Hasta La Gadget!

While everyone is going a bit nutty speculating about Apple’s potential iOS smartwatch, Japanese watchmakers are pumping out their own interesting watches. This one includes a sound sensor making it work like the bar graphs on a digital VU meter.

Based on a design concept by Sam Jerichow, the Tokyoflash Kisai OTO Watch allows you to read the time vertically across two centrally-located lines. The four digits on the left represent hours stacked on top of minutes, while the two digits on the right display the seconds.

Above and below the numeric displays, you’ll find the bars, which actually move based on ambient sounds. The bar graphs can be switched off if it’s too distracting, or you can also just switch off the time and just show the VU meter.

The watch comes in blue, green, red or amber LCD versions, with matching color LED  illumination. Each one is then set into a sleek black anodized aluminum case. Power is provided by a built-in USB-rechargeable battery.

The Kisai OTO watch is available for an introductory price of $99(USD) through Thursday 2/14 at 4pm Japan time, after which time, the price will increase.

Most of us love the light shows splashed across the sides of buildings for Christmas or Columbus Day or other events. They’re adorable! Here’s Improv Everywhere taking a timeout from the usual business of, well, confusing everyone around them to put on a light show for Grand Central’s 100th birthday. More »

This is wonderful. Jason Bruges Studio created an interactive installation that can react to touch and reveal digital animals inside a children’s hospital. It’s really clever, there are 70 LED panels with 72,000 LEDs in total hidden behind the wallpaper of the rainforest. When started, the wall makes it seem as if animals are traveling through the forest. More »

Wedding invitations don’t get any geekier than this. Bill Porter and his fiance Mara really wanted to come up with invitations that popped and screamed geek all the way. With their wedding theme being ‘Circuits and Swirls,’ the power couple put their heads together to come up with DIY invitations that involved circuit boards and embedded LED lights.

Like most couples, Bill and Mara’s main constraints were time and money, but they were able to get the job done – and by that, we mean all of 50 wedding invitations – by being resourceful and smart about it.

Each invitation had a battery and several blinking LEDs built into it which were controlled by a microcontroller. They embedded a light sensor into each invitation as well, which signaled the LEDs to light up when the invitation was opened.

The coolest part? When the light level detected by the sensor falls below a certain limit, a secret Morse code message is flashed for the guest to figure out.

Bill detailed how the invites were conceptualized and made on his blog, which you can check out right here.

[via Hack a Day via Dvice]

For those who like to exercise or otherwise travel on foot after the sun has set, getting to where you’re going safely can be difficult. Bikes and some types of clothes offer reflectors, of course, but if you’re making your way through crowded city streets, it can be difficult to stick out. That’s a problem Halo Belt Company and Rickshaw Bagworks have teamed up to solve with the new Halo Zero LED messenger bag, a product that recently went up on Kickstater.

As you can see from the image above, the Halo Zero looks similar to any other backpack you’ll find, with one key difference. There’s an LED strap that stretches across the outside of the bag, shining bright to let other people know you’re there. While there’s plenty of reason to want a bag that looks as cool as this, that LED strip should do a lot to keep bikers and walkers safe while traveling at night.

The bag itself can hold a 13 to 15-inch laptop, closes using Velcro, and features an adjustable shoulder strap. The LED strap comes in four different colors – red, blue, yellow, and green – and is powered by two CR2025 batteries. The LED strap supports solid, flash, and strobe modes, with the developer saying the batteries should last for 20 hours in solid mode. The whole package is hand-made in San Francisco and would normally come with a price tag of $150. If you get in early with the Kickstarter campaign, however, you can secure one for $128.

Provided this Kickstarter campaign is successful, the companies will use the money to fund the production of the first batch of Halo Zero LED bags. With 41 days left to go, the campaign has already raised a significant amount of its funding goal of $23,000, bringing in $10,017 at the time of this writing. So long as the funds keep coming in the way they have been, Halo and Rickshaw should have no problem hitting their goal. Stay tuned.

Halo Zero LED messenger bag lights up Kickstarter is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
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