Hasta La Gadget!

For a long time, most sunglasses have made of the same basic materials – plastic or metal. Recently, I’ve seen wooden sunglasses and even shades made from recycled skateboards pop up. These sunglasses fuse wood with stone to make them look quite rugged.

The Shwood Stone Collection includes two models, the Canby Stone and White Slate. Both versions fuse genuine slate with premium birch wood. The inlays are hand-poured as well, giving the sunglasses a natural, refined look. Each pair of sunglasses comes with a custom felt pouch with an embroidered leather patch.

The sunglasses are limited to 200 pairs and ship in 2 to 4 weeks. They cost between $295 and $325 (USD). Act fast if you like the style.

[via Uncrate]

Wraparound sunglasses provide as much protection from glare as you can get without having to resort to a full-on helmet and visor. But those curved lenses also makes them bulky and hard to stash away when not worn. So a company called Visoptical has developed a solution: sunglasses with a clever sliding rail system that fold away to a tiny package. More »

It’s a simple trick that serves no other purpose than to impress your friends, but that doesn’t make these sunglasses from Parabellum and Oliver Peoples any less awesome. The shades feature almost no branding, until you breathe on and fog up the lenses—then the company’s logo is conspicuously revealed. More »

While I question the practicality of these perforated “sunglasses,” there’s no question at all about their awesomeness – as they’re embellished with cool images from pop culture and retro video games.

According to their creator, Hong Kong-based artist Millie Chiu, the tiny holes actually can help short-sighted or long-sighted vision by filtering out indirect light sources – the result being sharper vision.

Each pair is hand-drawn, with scenes ranging from Pac-Man and Space Invaders, to game health indicators, and a TV color bar test pattern. Remember those? I don’t remember the last time I saw one of those in today’s era of 24-hour-a-day broadcasting.

Each pair of perforated shades sells for just $20(USD) over at IAMKAMTY’s Etsy shop. If you grab a pair, let us know how well you can see out of them. Even if you can’t, you’ll still look cool.

CSI: Miami might be out of production, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be deprived of casual eyewear flipping. Not if Ben Heck has a say in the matter, at least. His latest DIY project automatically swings a pair of clip-on sunglasses into view whenever it’s too sunny outside: a photocell attached to an AT Tiny microcontroller checks the light levels and, through an Arduino-based AVR MKII language, tells a rotor to spin the glasses into place. No one will be labeled a fashionista with the requisite battery pack strapped to their heads, but the construction doesn’t require CNC milling and won’t destroy a favorite frame. We’re only disappointed that the sunglasses won’t play The Who on command… yet.

Continue reading Ben Heck builds Arduino-based automatic sunglasses, beats David Caruso to the punch (video)

Filed under: Wearables

Ben Heck builds Arduino-based automatic sunglasses, beats David Caruso to the punch (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Oct 2012 22:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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