby Power Pill and turns the tables on them ghosties.

The Pac-Man Ghost Lamp does what it does best – lighting up your room with a ghostly glow, and not only that, it can be remote controlled and is a 100% authentic lamp to light up your room (or wherever else you decide to place it). Unlike the ghosts in the original Pac-Man game, the Pac-Man Ghost Lamp is capable of delivering a spectrum of 16 different colors in a range of settings, among them Strobe, Flash, Dim and Smooth Fade. While this is not an actual ghost, you will need to ensure it remains plugged into the mains at all times to work.

[ Pac-Man Ghost Lamp copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]