Hasta La Gadget!

Dexter Industries makes a Raspberry Pi add-on called BrickPi, which connects the ultra cheap computer to LEGO’s NXT Mindstorms parts. To show off what you can do with its kit, they made a robot that reads eBooks aloud.

The BrickPi Reader was designed to read from the Kindle app on the Nexus 7 tablet. Aside from a Raspberry Pi and LEGO, the BrickPi Reader also has a Raspberry Pi camera. The camera takes a picture of an eReader’s screen. The Raspberry Pi then uses an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program to extract text from the picture. A Text-to-Speech engine reads the extracted text aloud. Finally, its Mindstorms arm taps on the Nexus 7′s screen to turn the eBook’s page. When you think about it, it’s basically a Rube Goldberg machine.

But don’t say goodbye to Audible just yet. Not only does it take the BrickPi Reader a few minutes to convert a single page, its “voice” is also horrible. Maybe it’s soothing to baby robots.

I love how they show a guy wanting to read an eBook while driving, as if their finished contraption could be used in a vehicle. Still, who would’ve thought LEGO could read?

[Dexter Industries via Make:]

Everything looks better in gold – at least if your last name is Trump. The latest product to get the shiny gold treatment? The already shiny new Xbox One.

This 24-karat gold-plated Xbox One was spotted by Redditor SirSyhn at Harrod’s department store in London.  As you can see from the picture, it’s selling for a whopping £6,000 (~$9,774 USD), which is enough to buy almost 20 ordinary Xbox Ones – or 24 PS4s and a few games. It better include a golden Kinect and golden controller for that price.

I’m really not sure who this is designed for. If you’ve got more money than you know what to do with, you’d want a solid gold Xbox One, not just a gold-plated one. And that would sell for about $6.4 million at today’s gold prices. Now, that’s more like it.

[via Luxury Launches]

There are days when you want to be with people. There are times when you just want to be alone. So when people overstep boundaries and cross the line into your personal space when you’re in the latter mood, it gets more than just annoying.

Prevent that from happening ever again – at least, in the physical sense – with the Spike Away vest.

As the name implies, the entire vest is riddled with spikes. It’ll turn heads, but it’ll keep people away because it frankly looks scary and will probably cause a lot of pain if you bump into it head-on. The piece was created by Singapore industrial designer Siew Ming Cheng, who used off the shelf materials, including strips designed to keep pests out of gardens to make the prototype.

Cheng explained: “Trains are usually crowded during peak hours. Everybody will push each other to try and get onto the train. How can I protect my personal space? The idea was then conceived.”

While the Spike Away is just a one-off concept at this point, Cheng could sell millions of these to daily commuters – especially if the spikes were sharper.

[via C|NET]

It’s winter and cold in most parts of the country. If your dog is like the one that lives in my house, they may not like to take care of their business outside when it’s too cold out. My daughter’s little Chihuahua, Buttercup, won’t poop outside if something cold touches her. Once that chill hits her, you can bet on picking up a little gift inside the house later.

I’ve decided she needs a jacket of some sort to keep her warm so maybe she will poop outside. ThinkGeek has the perfect jacket for any dog.

It’s the Star Trek Spock Dog Hoodie. The body of the hoodie appears made from sweatshirt material and it has the same blue design Spock wore.

The hood of the hat has pointy ears and black hair just like Spock. Sizes range from Small up to 2X for jumbo dogs with a chest up to 39 inches. Buying your dog a hoodie is enough, but buying your dog a Star Trek Spock hoodie puts you on a whole ‘nuther level.

So do the logical thing and transport yourself over to ThinkGeek, where you can get the Spock Dog Hoodie for $39.99(USD) While you’re shopping, be sure to grab the Star Trek communicator poop bag dispenser, and a Star Trek transporter dog bed.

David Cranmer is a mechanical sculpture artist. You might remember him from such projects as theremin in a stuffed badger. He is always busy creating new projects. This is his latest.

You may or may not know that Southern Comfort originated in New Orleans. And so a marketing company working on behalf of the brand hired David to create some sculptures to promote The beverage. The result is two machines built around instruments that are reminiscent of New Orleans’s jazz history. Just insert a bottle and press a trumpet key.

What happens next is magical. Alcohol is delivered. That’s real magic, unlike that fake Harry Potter stuff. Give me a drink any day over an invisibility cloak. Music and alcohol. What could be better?

[via Yababoon via Neatorama]