Stunning images of space taken from a shed
Here’s a great story in the Telegraph about an amateur stargazer who tricked out his garden shed in the U.K. and surprised professional astronomers around the world with his top-notch images.
Mods
Blu-Ray Star Trek laser pops balloons across a room
Our own Kipkay first put a Blu-Ray laser diode into a handheld Star Trek phaser toy back in 2007. Hack N Mod’s Jay has added an illuminated safety switch, a large heat sink, and a custom focusing adapter at the tip. The laser operates at 320 mA and gives 465 mW of power, and is, to be fair, quite dangerous for the eyes. Not a toy. Even though it’s built into one. [via DVICE
Power Wheels car modded into wireless warthog
Tim modified some kid-sized jeeps with laser tag weaponry + game controllers to create a live action game in the spirit of Halo’s warthog vehicles. In the above interview he explains the sizable list of gear used to make it all happen. I’m guessing a simpler take on the idea could be built using RC […]
Lego router works!
Too cool – Luke rehoused his WRT54GL’s PCB in an entirely Lego-built enclosure. He was also kind enough to provide downloadable instructions on his blog. Anyone out there been using Lego for their DIY electronics projects? [via Byphenyl’s Twitter feed]
Hacking Pizza with PizzaHacker
Earlier this week I was exiting an event in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood when I bumped into PizzaHacker and his amazing Franken-Webber portable wood burning pizza oven.
Glow-in-the-dark record player display
This light sculpture by German multimedia design collective lab binaer may look like a persistence of vision (POV) display at first glance, but in fact works on a very different principle. It’s built from a record player, and the turntable has been treated with a phosphorescent pigment. Messages are printed on the pigment by an array of bright lights on the tone arm, and slowly fade to black as the phosphorescence wanes. It’s titled »Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod« or “Death calls the tune.”
Bluetooth Ericofon
SQNewton didn’t just crack open a bluetooth headset and cram it into a cool retro handset casing; he developed his own hardware to produce a fully-functional, self-contained phone that uses the Ericofon’s original rotary dial, gives dial and busy tones, mimics the original Ericofon ringer, and has voice-recognition dialing to top it off. [via Hack a Day]
