Hasta La Gadget!

Real Virtual Skater is a controller mod that sees a Wiimote liberated from its case and placed inside a box strapped to the underside of a skateboard. Thanks to The Bluetooth, as the player gleams “the cube” (or his “living room”, as the case may be) all his movements are used to control his avatar in the magical world of Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Just the thing for a kid that already has the board, the Vans, the Jams, a Lance Mountain t-shirt, and a JFA cassette — but no real desire to leave his parent’s basement. Technical details are few, but we do have a chest-pounding video of the thing in action after the break.

[Via Feng Gui]
[Thanks, Pegasus Unicorn]

Continue reading Wiimote and skateboard hacked into a controller, Gator not impressed

Filed under: Gaming

Wiimote and skateboard hacked into a controller, Gator not impressed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen the elusive Chumby hidden behind all sorts of facades before, but this one is probably the most heartwarming yet. The brilliant minds at MAKE have figured out a way to retrofit the highly tweakable gizmo into an old school telephone, putting all sorts of web-connected widgets at your fingertips while keeping that blast-from-the-past flair in tact. Sadly, it cannot yet make or receive calls, but what’s stopping you from taking this same project on and making sure that functionality remains in tact? Nothing, that’s what.

[Thanks, Gerry]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Chumby gets retrofitted into retro telephone, will soon make collect calls originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Inside a mild-mannered toy golf cup, the kind that pop the ball back at you when you sink a putt (and make you go walk for it when you miss), lurks a lethal weapon — a tiny rail gun just waiting to serve. Modder Jay took one of those induction coils to build himself a small but fierce turret, also using a little inspiration from the Serv O’Beer, an ioBridge module, two ballpoint pens, two wooden spoons, a coffee mug, and — the pièce de résistance — a Wiimote liberated from someone’s console. By twisting the controller left or right the weapon rotates accordingly, honing in on threatening textbooks and launching a screwdriver bit with deadly force. Alas, you can’t fire the turret by pressing a button on the controller, but that’s said to be entirely for safety reasons — we wouldn’t want some poor kid trying to play a little My Horse & Me and accidentally shooting themselves in the back.

[Via Make]

Continue reading Wiimote + pens + coffee cup + office putting toy = deadly coil gun turret

Filed under: Gaming, Household

Wiimote + pens + coffee cup + office putting toy = deadly coil gun turret originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that the holiday season is officially over (CES notwithstanding), there’s officially no better time to get inebriated and wash away the sorrows of not having another government-recognized holiday for like, ever. After you’ve drug that dead tree out to the roadside and filled a few buckets with tears, why not try constructing your very Serv O’Beer in order to bring just a sliver of that joy back into your heart? Put simply, the project pictured above utilized Construx as the mechanical platform, a servo driving the action and ioBridge controlling the system; a so-called “perfect pour” was executed by linking an iPhone accelerometer to the system and turning it up. Have a look at the demonstration vid just past the break — dollars to donuts it’ll make you smile.

[Thanks, Hans]

Continue reading Serv O’Beer pours when iPhone accelerometer tells it to

Filed under: Cellphones, Household

Serv O’Beer pours when iPhone accelerometer tells it to originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS hinted at some alternative Eee form factors in the Spring of last year, but it’s a Japanese modder that’s showing the company exactly how it shouldn’t approach an Eee-branded tablet PC. It’s a touch tough to understand exactly what’s going on, but here’s what is (partially) clear: the hack job took around ten hours to complete, and the outer edges are inexplicably covered in aluminum foil. It’s encased in some sort of transparent housing — which we suppose is pretty nifty for showing off the internals — and the retrofitted touchpanel provides the tasty tablet functionality. Apparently this guy spent around ¥11,000 ($128) over and above the cost of the Eee PC in order to construct the final result pictured above — the question is: was it really worth it?

[Via Fashion Funky, thanks Bob]

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

Japanese DIYer shows ASUS how not to make an Eee Tablet PC originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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