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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

While we of course rock oh-so-very-hard on Rock Band’s drums, the pedal just never felt right under our weakling calves. The problem is naturally exacerbated for folks in wheelchairs, since there’s no way to avoid the kick drum or re-route it to another button — at least out of the box. Some folks at Kinetic Communications modded up a doorbell to work as the kick drum button and screwed it to a drum stick. Not the prettiest mod in the world, but it got their wheelchair-bound buddy drumming for about $20, and it shouldn’t be hard to replicate their instructions.

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Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Chalk another one up for Sharp. The company has landed yet another partner willing to utilize its solar panels in order to make news, wow onlookers and give Mother Earth a modicum of a break. Napa Valley winery Far Niente has flipped on its self-coined Floatovoltaic installation, which was developed by Thompson Technology Industries and installed by SPG Solar. Nearly 2,300 Sharp solar panels were secured for the job, and we’re told that the array generates 400 kWs at peak output, which “significantly offsets the winery’s annual power usage and provides a net-zero energy bill.” Don’t expect that coveted bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon to be any cheaper as a result, though.

[Via CNET]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Wearables

This day and age, there’s really no excuse to have too little room in your average pair of cargo shorts for all the gadgets needed in a day. Convergence and shrinking PCBs have left us with do-it-all handhelds that can fit in the rear pockets of size 2 jeans on a size 4 gal, so really, you have exactly zero reasons to actually buy that abomination pictured above. If you must know, the FreeHand is a wearable neoprene pocket that keeps your keys, flash drives, RSA token and chump change within easy reach, and if you’re lucky, you may be able to convince the boss it’s being worn to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. Folks who haven’t listened to a word we just said can ignite a Jackson right now — or spend $19.95 on this, same difference.

[Via Coolest-Gadgets]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Dallas’ Southern Methodist University is now recycling energy with one of the first commercial electricity generators that use thermoelectricity—the act of drawing power from waste heat. The machine operates by using heat given off by other processes (such as manufacturing) to boil liquids, which then turn into steam, which then turns an electricity-generating turbine.

ElectraTherm’s Waste Heat Generators recover heat from various sources without any specialized electronics or hard-to-maintain components. By boiling water up to 200°F, the generator can produce from 25kW to 1MW of fuel-free, emission-free electricity.

About 50% of all fuel burned by industrial sources becomes “waste heat.” Though businesses can try to use fuel as efficiently as possible, nearly seven quadrillion Btu of waste heat still escapes to do nothing but warm the atmosphere. But ElectraTherm says that its products, if used widely, could recover the equivalent electric output of 92 500MW gas-fired power plants.

The company says that the university will recoup its purchase cost in three to four years, with electricity costing about three to four cents per kwH during that time. After the payback period, the cost per kWH will drop to less than a penny. If only ElectraTherm’s machines could be hooked up to the hot air our politicians will spew come election day, then all our nation’s energy problems would be solved. [Electratherm via Cnet]

Original post by Elaine Chow

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Frighteningly enough, this isn’t the first (or second) time that we’ve seen scientists pat themselves on the back for creating a mind-reading machine, but a dedicated team from Carnegie Mellon has just announced a computer that “has been trained to read people’s minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words.” In a completely unsurprising move, gurus familiar with the development are suggesting that the breakthrough could be used to better understand how the brain organizes knowledge, and eventually, treat language disorders and learning disabilities more effectively. That’s all gravy from here, but when this stuff starts passing as evidence in court, you’ll know it’s time to seriously investigate a relocation to Mars.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Apologies to reader Miguel for taking his fantastic creations and shoving a lousy pun on it, but it was either that or “sTEAmpunk”. These Steampunk Tea Pots are really, really amazing, and they’re all hand-made and unglazed colored clay pots perfect for putting your morning tea into. Mr. T would approve.

GALLERY

Boiler

Encounter

PlanetX

Radial
END

Original post by Jason Chen

Filed under: GPS

First things first: considering the huge amount of press garnered by a recent position art scam, this here could indeed be just another spoof to get your hopes up. That being said, we’re pretty sure no one with any level of decency would do such a vile thing on Easter Sunday, which is precisely when the above bunny was purportedly created from waltzing about with a Magellan GPS and a digital camera. The artist himself admits that what you see above is a slightly cleaned-up version of the actual path, but we’re told that any edits that occurred had no huge bearing on the outcome of the piece. You be the judge.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Lockergnome has somewhat convoluted way to game the Amazon system to get an extra 5% off of anything in the store, as long as it’s actually sold by Amazon.com and not a third-party retailer. It’s too long to list here, but the gist of it is that you tell Amazon you already own something, wait a day, and they’ll recommend that item back to you at a 5% discount. Not sure how this makes sense, but Lockergnome says it works. Go check it out, cheapos. [Lockergnome]

Original post by Jason Chen

Filed under: Cellphones

Hah, did you really have the nerve to doubt CraigIX? The iPhone gamepad add-on that we heard about just last week is already inching closer to reality, and there’s a video to prove it. In the somewhat unexciting clip posted up after the jump, you’ll see a PCB mockup of the device doing its thang, though it’s quite inelegant in its current form. If you just needed one more something to boost your interest / confidence that this critter was real, you know where to head.

[Via zodttd]

Continue reading Prototype iControlPad proves itself on video

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Original post by Darren Murph

Microsoft’s Surface multi-touch table sure is cool, but who has $10,000 to spend on a gadget like that? I personally have maybe fifty bucks to my name right now, so I guess I’ll have to fulfill my multi-touch itch with a cardboard box and a webcam like this guy.

Seth Sandler, an undergraduate student at UC San Diego, built a portable multi-touch pad out of a cardboard box, a piece of glass, paper, and his Philips SPC900NC webcam. The camera picks up on the shadows created by your fingers when they’re placed on the pad’s surface. A tracking software then transfers the motions onto a computer screen. Multi-touch goodness at an incredibly low cost—looks like I can afford to eat this month after all! [New Scientist]

Original post by Elaine Chow