Just admit it: you want this portable boombox modded Sega Dreamcast, don’t you? If the answer is “no,” you blew it. Hit up the source link for way more images and a video.
Dreamcast boombox: why not? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Jun 2010 03:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Dell Adamo gets jammed inside another Dell laptop: yes, it’s that thin! originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Jun 2010 02:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Tired of touchscreen tablets that lack speed, a usable UI, or support for a certain streaming video format that will go unnamed? As one of our favorite sayings goes, if you want it done right, do it yourself. One Engadget reader took that idea to heart in crafting the 13.4-inch carbon fiber contraption you see above, imbuing it with enough high-end netbook parts to run Windows 7 at a brisk pace and play 720p video on its large, resistive touchscreen. Starting with the guts of an MSI X320, adding an accelerometer and 40GB solid state drive and finally sandwiching a random Chinese digitizer on top, the whole 1.6GHz Atom Z530 machine cost him under $700 in parts. For that price, we’re sure many of you would be happy to follow in his footsteps, but if not, by all means continue complaining to your tablet manufacturer of choice. We have another favorite saying: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Video after the break; Q&A with the creator at our more coverage link.
Continue reading MSI X340 reborn as DIY carbon fiber tablet, watch it stream YouTube at 720p (video)
MSI X340 reborn as DIY carbon fiber tablet, watch it stream YouTube at 720p (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 15:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
DIY weaponry gets more lethal with each passing year; where once we were content with a simple foam missile launcher, technology has progressed such that our automated turrets now spew screwdriver bits, airsoft and paintballs. As progress forges ahead, two engineering students at the University of Arkansas have added injury to insult with this four-stage DIY coilgun. Using an Arduino microcontroller to actuate the firing mechanism and steer the monstrous wooden frame, they nimbly control the badass kit with an iDevice over WiFi, and line up targets using a repurposed PlayStation Eye webcam. While we’d of course prefer to have our phone SSH into the gun over 3G, we’re not going to argue with success. We’d like to keep our lungs un-perforated, thank you very much. See it in action after the break.
Students accelerate cubicle arms race with PlayStation Eye-tracked, iPhone-guided coilgun (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 May 2010 07:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
General-purpose devices such as the iPad are rendering a number of dedicated devices unnecessary by replacing them with apps. Rather than toss his word-processing Alphasmart Neo keyboard in the recycling bin, Eolake Stobblehouse had a clever idea: Why not hook up the keyboard to the iPad?
iPad with Neo as keyboard from Eolake Stobblehouse on Vimeo.
In the video above, Stobblehouse shows off his Neo hooked up to the iPad via a USB dongle (the iPad camera connection kit, which, as it turns out, connects to a lot more than just cameras). Much to our surprise, the six-year-old keyboard appears to work.
What’s more, Stobblehouse used paperclips to create his own stand for the iPad so that it can be used in landscape mode. These two “mods” combined already look more convenient than the standard iPad keyboard dock, which forces you to dock the tablet in portrait mode.
Stobblehouse says the Neo is an especially good choice for travelers, since it’s full-sized, very rugged and lightweight. It looks promising.
See Also:
Just point and shoot.
Video after the break.
Continue reading Canon DSLR shutter remote hacked into Atari joystick
Canon DSLR shutter remote hacked into Atari joystick originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 03:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Sure, Project Natal is the hotness and a little bird tells us PlayStation Move is pretty bodacious, but you don’t have to buy a fancy game console to sooth your motion-tracking blues. When students at Cornell University wanted to play Human Tetris (and ace a final project to boot), they taught a 20Mhz, 8-bit microcontroller how to follow their moves. Combined with an NTSC camera, the resulting system can display a 39 x 60 pixel space at 24 frames per second, apparently enough to slot your body into some grooves — and as you’ll see in videos after the break, it plays a mean game of Breakout, too. Full codebase and plans to build your own at the source link. Eat your heart out, geeks.
Students program Human Tetris into 8-bit microcontroller, give away schematics for free (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 May 2010 07:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
It’s rush hour, and you’re headed due West on your evening commute — the sun burning holes in your eyes. You could flip down a window visor, trading your field of view for visibility. Or, with a prototype shown off at Intel’s 2010 International Science and Engineering Fair, you could simply let the windshield darken on its own. Two San Diego students (both accustomed to copious amounts of sunshine) rigged a Toyota Prius to do just that by stringing up electrochromic panels, which dim when voltage is applied. The trick is figuring out when and where to apply it, because when the sun is shining the panels themselves all receive the same amount of light. So instead of gauging it at the glass, Aaron Schild and Rafael Cosman found that an ultrasonic range finder could track the driver’s position while a VGA webcam measured the light coming through, and darken the sections liable to cause the most eyestrain. We saw a prototype in person, and it most certainly works… albeit slowly. If you’re rearing to roll your own, it seems raw materials are reasonably affordable — Schild told us electrochromic segments cost $0.25 per square inch — but you may not need to DIY. Having won $4,000 in prize money at the Fair, the teens say they intend to commercialize the technology, and envision it natively embedded in window glass in the not-too-distant future. Here’s hoping GM gives them a call. See pics of the Prius below, or check out a video demo of their prototype right after the break.
Continue reading Auto-dimming electrochromic panels reduce glare when driving (video)
Auto-dimming electrochromic panels reduce glare when driving (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 May 2010 12:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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There were certainly a couple whiz kids at Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair this year, but high school senior John Hinckel’s a regular MacGyver: he built a wheelchair remote control out of a couple sheets of transparent plastic, four sliding furniture rails and some string. A Nintendo Wiimote goes in your hat and tells the whole system what to do — simply tilt your head in any direction, and accelerometer readings are sent over Bluetooth. The receiving laptop activates microcontrollers, directing servo motors to pull the strings, and acrylic gates push the joystick accordingly to steer your vehicle. We tried on the headset for ourselves and came away fairly impressed — it’s no mind control, but for $534 in parts, it just might do. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who thought so, as patents are pending, and a manufacturer of wheelchair control systems has already expressed interest in commercializing the idea. See the young inventor show it off after the break.
Continue reading Student moves quadriplegics with Wiimote wheelchair control (video)
Student moves quadriplegics with Wiimote wheelchair control (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 May 2010 08:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sprint and Verizon may have shunned the Nexus One, but that doesn’t mean the handsets can’t be put to good use: these Android-controlled, Arduino-powered Cellbots now feature the one true Googlephone as the CPU. At Intel’s 2010 International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose, we got our hot little hands on the DIY truckbots for the first time, and found to our surprise they’d been imbued with accelerometer-based motion control. Grabbing a Nexus One off a nearby table, we simply tilted the handset forward, back, left and right to make the Cellbot wheel about accordingly, bumping playfully into neighbors and streaming live video the whole time. We were told the first handset wirelessly relayed instructions to the second using Google Chat, after which point a Python script determined the bot’s compass facing and activated Arduino-rigged motors via Bluetooth, but the real takeaway here is that robots never fail to amuse. Watch our phone-skewing, bot-driving antics in a video after the break, and see what we mean.
Continue reading Cellbots get Nexus One upgrade, ad-hoc motion control (video)
Cellbots get Nexus One upgrade, ad-hoc motion control (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 May 2010 17:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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