Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve seen a couple of robots that take the hassle out of making alcoholic drinks. If you think about it, the most valuable function of those robots is that they mix drinks with an accuracy that you can’t hope to muster even when you’re sober. If you’re willing to pour your own drink – but not measure it – the Barman might be good enough for you.

Invented by John Gallagher, the Barman is a simplified weighing scale. To use it, first you have to select or input a recipe from its companion mobile app. Then you beam the recipe – i.e. the mass of each ingredient – to Barman via Bluetooth. Barman will then prompt you to add the first ingredient, but instead of a number it will simply show a progress bar:

When you’ve added the right amount, the Barman will ask you to stop and it will flash an unmissable red light. Repeat the process for the rest of the ingredients. Gallagher says you’ll be able to exchange recipes with other people online. You can also share the Barman itself even on a beach or tailgating party because it only needs a 9v battery to function.

In exchange for a bit of work on your part, you get a drinking buddy that is vastly cheaper and easier to clean than its automated counterparts. Pledge at least $49 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Barman as a reward.

The new reserves of lithium found near Rock Springs could serve the entire needs of the US in batteries, reducing our needs to import the substance from overseas, and helping innovation in the industry.

On second thought, I guess it still might be possible to let this chunky remote control slip between the couch cushions, but it certainly wouldn’t be very comfortable if you sat on it. What you’re looking at here is a hacked together remote control that started its life as a cheap universal remote control.

Modder Bigape decided he had enough of cheap plastic remotes which wear out all of the time, and built this heavy-duty remote to replace his parents’ old broken Sony TV remote. He Frankensteined together the electronic components of the universal remote with the a sturdy industrial case designed to control construction equipment.

Since he wanted the remote to control channels, volume and power, he had to add a couple of additional buttons into the case as well. In true MacGyver fashion, he built the caps for the volume buttons from retractable ball-point pen parts. The large red power switch actually was made from the button from an a light bulb socket, a sweater button and an old spring switch. The giant orb that holds the large IR diode is actually the cap from an old bottle of perfume if you can believe it.

Want to build your own industrial-strength remote control? You can find a similar control box over on eBay, and then check out the full build log over on Instructables.

Bicycle-mounted generators are nothing new – many of them are used to power bicycle lights, for instance. But what makes the Siva Cycle’s Atom generator unique is its removable battery, which means you can preserve the electricity you worked for and use it at your convenience.

The Atom generator is meant to be attached to the rear axle of your bicycle. Once it’s installed, you can use it to charge pretty much any mobile device while you’re riding, as long as you have a USB cable for your device. But as I said, the Atom also has a 1300mAh removable battery pack, so you don’t have to bring your device with you for the Atom to be useful.

Pledge at least $95 (USD) on Kickstarter to get an Atom generator as a reward. I wonder if you could hook it up to a small motor to make a hybrid bike that you could recharge on the go.

[via OhGizmo!]

It makes sense that phones with lots of bells and whistles are among the most expensive that you can find in the market. But if all you want is a phone to call people or send them a message, then this $12 handset might be for you.

The big catch is that it’s pretty hard to find, because apparently, it’s only available in China.

This is no smartphone by any means. But if money’s tight and all you need is a basic cellphone, this could very well do the job. Hacker Andrew “Bunnie” Huang came across this particular cheap phone when he was at the Mingtong Digital Mall in Shenzhen, China and was impressed at the extremely low price of the device.

Of course, you get what you pay for. While the device is an unlocked, contract-free quad-band GSM mobile that comes with a charger, USB and microSD ports, and Bluetooth connectivity, it’s also built with a meager two-color OLED screen, and only has 8MB of storage. Plus all of the components are soldered in place, so it would be very difficult to repair or replace any parts. But for 12 bucks, you can just buy another phone if anything goes wrong with this one.

[bunnie:studios via Boing Boing via Dvice]