Pixel Qi DIY kits will be out in Q2, ‘slightly more difficult than changing a lightbulb’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Let’s face it: Taking it easy isn’t very easy. Meditation classes, binge drinking, marijuana, movies with sexy blue alien cats — these are the things we hardworking Americans rely on to help us unwind. But what if we could eliminate stress altogether? What if we could train our brains to stay relaxed forever?
That’s the idea behind Harcos Laboratories “most painful toy hack ever.” The team of kooky geeks was intrigued with Mattel’s Mindflex, a wireless headset that reads the frequency of your brainwaves to levitate a ball. LEDs on the headset light up if you’re concentrating hard; if you’re calm, no LEDs light up. Harcos Lab wondered, “How can we put that to more practical use in our everyday lives?”
Easy: Reprogram the Mindflex to shock the bejeezus out of you if you concentrate too hard. Harcos hooked up the leads of the LEDs to a transistor/resistor relay network so they’d instead activate an electric-shock kit made by QKit. The end result? Concentrate a little, and you’ll get zapped a little. Concentrate hard, and you’ll get an electrical pulse that will make you think you’ve wandered onto the set of Green Mile. What a shockingly brilliant solution to all our problems!
Actually, the hack wasn’t that easy. Harcos admits it was difficult opening up the Mindflex. A full how-to is over on Harcos’ blog. Check out the lab’s Mindflex hack in the video below.
(Thanks, Jon!)
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Swedish photographer Peter Karlsson has come up with a lightweight, strong and beautifully designed light stand. The skinny tripods are somewhere between a tent and the rigging of a sailing boat.
Peter, like many Strobists, uses small flash units for his work, the kind that slide onto the top of your camera. These small speedlights are surprisingly powerful and very portable. The problem is the stands they sit on, which are – if not exactly heavy – bulky and weighty enough to make you think twice about carrying more than one or two.
So Peter built these featherweight stands from flexible tent poles. They weight just 440 grams (15.5-ounces) each and extend from just 40cm to two meters (1.3-feet to 6.5-feet). This is less than a third the weight of a regular lighting stand.
The stands are standard tent-poles with elastic cord running through the core. To make one, Peter says that the “only needed skills are to cut rope and tie knots.” Instead of using a standard (heavy) clamp to attach the flash and soft-box to the top, Peter hangs it there with more cord. Height adjustment is done by lengthening or shortening this rigging. It’s not for using outside on a windy day, but for indoor location work, its ideal.
The video runs a bit long, but it is exquisitely shot, and explains all you need to know.
Homegrown ultralight lightstands [Svarteld]
Tent Pole Light Stands: More Details [Stobist]
What’s cute, cuddly, and makes all sorts of bizarro noises when it senses wireless waves? Yoshi Akai’s Wireless Catcher, of course! This analog synth contraption is simplistic in nature and complex in design, utilizing an onboard antenna to sense WiFi signals and then alter the sounds being outputted depending on signal strength and direction. It’s not exactly the symphony that Bach forgot to write, but it’s certainly beautiful in its own nerdy way. Have a look at the video past the break, won’t you?
Continue reading Yoshi Akai’s Wireless Catcher senses nearby wireless waves, makes music (video)
Yoshi Akai’s Wireless Catcher senses nearby wireless waves, makes music (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 04:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Twitter-enabled LED table lets you get your Lite-Brite on from afar originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We don’t know that this requires much more explanation than the title. A couple of rad dudes from the German-speaking parts of Europe have taken up tools against their old titanium PowerBooks G4s and produced the righteous bit of snow-surfing kit you see above. It was done for a competition asking for creative ways to re-utilize old gear, though judging by all the flopping and crashing that ensued in their tests, this isn’t exactly useful. See it on video after the break, and if it really catches your fancy, the PowerBook snowboard can be found on eBay, though no one has been mad enough to bid for it yet.
Continue reading Two PowerBooks spliced into one epic snowboard (video)
Two PowerBooks spliced into one epic snowboard (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Working for a large company comes with a lot of baggage, the least of which is an RFID security badge. For those small companies who can’t afford such extravagantly wireless door key solutions there’s another option: this DIY project completed by a team of developers at Sunlight Labs. It all centers around a Linksys WRT54GL, a Linux-based wireless router that, with a little firmware hackery and a bit of wiring, was tethered into the office’s door release buzzer. The team then went about allowing SSH access to the router and created Android and iPhone apps that instantly connect to the device and open the door, authenticated by a PIN and a unique ID assigned to each device. Users can also deliver their PIN via SMS or a simple phone call to open the door. Elegant, impressive, open source, and one less thing to forget on a Monday morning when groggily heading to the office.
Continue reading Linksys router turned into smartphone-controlled doorman (video)
Linksys router turned into smartphone-controlled doorman (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Engadget reader Martin Schrotz is a man after our own hearts. He’s taken the editors’ choice for best smartphone of 2009 and tricked it out with a handsome new back cover made out of titanium. Not sufficiently pleased with the plastic casing provided by Apple, Martin opened up his favorite CAD program and refashioned his phone into the much hardier and indubitably more awesome machine you see before you. The new backing is built out of a titanium alloy that allows RF waves through and therefore requires no plastic parts to let the wireless communications flow. Check out the gallery for more before hitting the link below to bug Martin to provide you with a video or a price estimate.
Gallery: Titanium iPhone 3GS mod
iPhone 3GS mod ditches plastic cover in favor of titanium vestment originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Look, that BOSS TU-2 has served you (and eleventy billion other guitarists) well, but isn’t it time for something a bit different in the pedal board mix? Stimmmopped is that very thing, which is a darling little contraption that uses LEDs rather than a microphone in order to tell you if your strings are tuned as they should be. Put simply, the device illuminates a string with a pair of lights, both of which are flashing at the frequency that the string should be vibrating at if it’s in tune; if you’re off, the illuminated part of the string will appear to be moving (thanks, stroboscopic effect!), and if you’re on the money, the lights will appear fixed. Have a peek at the source link for more, but don’t go building one yourself without a steady hand and a few vacation days to spare.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Stimmmopped lets you tune your axe with LEDs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Remember Bioloid? How could you forget, right? Well, we had the pleasure of meeting his more expensive brother and Avatar-inspired-sister Bioloid Premium at the New York Toy Fair. Meant for hobbyist robot builders, the kit comes with everything you need to build and program the plastic and metal humanoid, including Robotis’ AX-12 servo actuator and ‘C’ programming software. But getting Bioloid to walk, run and dance to Lady Gaga is going to cost ya a whopping $1,199. That seems like a lot of dough for us non-robot builders, but this guy’s heartwarming demeanor and balancing act almost has us forking it over. You’ll see what we mean in the video just past the break.
Gallery: Bioloid Premium hands-on
Continue reading Building Bioloid Premium doesn’t look easy, even if you do have $1,199 to do it
Building Bioloid Premium doesn’t look easy, even if you do have $1,199 to do it originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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