Hasta La Gadget!

Nintendo Entertainment Systems have proven to be fertile ground for the DIY community — purses, guitars, and belt buckles are just a sampling of the more unusual NES mods out there. We’ve also seen our share of NES PCs, and now an enterprising Finn going by the name Ana-5000 has crammed a fully-fledged home theater PC into everybody’s favorite 8-bit console. An Asus AT3IONT-I Deluxe motherboard with an Intel Atom 330 dual-core processor and an NVIDIA Ion GPU provides the computing power and offers HDMI and VGA ports, six USB 2.0 ports, optical and RCA audio connections, integrated 802.11b/g/n wireless and Gigabit ethernet, and Bluetooth connectivity. Ana-5000 gave the repurposed Nintendo a fresh black and white paint-job to set it apart from your garden variety NES as well. Hit up the Source link for pics and an explanation of the entire mod process if you feel like doing some console recycling yourself.

NES becomes an HTPC, turns your FOF upside down originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 03:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Nintendo HTPC  | Email this | Comments

If your ambition was to travel the world, and your job to push the buttons of three cellphones located in South Korea, you might go insane. That seems to be what happened to Mok Young Bak, at least, when he invented the crazy contraption depicted in the video above. Called the Caduceus, it’s a telepresence machine that does just one thing — it controls every single button on each of those three phones with a series of servo motors and actuator cables, and moves a pendulum-like webcam so he can clearly see each screen from wherever he happens to be. That way, he can enjoy tourism while leaving his livelihood within reach, at least so long as concerned neighbors don’t assume the terrible din is, say, a killer robot assembly line, and insist that police investigate.

Man builds machine to push phone buttons from half a world away (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 11:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Hack a Day  | Email this | Comments

If art always seemed a little bit too passive for your liking, we have a little something that might change your mind. Wall artist Alexandre Farto has been creating images without paint, pen or charcoal, opting instead for very precise explosions. He places charges into a wall and then detonates them, blowing off bits of plaster to create large murals, with the contrast between the exploded bits and intact wall forming the image. 

The murals can be found around London and Moscow and are part of a series called “Scratching the Surface”. His site contains images of other pieces he’s made with explosives, as well as links to his other works (mostly of the more tame, non-volatile variety).

The artist, also known as Vhils, collaborated with the musician Orelha Negra to create a video of the creation of the pieces, explosions and all. Watching the bits of plaster fly off the wall, leaving behind a simple slogan or picture is honestly breathtaking, especially given how carefully targeted these blasts had to be to make this happen. Can’t help but think that required art classes would be a bit more fun using his technique. Check out the video after the break.

[via Hack-a-Day]

If you asked us to drop $350 for 23 pieces of laser-cut plastic, we’d probably shoo you away, but it’s hard to resist the incredible charm of the Nanocade. Besides, designer Rasmus Sorensen’s actually selling the miniature arcade cabinet parts for just $229 right now, which makes the decision to finally build your own MAME machine a wee bit more affordable. You’ll still need to supply all the internals yourself, including buttons, an arcade stick, a monitor and glue, and even should you succeed, good luck prying guests away from your new coffee table conversation piece. Find the basic kit in your choice of Midnight Black or Arctic White at our source link.

Note: It’s a bit of a bummer, but the Nanocade website says that handsome curved control panel displayed above actually isn’t part of the initial kit — it comes with a pair of flat pieces that meet at a (seemingly) wrist-chafing angle instead.

Nanocade kit now on sale in the USA, somewhat less pricy at $229 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Nanocade  | Email this | Comments