Hasta La Gadget!

ICufflinks turn your wrists into sleeping computers

I don’t know what’s most impressive about the iCufflinks. It could be the fact that these glowing standby-symbols fit their electronics into such a tiny package, or it could be that the makers at Adafruit actually reverse-engineered the pulsing sleep light from Apple’s MacBooks.

Each cufflink contains an LED, a battery and the controlling circuitry. Screw the CNC-machined aluminum capsule closed with a fresh button cell inside and you’ll get a gently pulsing light for up to 24 hours.

And the light does look uncannily like Apple’s. Apparently this is patented, and while the patent says it is sinusoidal, Adafruit says not. To reverse engineer the wave, Adafruit measured the brightness of a Mac LED using an oscilloscope, a photocell, some extra circuitry and — of course — duct tape.

The cufflinks are also open source, so you download the schematics, CAD files and the rest to make your own. That’s a lot of work to do, though, so you might be better off just buying a pair. At $128 (even the price is nerdy) they’re not cheap, but it’s unlikely anyone else will be wearing them at the party.

Available now.

iCufflinks v1.0 [Adafruit. Thanks, Phil!]

Reverse engineering the Mac ‘breathing’ LED [Adafruit]

See Also:

• Bike Cufflinks Link Cuffs, Look Awesome
• USB Cufflinks, For the Man Who Has Everything (Except Taste …
• USB Cufflinks Are Surprisingly Classy
• Transformer Cufflinks