Hasta La Gadget!

Hide your mushrooms, buds and leaves in these Super Mario Bros.-themed boxes. They’re special editions of a trick safe called the Magic Billet Box, which has a lid that can only be opened a certain way.

Each anodized aluminum box has two lids. Anyone can take the outer lid out, but you have know the trick to remove the inner lid and finally open the box.

Here’s a demo of the boxes by inventor Eric Krusenstjerna.

Punch your browser and head to Magic Billet Box to order. Each box measures about 2″ on each side and costs $100 (USD) each. You can also get a three-piece set  – two brick blocks and one coin block – for $240.

[via DudeIWantThat]

Some drivers are horrible parkers. Some are careless, there are others go out of their way to be rude, while some just can’t help it. Regardless of which kind of bad parker they are, they’re still bad parkers all the same. And for that, their cars deserve to be magneted. Okay, so I just made that word up.

Sticking these Do Your Park magnets onto cars might not seem to do much, at least, in the physical sense, but the insults printed on them will send a message that the recipient isn’t likely to forget. Each pack contains ten magnets with an assortment of insults, ranging from subtle to in-your-face cracks about their inability to park courteously.

The Do Your Park magnets are available online for $12(USD). That’s way cheaper than the bill you’ll pay for keying their car.

[via Laughing Squid]

A few months ago I talked about a Kickstarter project called the LightUp, an electronics kit for kids and newbies. Instead of wires or solder, LightUp uses magnets to connect the modules together. It turns out that there’s already a very similar product out on the market. It’s called littleBits, and it already has a growing number of modules and a healthy community.

Like LightUp, littleBits uses color-coded modules that easily snap together using magnets. Each module also has screen-printed labels that identify its parts. Unlike LightUp, littleBits uses the polarity of magnets to prevent you from sticking a module to another module the wrong way.

The modules are separated into four types: power, input, output and wire. The first three are self-explanatory, while the wire module is used to extend or branch out your circuit. Each type has multiple variants. For instance, there’s a USB and a coin battery power module, a button and a light sensor input module, an LED and a DC motor output module and more.

Head to littleBits’ online shop to order a kit. The base kit costs $99 (USD) and comes with 10 modules. You can also buy more modules separately.

Check out the littleBits website and their YouTube channel to see what customers have built with the kits.

[via Make:]

Flickr user/Sprite Stitcher/Princess of All Cosmos Mara Cheng made a crocheted katamari that works a bit like its videogame counterpart, and she did it the Jesse Pinkman way: with magnets. Yeah, Science!

Actually Mara made it the Amy Shimel way. Amy designed the pattern back in 2007, way before Jesse and Walt needed magnets. Amy’s design calls for 28 0.75″ round magnets stuffed inside the ball along with Poly-Fil. Amy says you have to crochet the main body as tight as you can so that the Katamari won’t be deformed by the weight of the magnets. Roll to Amy’s website for the instructions.

[via Sprite Stitch]

Stanford University alumni Josh Chan and Tarun Pondicherry invented LightUp, a modular electronics kit that’s as easy to use as LEGO blocks. The kits is designed to teach children the basics of electronics and computer programming.

LightUp simplifies the process of building an electronic circuit so that it won’t discourage children from experimenting and trying again if they don’t get the result they want. Instead of requiring children to use soldering materials or wires, the parts in a LightUp kit connect to each other using magnets. This means that they’re easy to put together and take apart. It also means that if you purchase more kits, you get more parts to mix and match.

One thing that LightUp kits have that LEGO toys don’t have is an augmented reality app. When you take a picture of a LightUp circuit on a mobile device, the app can point out if any of the parts are incorrectly connected. It can also show the flow of electricity throughout the circuit, as shown in the image above. Finally, LightUp can be programmed using Arduino code, so kids can jump right into coding if they want. I’m not sure if the kit will come with programming aids or lessons though.

Pledge at least $39 (USD) on Kickstarter to receive a LightUp kit as a reward. The reward tiers seem to have different kinds of kits assigned to them; I’m not sure if the more expensive kits will include all the items included in the cheaper ones, so choose your desired tier carefully.