Hasta La Gadget!

Got a problem with the world? Have a bone to pick with everything and everyone these days? Hate the rain or the sweltering heat of the sun? Well, don’t waste your energy yelling at those who’ve offended you or cursing about the weather. Instead, just give everyone and whatever’s bothering you the finger without actually having to lift a finger with this umbrella.

Because as you can see, it does all the not-so-heavy-lifting for you. All you’ve got to do is tilt the umbrella in the direction of your intended recipient. You might get some disapproving stares and even some dirty looks while you strut around town with this offensive umbrella in tow, but hey, there’s a whole lot of other things that are more offensive than this umbrella.

The Up Yours Umbrella is available for £23.99 (~$39 USD) at Firebox.

[via Buzz Patrol]

Regular umbrellas shield you from the rain falling from the sky, but they don’t do anything to protect you from water splashing from the wheels of cars speeding through puddles in front of you.

It’s annoying but unfortunately, there is little you can do about it. Until now, that is, thanks to Lin Min-Wei and Liu Li-Hsiang’s Rain Shield.

It’s basically an umbrella with an extension on one side that shields you from splashes coming at you from the side.

When you’re safe and dry indoors, just fold the entire umbrella up into a 180-millimetre-diameter disc and store. Pretty convenient, huh?

The Rain Shield was presented at the red dot award: design concept ceremony in Singapore.

[via Yanko Design]

London is very wet at the moment – and someone even mentioned in her Facebook status that someone forgot to place an order for summer this year. Well, it is definitely one of the wetter places on earth, and it would be wise to carry an umbrella with you wherever you go, never mind that it is summer. Since you are unable to predict a downpour, it is always better to be prepared. Designer Mikhail Belyaev has other plans though, coming up with what he calls the Lampbrella. As the name suggests, you can more or less figure out that this is an umbrella that doubles up as a lamp.

Or is it a lamp that doubles up as an umbrella? I think you get the picture, no? Basically, the Lampbrella is a lamp post that has its own rain-sensing umbrella built-in, where this concept will see a standard issue street lamp which has been fitted with an umbrella canopy in addition to an integrated electric motor which will open up or close the umbrella on demand. As mentioned earlier, there are integrated sensors, where these will make sure that the umbrella will be deployed so that pedestrians can enjoy some much needed shelter whenever it starts to rain.

Apart from the rain sensor, there is also a 360 degree motion sensor located on the fiberglass street lamp which is perfect to detect anyone who uses the Lampbrella in order to escape from the rain. When no movement is detected for three minutes, the canopy will then go about closing itself. It would be cooler that the Lampbrella is powered entirely by solar energy, but I guess there is always room for improvement, right?

Mikhail claimed that he was inspired to design the Lampbrella after he saw ordinary folks get wet on streets in Russia when the heavens opened up. Mikhail mentioned, “Once, I was driving on a central Saint Petersburg street – Nevsky Prospect – and saw the street lamps illuminating people trying to hide from the rain. I thought it would be appropriate to have a canopy built into a streetlamp.”

This is still a concept, and there are no plans by any parties to send this into production. Any angel investors out there who are willing to take the risk?

Source

[ Lampbrella not only lights up the street, but it keeps you dry, too copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

An umbrella is supposed to keep you dry from those rainy days, and it too, would be able to ensure your skin does not get sun burnt at all when it is scorching hot out there during the summer. At this year’s Amsterdam-based Music Hack Day, a couple of intrepid hackers who hail from Berlin did figure out a way to create a musical umbrella which is capable of producing a random series of lo-fi 8-bit tones.

These tones are triggered the moment a raindrop strikes the outer surface of the umbrella’s canopy, and since the results are totally random and abstract, you will hear different tunes all the time, and chances are just like snowflakes, you will not find the same two tunes at any time. What your ears will hear would be something akin to what the first generation Nintendo Game Boy is capable of churning out. To know more about how this particular musical umbrella works, read on after the jump.

The gist of the umbrella works this way – whenever raindrops strike the outside surface of the umbrella canopy, they will be transformed to tones thanks to the presence of a dozen piezo pickup sensors which are taped to the underside of the umbrella. These piezo pickup sensors are fully capable of responding to vibration, where they are then sent over to an Arduino Uno, which is actually a cheap and open source micro-controller that is popular with hackers and hobbyists. Not only that, it will in turn be hooked to a couple of speakers.

The Music Hack Day event was originally held in the London offices of U.K. newspaper The Guardian three years ago, and the movement has since spread to Berlin, Amsterdam, Boston, Stockholm, San Francisco, Barcelona, New York and Montreal, where over two thousand participants and sponsorship from notable music-tech companies are the attendees.

There is still no indication that this musical umbrella will be sold to the masses, but the umbrella’s creators, Alice Zappe and Julia Lager, decided to come up with a new and improved version of their Music Hack Day prototype.

Source

[ Musical umbrella delivers 8-bit tones copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]