The Yellow Drum Machine is a robot with one sole purpose: to find things to drum on. The cute little robot has tracked “wheels” so it can roam around finding objects to lay beats on. The Yellow Drum machine can avoid obstacles, but when it finds an object worth playing on (it actually takes sound samples), it goes ahead and drums a little beat. It also records every beat it has played in the area, so it can playback the “recorded beat” while it plays a new beat. The Yellow Drum Machine is fully autonomous, there is no remote control.
It’s pretty f’ing cool. It cost $120 and 20 hours to build. Watch the video!!!
Update (3/23/08): Updated the vid. Looks like the old one died. Still, more vids at Let’s Make Robots.
This reminds me of the Skateboard Mirror of earlier this week. However, PBteen’s Skateboard Speaker Shelf is way more useful. Not only can you place your books and crap on it (it is a shelf after all), it also comes included with two 5-inch speakers, wall mounts, and a 30-pin dock for your iPod. It is available in pink or brown with an “artsy” paint splat that, I guess, makes it look cool.
The Skateboard Speaker Shelf measures 29 x 5.5 x 8 inches and is made from MDF, so don’t think about attaching trucks and wheels to the thing. It costs $179 at PBteen.
The Buckle-Up Key Holder is one of those “take-something-useless-and-turn-it-into-something-useful” product designs. Taking salvaged seatbelt buckles from a junk yard, Thabto has turned seatbelt buckles into a wall mountable key holder. The idea is to attach the “male” part of the buckle (the connector) to your keychain (like a key fob). Then, you take the actual belt buckle, the “female”, and mount it on your wall. So, when you come home from work, you simply “buckle” your keys to the wall.
Simple, and it keeps you organized. No more panicking about where you left your keys in the morning. Just look on the wall!
Okay, this futuristic remote control is another head scratcher. Sure, it is a cool idea, but to me, the concept is just too gimmicky to be practical. Designed by a Duch design student, the remote sports a multi-touch pad-esque finger sensor. The remote control requires you to use finger gestures to operate the TV. To turn the TV on, you spread your fingers apart in the remote’s center cavity. To change the channel, you either “slide” your finger up or down. To turn off the TV, you make a “pinching” gesture. Finally, to adjust the volume, you gently adjust the remote’s up or down tilt to increase or decrease the volume. It can auto balance itself, as long as it remains between 0 to 40 degrees.
I know, confusing. I’d rather just press buttons. But, watch the video for a demo…it’ll all make sense.
This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Using a retail version of the Lego Mindstorms NXT kit, Hans Andersson, was able to design and construct a robot that could solve a Rubik’s cube. He called it Tilted Twister, because of the robot’s tilted stance. Using four included sensors — light, touch, ultrasonic, and sound — and three servo motors, Andersson was able to program the Tilted Twister to solve a scrambled Rubik’s cube in about 6 minutes average.
Tilted Twister first scans the cube using its color sensor to understand the cube’s arrangement. Its robotic arm is able to flip the Rubik’s cube over, allowing the sensor to scan each side. After it has completed the scan, its algorithm takes over and it begins to solve the cube using its flipping and twisting arms.
Do you have a dinky little fish bowl because you don’t want to invest in a large, full sized tank just for a couple of goldfishes? Well, the ComFish all-in-one mini aquarium might be worth the ‘upgrade’. The interesting part of the ComFish is that its oxygen tank, lighting, and water heater are all powered by USB. Yup! You install the included software and connect the ComFish to a USB port on your computer, giving you full control of the aquarium’s system to make sure your goldfish stays nice and comfy. The mini aquarium also doubles as a room humidifier and night light.
One question though? What happens when you power off your computer? Will it cause my little Nemo to die? Also, why USB? Hello?!? Welcome to 2008, I want Wi-Fi please.
The ComFish is available in either red, blue, gold, or silver color. It costs about 49,000 KRW ($50) in Korea.
Remember the Bamboo phone earlier this month? Well, that was a concept. Here’s a real, “purchasable” one, called the Eco-Media Player from Trevor Baylis. This thing has a hand crank that provides 40 minutes of playtime with each full minute of cranking. If you are totally against any type of manual labor, you can also charge the Eco-Media Player through USB. The environment friendly player features:
* 1.8″ color LCD display
* 2GB
* 24-bit digital audio processing
* Audio support: mp3, wma, asf, wav, and ogg
* Video support: asv (in comes with a conversion software to convert your video files)
* Photo viewer: jpeg, bmp, and gif
* FM radio
* Stereo 3.5mm headphone jack
* SD card slot
* 20 hours of music/10 hours of video playback on a full charge
* USB 2.0; for easy ‘drag and drop’ file transferring
Here’s another touchscreen portable media player. This time, it’s from Teclast with their latest M26 player. The sleek and sexy PMP sports a 2.6-inch WQVGA (400 x 200) touchscreen, FM radio, TV-out, and has support for Microsoft’s PlayFX — for enhanced sound quality.
It can play back RMVB, RM, FLV, and AVI video files. However, a complete list of supported audio files isn’t available, but you can expect support for MP3s at the very least.
As you can tell, Teclast hasn’t said very much about the M26… No word on pricing. Judging the photo, it’ll come in either white or black.
