Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve been needing a little inspiration for your next TI LaunchPad project, look no further than the company itself. Texas Instruments set up shop in the maker tent across from the Austin Convention Center this week, showing off creations built atop its line of microcontrollers. The rep we spoke with was particularly excited about this mouse hack that the company put together in a few hours, while getting ready for SXSW. The creation utilizes the Stellaris board’s accelerometers to control the cursor of a Windows machine on X, Y and Z axes, via USB.

The project is more than just a hack, according to the company — it’s actually a prototype of something it’s set to unveil later this year. No specifics on that front, but TI promised a “big surprise.” In the meantime, you can check out video of the project after the break.

Filed under: Peripherals

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The best way to get the attention of a bunch of sleep-deprived, possibly hungover SXSW Interactive attendees? Coffee-slinging robotic arms, naturally. GE’s fully embracing Austin’s caffeinated food trick culture with a pair of Barista Bots, arms that operate similarly to your standard 3D printer, moving along the X, Y and Z axes to extrude coffee through a syringe, atop a latte’s foam. The process starts when one of the robot’s human barista counterparts takes a shot of an image with a webcam, digitizing it on a nearby computer. Then the arm goes to work.

It’s an imperfect science, of course. For one thing, foam is a really difficult canvas to work on, what with all the unevenness of constantly popping bubbles. There’s also an awful lot of wind in Austin today, and with all those people inside, the van did a little bit of rocking. We saw some more complex images that didn’t come out particularly well (facial scans, for one thing), so we decided to throw something a simpler at the ‘bot, drawing our “e” logo on a sheet of paper.

Filed under: Household

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“Pepper’s ghost” isn’t the sort of phrase you hear very often at a show like SXSW. In amongst all the latest-generation technology, there aren’t too many folks discussing optical concepts hundreds of years old. But the idea’s a driving force in the Palm Top Theater, an iPhone case that turns smartphone videos into a miniature 3D-viewing experience. The peripheral utilizes three small drop-down displays — the rear is a full mirror with two half mirrors in front it, reflecting images from the phone display into what appears to be a three-dimensional object — and really, it a stunning little effect.

The Palm Top requires the use of a proprietary file format that essentially splits the displayed image or video into three parts. The company’s providing some video for users, as well as a converter app to make custom footage. The device is available now for around $36 — not super expensive, though it’s hard to see such a device as anything but a niche product, especially since the opening makes for a fairly limited viewing space. It would be extremely cool to see this on a larger space, but in the meantime, you’re stuck with a little window into the technology.

Filed under: Mobile, Apple

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All the hype of Google’s presence at this year’s SXSW has, not surprisingly, largely revolved around the company’s Glass project, but much to our surprise, the software giant used the show to take the wraps off yet another wearable. We spoke to a rep who kicked off our conversation with the express disclaimer that “Google is not getting into the shoe business,” so you can tamp down those expectations right now. Of course, the company is still firmly in the business of creating cool projects for the purposes of promoting creativity and supporting the developer community and ethos that are the driving forces behind its Art, Copy & Code project.

Filed under: Wearables, Wireless, Google

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Electric cars and commercial space flight — what more could a person want? The Tesla / SpaceX founder is bringing all of that to his keynote on this, this second day of South By Southwest Interactive. The exec has never been on to mince words, so this ought to be an interesting one. Join us after the break, won’t you?

Filed under: Transportation, Science

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