Hasta La Gadget!

As you know, we love LEGO bricks around here. There’s something just so amazing about the billions of different creative things you can do with these little modular components. Now, you can combine your LEGO enthusiasm with your iPod Touch with a single gadget – the TinkerBrick case.

The TinkerBrick is a special LEGO-compatible iPod Touch case, which allows you to integrate your iOS device into your LEGO creations. This isn’t like some of the other LEGO cases I’ve seen which just let you snap a couple of bricks on your phone. This case is specifically made so you can use your iOS gadget as a component of your LEGO builds. For instance, let’s say you want to make a strummable LEGO guitar, where the iPod Touch acts as the frets. Perfect. Simply build your LEGO guitar, snap your iPod Touch into the TinkerBrick, and then attach it to the fretboard. Voila!

The sky is really the limit. With the TinkerBrick case, you can use your iPod Touch as a screen and input device within LEGO builds, so you can create interactive creatures and gadgets with LEGO accessories.

The TinkerBrick case is available in red, black, white and yellow versions, but at this point, the TinkerBrick case is available only for the iPod Touch (4th Gen.) I’m hopeful that they’ll release the case for other devices like the iPhone and iPad, as I could see plenty of possibilities for integrating those devices into LEGO builds as well. You can get your hands on a TinkerBrick case over on Amazon now for $32.95(USD).

A group of students from Boston’s Northeastern University have built a robot that should become every gadget lover’s best bud. Why? Because this unnamed hero is a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot. It can even extend its network by dropping wireless repeaters.

We have Glen Chiacchieri and “seven other computer and electrical engineers” to thank for designing and building the robot. Except for its treads, all of the robot’s parts were custom made from aluminum. It’s quite tough; as you’ll see in the video below it can even ferry an adult human. But adult men can’t connect you to Facebook and Twitter, so Chiacchieri and company installed a router on it instead, along with a webcam, a GPS module and two routers converted to repeaters.  The robot can be controlled on the very network that it deploys, using a web interface that Chiacchieri coded.

All that’s missing is a USB charger and a six pack of your favorite beverage, and that’s good enough to be called Man’s Best Friend 2.0. I highly recommend that you read Chiacchieri’s blog post to learn more about the project and the robot’s capabilities. He does swear quite a lot in the post, so be warned. Although I would too if I built something this awesome. I wonder if these engineers can build a drone version of the robot.

[Glen Chiachhieri via Geek via Botropolis via Geeky Gadgets]

I admit that I take my iPhone pretty much everywhere with me, but I draw the line at taking it into water. The iGills case seeks to change this by making your iPhone fully waterproof.

The iGills SE-35 case isn’t some a flimsy cover, but a fully waterproof case that you can take with you – even on diving expeditions. It’s made out of polycarbonate and will let your iPhone withstand depths of up to 130 feet. There are some buttons that will allow you to use your iPhone underwater, which work in tandem with the iGills’ dedicated app.

The app will allow you to track your depth, time underwater, and nitrox levels as well as monitoring the temperature of the water you’re in thanks to the case’s own built-in sensors. All this tech doesn’t come cheap, as you’ll have to spend $329.99 to pre-order yours from iGills.

[via Ubergizmo]

This conveniently-sized 30-pin to USB connector is no thicker than a credit card but will allow you to hook your precious iPhone up to any computer for a quick juice up. I’d like it even more if it had a built in battery though.

The ChargeCard is a “charging cable” that takes up no space at all. You can put it in your wallet and take it out for emergencies. We’ve all been in situations where we could have used something like this. When it’s not in use, it’s as slim as a credit card. While it’s pretty smart, you won’t be able to use your iPhone while it juices up, so that could be a problem, and it really isn’t practical for use with a traditional wall charger since the flexible USB cable is very short.

ChargeCard was launched as a Kickstarter project, and you can get in on the action for $18(USD).

[via Ubergizmo]

After seeing Dhani Sutanto from London embedding a RFID Transit Card into a ring, Becky from Adafruit thought that it would be a cool idea to try and embed one into her iPhone.

The process is pretty straightforward. First, you need to dissolve away the plastic of the card in acetone. Then you need to extract the antenna and chip. This needs to be installed under the iPhone backplate. You’ll probably have to experiment with paper and tape in order to insulate the chip from the guts of your phone.

The result is that you can carry around your transit card without actually carrying around your transit card. Of course, as NFC technology continues to come along, chances are that someday you’ll be able to pay for public transit just by holding your phone up to the reader anyhow. But for now, this is a clever hack and works with today’s systems.

[via Make:]