Cool Gadgets

Magnetic Levitation Light Bulb uses Wireless Energy Transfer
Complex Hacks

17

  Robin Massink from the Netherlands has built a cool Magnetic Levitation Light Bulb it uses Wireless Energy Transfer to power the bulb. It is always weird to see something being powered with no wires! "I used this globe (http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/98b8/) for the levitating part. It consists of 2 permanent magnets, and 2 electromagnets, coupled with a hall sensor to keep a third magnet (inside the globe) floating. I mounted a

iPhone Rotary Phone Docking Station
Cool Gadgets

16

  I love the look of the old rotary phones. This hack turns your old phone into a cool iPhone docking station. With 16 Watts of speakers hidden in the device there is sure to be some cool sounds coming from this covert device. "Rotary Dial 1940’s Phone fitted with an iPhone speaker dock. One speaker behind the dial (10w) on the front of the phone and two speakers in

MIDI Hero - Control Guitar Hero and Rock Band with Real Drums
Complex Hacks

3

  Talk about extending the playability of Guitar Hero and Rock Band! This hack allows you to use real instruments to play the popular games instead of using the cheap plastic instruments that come with the game. Many people say that necessity is the mother of invention and I think this is the case here since it doesn’t look like this hack would have been done if Egyokeo hadn’t hurt

Mashup Mixing using a Wiimote
Complex Hacks

3

  Based on the White Screen Wiimote hack by Johnny Lee the ECC has developed a very cool way to mashup music at their shows. Thimbles with LEDs in them allow them to press virtual buttons on the huge sound control board. "It’s perfect for our Wheel Of Mashup shows, which depend on an overloaded setup of Ableton Live. Because it’s overloaded, it’s very difficult to mouse quickly and accurately

Christmas Lights controlled with the .NET Micro Framework
Computer Hacks

3

  Rob Miles has put together some software and complimenting hardware that lets to control some Christmas lights using software that is monitoring the internet. In this case it will turn on when a new post appears on his Web site. He uses shift registers to give the project the ability of controlling a ton of LEDs using a small number of controller pins. "If you know C# and love

Video Camera Rocket Mount
Cool Gadgets

1

  If you ever wanted to mount a camera onto a model rocket this article makes for a good read. A custom mold was made to securely hold the camera in place. Project page. "So here is the awkward part. The camera must be TURNED ON when I install it in the rocket. It doesn’t need to be recording, that can be controlled with the poking stick. But it must

96 LED POV
Complex Hacks

3

  Details are slim on this very cool POV that uses a whopping 96 LEDs. The tiny LEDs are able to make a very nice image, it looks like the images may be stored in the banks of chips that can be seen on the board. Timing appears to be done using an LED, it might be a infrared LED since it would be visible to the video camera. There