Hasta La Gadget!

Mobile developer Jim Rutherford’s son Owen loves to play Minecraft. To enhance his Owen’s gaming experience – or perhaps to gently remind him how long he’s been playing – Jim made it so that lamp on Owen’s desk changed color and intensity to match the game’s day and night cycle.

The hack is made possible largely because of the new Philips Hue LED bulb, which can produce light in a variety of colors and intensities and can be controlled over the Internet. The other half of the project is an iPad app that Jim himself wrote. The app not only controls the LED bulb, it also allows Owen to match the time on the app with his game. Skip to around 3:35 to see the hack in action:

Jim has posted the source code for the app on Github. He also said that he’s going to submit the app to the Apple App Store. If it’s passed, he won’t charge a cent for the app. Which is nice, considering the Philips Hue is freakin’ expensive.

[via Jim Rutherford via TechCrunch]

Everyone wants to look their best, it is in our nature always to put our best foot forward. After all, who would like to play the role of a slacker? Nobody, really, unless one does not really care about what the world thinks of them. Well, here is a unique addition to your wardrobe, where it comes in the form of the LED Ampli-TIE which could very well be a DIY project. Basically, your average, boring looking necktie can now be transformed, given a new lease of life as you light it up like a VU meter.

The LED Ampli-TIE will rely on the Electret Microphone Amplifier to that will then trigger 16 Flora NeoPixels which has been sewn using conductive thread along the entire length of the tie in order for it to work. Of course, if you are going to embark on this project on your own, you would definitely need to have a fair amount of DIY knowledge, especially when it comes to Flora, the Adafruit Microphone Amplifier Breakout, and conductive thread among others. Since there are electric bits and pieces all over, should you find a need to wash your LED Ampli-TIE after spilling some curry or wine on it, make sure you remove the battery and perform a gentle spot clean, as water should be refrained from getting into the microphone.

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[ LED Ampli-TIE gives you an electrifying appearance copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Have you seen those t-shirts that have a built-in equalizer? They look cool in theory, but they’re not really awesome up close. Most of them have this awkward-looking large cardboard in the middle where the LEDs shine through. Then there’s the fact that you have to carry around a battery pouch. This necktie variant is a lot cooler.

Becky Stern of Adafruit calls her creation the LED Ampli-tie. This particular tie runs on Adafruit’s FLORA, an Arduino-compatible board. The Flora detects ambient noise via a small microphone hidden behind the tie’s knot. Adafruit already wrote the program that will make the 16 Flora RGB LEDs react to the noise. The best part? The Ampli-tie runs on the FLORA’s battery.

Check out Becky’s post on Adafruit’s website for the full walkthrough.

[via MAKE]

Maybe I’m an old-fashioned geek, but I’m never really understood the interest in a bracelet or a watch that can notify you of what’s going on your smartphone. I mean, all you have to do when it beeps or vibrates his pull it out of your pocket to see what’s going on. It seems like that would be much easier than trying to remember what notification a specific color on a bracelet goes with.

If you like technology that keeps you from the first-world problem of having to pull your phone out of your pocket, a new product has landed on Kickstarter called the Embrace+. The device is a bracelet that has RGB LED lighting inside, which makes the bracelet glow. The color of the bracelet can be customized to notify you of just about anything your iPhone or Android device can do. Simply use the companion app to attach notification colors to events on your smartphone.

For instance, if you want bracelet to turn blue when a new Facebook post is made, it will do it. If you want the device to turn red when someone retweets your posts, you can do that too. You can even set the bracelet to show you a color when the battery on your smartphone is low, or you have an upcoming appointment.

If you want one of the Embrace+ bracelets, you’ll need to pledge $39(USD) or more and can expect delivery in June – assuming the project hits its rather lofty $220,000 funding goal by March 23, 2013.

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.

[via Ikeahackers]