Epiphany OnE Puck Turns Heat to Electricity: World’s Most Useful Coaster

Are you unimpressed by the current crop of portable battery chargers on the market? Boy, you’re hard to impress. But even with your high standards, there’s a good chance you’ll be interested with the Epiphany OnE Puck. It doesn’t need electricity, light or salt water. All it needs is a hot or cold object, and it’ll pump out electricity in return.

epiphany one puck heat engine usb charger

Epiphany Labs claims that its device is a Stirling engine, which works by cooling down fluid trapped inside it. In the process of cooling, some of the thermal energy from the heat source is eventually transformed into electric energy. The company didn’t go into details about the specific components of the OnE Puck, only that if you apply sufficient heat – say, from a cup of steaming hot coffee – on its red side or if you significantly cool down its blue side – as shown above – then it will be able to generate up to 5W of power, enough to charge most smartphones.

A pledge of at least $115 (USD) on Kickstarter lets you reserve your own OnE Puck. As of this writing, the fundraiser has already raised more than half of its $100,000 target with 55 days to go. But if I were you, you might want to wait until Epiphany Labs provides more details about the device before pledging. After all, they haven’t answered the most important questions: What are its minimum and maximum temperature tolerances? Can you hang it over a bonfire or place it in your freezer? And exactly how hot (or cold) does an object have to be to cause the device to generate enough charge? Can Lambert of Technabob get one for free? So many questions.

[via CNET]

PLUGG Radio Asks You to Shove a Cork in It

If you’ve ever been asked to shut up, you probably are familiar with the phrase “stick/shove/stuff/put a cork in it.” Now there’s a radio concept which wants you to do just that.

plugg radio

Designed by Skrekkøgle, the PLUGG radio is a basic digital radio with one unique feature – it’s turned off by shoving a cork into it, and removing the cork turns it on.

I assume you’ll still need to use normal controls for changing volume or stations, but the cork power switch is pretty clever. That is, until you lose the cork.

[via Fan the Fire]

Finger Trap Handbags: You’ll Be Stuck with This Purchase

Chinese finger traps are probably the bane of many children’s (and android’s) existences. Of course, it’s not much of a scare or prank once you figure out how to get your fingers out of the trap, but the trauma (“I’m going to be stuck like this forever!”) remains.

Picking up on how finger traps work is designer James Piatt, who managed to work its mechanism into a series of ladies’ handbags.

chinese finger trap bags The result? His Finger Trap line of handbags, which requires at least one trapped finger to ‘hold’ the bag. The full-sized version is best carried with three fingers trapped in the handles (or shall I say, finger-dles?) It comes with a shoulder strap, in case you’d prefer to have full use of your bag finger while you’re carrying it.

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This here is the mini version of the Finger Trap bag:

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It’s definitely an unusual design inspired by an equally unusual puzzle. They don’t come cheap, either. The full-sized Finger Trap bag costs $725(USD), while the mini one retails for $125.

[via Laughing Squid]

 

Mr. @#?%!: A Q*bert-ese Obscenity Generator

What’s this? Two Q*bert posts in a week? Yeah, you got me. I guess I’m on a roll.

Remember how Q*bert used to let out that weird stream of gibberish expletives when one of his enemies got him? Well, one electronic musician decided to build himself a gadget which solely swears like Q*bert.

qbert swears

The Mr. @#?%! obscenity generator uses a variety of audio chips, including the classic Votrax SC-01A analog speech synthesizer. It was made by Count Funkula, using entirely parts that were available back in 1982, at the time the arcade machine came out. Check out some of the wondrous obscenities that stream forth from the orange guy’s proboscis…

Man, that little dude can swear like a truck driver. You can check out the schematics and read more about how Count Funkula built the Mr. @#?%! obscenity generator here. I’ll give you a hint – it doesn’t involve dropping balls and coiled-up snakes on anything.

Scottish Hospital is a Robot Shop of Horrors

There’s nothing new about robots helping doctors learn their craft, but normally they are satisfied with just a CPR robot or just a robot that simulates a heart attack. However, the Forth Valley Royal Hospital’s high-tech Scottish Clinical Simulation Centre is like a robot house of horrors.
hospital robot
It is there that trainee doctors and nurses in Scotland are perfecting their skills on robot patients. There are robots that breathe, speak and have heartbeats – and robots whose eyes dilate when a doctor shines a light in it. The robots are operated by computers and respond to the treatment in various ways.

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That’s all well and good, but have a look at the video and be creeped out by how many of these freaky robots are just laying around on tables like the undead. Skip to about 40 seconds for stuff you’ll see behind your eyelids tonight in bed tonight.

And if the training robots aren’t enough, they have tons of robots working behind the scenes in the facility too. They patrol the corridors, sort the mail and take care of drug orders. These people need to evacuate that building now!

[via BBC]

Swash Tabletop Washing Machine Lets You Wash One Outfit at a Time

Don’t have enough space in your apartment for a washing machine? You could always send your dirty stuff off to the laundry or get a tabletop washing machine instead. This thing is so small and compact that you can actually just keep it on your, well, tabletop.

Tabletop Washing MachineWith small size comes an expected corresponding shrinkage of capacity. Called the Swash, the minuscule washing machine only has a 250-gram capacity while requiring about 5 liters for every wash. Two-hundred fifty grams obviously isn’t much – you can probably only wash your outfit for the day at once but hey, that’s the trade-off you have to make for lack of space.

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The Swash will be released in Japan on February 15th and will retail for ¥14,700 yen (~$160 USD).

[via FarEastGizmos via Oh Gizmo!]

Badminton Playing Robot Will Smash Your Shuttlecocks

I don’t get badminton. Isn’t it basically just tennis played like volleyball, while hitting something called a birdy? The birdy is also called a shuttlecock, which sounds like an astronaut chicken. I don’t get it. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t be impressed by this robot badminton player.

badminton robot

At the Flanders’ Mechatronics Technology Centre in Belgium (okily dokily!), researchers built a robot that they can play badminton with, called JADA. It’s pretty impressive to watch JADA in action. Its stereo vision system detects the shuttlecock from two visual angles. It then estimates the position of the shuttlecock and the robot’s software predicts the trajectory. After that an interception system hits it at the right point along the predicted trajectory.

That’s the same way that you would play – but your playing wouldn’t impress me. On the other hand, it impresses me that we can create a robot that does all this so well.

So why build a badminton robot in the first place? Its creators wanted to build a badminton robot to demonstrate new robotic technologies they are developing, and thought this would be a great way to showcase them in a single robot.

[via euronews]

Swedish Concept Hotel Lets You Sleep Like the Homeless Do

Would you pay a hotel so they’ll set you up with non-accommodations so you can sleep like a homeless person? It sounds far out, but that’s what Faktum Hotels, a Swedish concept hotel, is currently offering to interested patrons.

factum homeless hotelFor just €10 a night (that’s about $14), you can book yourself a homeless night in ten extraordinary locations, like under a bridge, in an abandoned factory, or on a public bench. Doesn’t sound very appealing, does it? You can book a “room” for yourself or give someone the gift of homelessness. Of course, you’re not obligated to ‘stay’ in your room once you book it.

factum homeless hotel 1

Behind the initiative is Swedish social activist magazine Faktum, which is trying to raise awareness for the 3,400 or so homeless people in Gothenburg.

Homeless Hotel

All proceeds from Faktum hotels will go towards supporting Faktum’s charity work – which include helping those who are actually homeless.

[via Pop Up City]

Chocolate RAM: Chocolate Chips

To celebrate its 33rd anniversary, a Japanese electronics company called IO Data is going to give away a special Valentine’s Day treat to three lucky online shoppers. It’s a chocolate bar that looks like a RAM module!

io data ram chocolate bar

As you can see they’re quite detailed; you can even make out the word ‘Samsung’ as well as other characters etched on it. Here’s a shot of the chocolate bar along with an actual RAM stick:

io data ram chocolate bar 2

A confectionery shop called Maple House made the awesome chocolate bars, which IO Data are calling “Memory of Love Chocolate.”

io data ram chocolate bar 4

Customers who bought or will buy from IO Data’s their online store between February 6 to February 15, 2013 will have a chance of winning a Memory of Love Chocolate. I guess you could say that the winners… will be picked randomly.

[via IO Data & CNET Japan via Kotaku]

30 Years Worth of Gaming Products in One Massive Auction: Over 9000-in-1

We’ve featured a handful of videogame collections for sale, but this one takes the cake. eBay member videogames.museum is selling what amounts to uhm, a videogame museum. Hundreds of consoles, thousands of games and hundreds upon hundreds of accessories and promo items.

30 year video game collection by videogames.museum

The collection includes more than 330 consoles, from the Atari 2600 to the current generation consoles and everything in-between, including rare variants as well as obscure flops like the Virtual Boy, the Gizmondo and the Nokia N-Gage. There are also more than 6,850 games; the seller claims that he has completed all the games from some franchises, including Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, Castlevania, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Sakura Wars and Super Robot Taisen. There are also controllers, action figures, magazines, strategy guides and countless other stuff.

30 year video game collection by videogames.museum 2

If you still don’t appreciate just how insane this collection is, videogames.museum has this to say: “I spent the last two months of my life taking pictures and making lists, working about eight hours a day just in order to make an inventory and to figure out what I have. Even now after all the time spent checking things I’m not sure to have included all in the lists…” You can download that list as a pdf file. It is 135 pages long.

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Videogames.museum is asking at least $550,000 (USD) for all of these goodies. He may also be persuaded to sell off the items per lot, but he’d really rather sell them as one package. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if he’ll gladly pay anyone who’ll get the N-Gage off his hands. You can check out a lot more pictures of the collection on his Imageshack account.

[via Geekologie]