Pocket Calculator Show. via: Beware of Blog
posted on Jul 7, 2008 - View this thread

This is a cool game you can download. Here are some rule books for it.
posted on Mar 28, 2008 - View this thread

Carl Rankin builds awesome RC planes out of straws, plastic wrap, tape, and foam take-out boxes. (via)
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - View this thread

The birth of a gadget. [Wired]
posted on Nov 22, 2007 - View this thread

Radiophonic Workshop - Alchemists of Sound.
posted on Nov 20, 2007 - View this thread

Open Text Book: a blog which lists freely-available online textbooks.
posted on Oct 25, 2007 - View this thread

Insect Lab. Insects retrofitted with antique watch parts and electronic components.
posted on Dec 12, 2006 - View this thread

The Toriton Plus A new electronic music interface using water and light. (YouTube). Make your own. From Little-Scale, which is chock-full of cool and wonderous stuff.
posted on Nov 11, 2006 - View this thread

Analog by Design: Reality TV for Design Engineers (autoloads Flash with sound). Author, self-proclaimed Czar of Bandgaps, and minor hero to many scientists and engineers Robert Pease now has an online video podcast.
posted on Oct 4, 2006 - View this thread

Metal Storm Limited specializes in weapon systems featuring rapid fire electronically fired bullets, up to 1 million a minute. The weapons platform can be used to make the worlds strongest handgun as well as be used to equip unmanned drones with firepower. The most frightening of which is perhaps the "dragonfly" micro copter. Their site has a number of videos showcasing some of the various weapons applications. Metal Storm has been around for a while, without getting a product to market, but with a recent influx of funding it doesn't look like they are going to go out of business any time soon.
posted on Jul 10, 2006 - View this thread

Have you ever seen a synth and said "Man, what this needs is cartoon eyes?" A bit similar to the Buchla Box or theremin in that they don't have a keyboard to control the sounds -- it's probably closest to the Booper, invented by The Weatherman from Negativland (or, well, Circuit Bending), the Thingamagoop is a photosynthesizer... which means it basically uses light sensors to generate sounds. The signal's run through a couple oscillators and, well, it comes out as somethin' that's pretty dang awesome. I'm on the fence on pickin' this one up. On one hand, it's a really neat toy that makes noise... on the other hand, um.... um.... I dunno. It's not made of candy?
posted on Jul 8, 2006 - View this thread

Discover the goodness that is Hack A Day -- DIY geekery of all sorts awaits you: vacuum forming • Infrared web cams and digital cams • robotic helicopter • Telemarketer Interception System • Jacob's Ladder • Dobsonian telescope [pdf] • prison tatoo gun • TIG welder • parallel and serial port sound • LCD projector • FM transmitter [tripod] • computer-controlled glider • jet-powered beer cooler • retro wooden laptop • White Trash hoverboard • refrigerator speaker cabinet • tornado machine [pdf] • fog machine • LED Pimp Bed • seismometer • persistence-of-vision game system • webcam telescope • racing game controllers • Segway • laser projectors • flamethrower • bagpipes and hours upon hours of time wasting others.
posted on Oct 25, 2005 - View this thread

The Wire This award winning CBC radio series incorporates interviews, music and sound to explore the impact of electricity on music, from Edison to Caruso to Les Paul to Bjork. Exhaustively researched and beautifully produced, it's somewhere between a documentary, a remix and a music show. The home site has excerpts, playlists, and the remix from each show, but you can listen to all eight episodes in their entirely at PRX (you'll need to login first).
posted on Oct 21, 2005 - View this thread

This jewel case makes its own music. One Bit Music is a project by composer and artist Tristan Perich. Merging his interests in physical computing and electronic music, Perich programs and packages electronics in a standard CD jewel case. The device plays minimal glitch/dance music when headphones are plugged in. You may remember him from such classics as the push button telephone to cellphone conversion.
posted on Sep 17, 2005 - View this thread

The Tortilla-Board^TM. When the worlds of electronics and cheap Mexican food combine.
posted on Jul 15, 2005 - View this thread

InstantSOUP is good for the android's soul An open electronics hobbiest kit geared towards design students in non-engineering disciplines. It's built around a simple I/O board that can interface with your computer (MacOS, Windows or Linux) and, wiring a programming language. Wiring is in turn based around the nifty Processing programming language.
posted on Jun 16, 2005 - View this thread

Circuit Bending : The art of taking (usually consumer-grade children's toys) electronics and short circuiting them for audio effects previously not intended by the manufacturer. The simple directions are to probe around the insides of a vivisected toy to find the connections that cause distortion, repitition, pitch change etc. After that all you have to do is solder wires to an on/off switch, dial or button.

Maybe a little like the Frankenstein monster projects like this can be pretty inexpensive. All you need is a bunch of wires, switchs, knobs and a soldering iron. Not to mention hours of trial and error. Any subjects for experimentation can be found at your local thrift store. Too lazy to shop around for victims? Trouble findng switches for under 5$ each? You can always buy one ready-made.
posted on May 15, 2005 - View this thread

The WEEE Man is a huge 3 ton figure standing 7 metres high and is composed entirely of WEEE (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment)--from washing machines to mobile phones and electronic toys. The WEEE Man represents the amount of waste a single person in the UK is likely to produce in a lifetime. Measure your own footprint here.
posted on Apr 28, 2005 - View this thread

When he says "home theater" he means home theater. If you're going to ignore TV Turnoff Week, you may as well do it in style.
posted on Apr 25, 2005 - View this thread

2 GB of data per second, piggybacking on your skin's electrical field. You == organic lan for small electronic devices. And it's a little more secure than bluetooth. via kottke, like everything else.
posted on Mar 23, 2005 - View this thread

Typing...on a screen! Text (and cover image) of a 1973 issue of Radio-Electronics mag, showing a new fangled way of typing with a TV screen. I like how the mag is billed as "for MEN with ideas in electronics." Heh...
posted on Feb 28, 2005 - View this thread

The Museum of Nerd Watches have some completely awesome watches. Take for example This watch with a built-in space-invaders type game. How about one that generates lotto numbers? What's the boiling point of that liquid? Check it with your directional temperature gauge watch!
posted on Feb 3, 2005 - View this thread

Introducing the Gizmondo handheld games console from Tiger Telematics. It's like the PSP, only DOOMED.
posted on Jan 27, 2005 - View this thread

U.S. Clandestine Radio Equipment catalogs "facts, observations, anecdotes, and stories about clandestine radio equipment as used by the United States." Includes a section on "mystery" equipment.
posted on Jun 1, 2004 - View this thread

E-paper to make its consumer debut. A little Cambridge, MA firm called E-Ink is teaming up with 2 global partners (Philips and Sony) to introduce next month "the world's first consumer application of an electronic paper display module." The size of a paperback book, it will allow storage of the equivalent of 500 books, and display of up to 10,000 pages on a single set of batteries. The display technology comes closer to the appearance of a printed page than any previous electronic display. The future of this technology: "'expressive surfaces'-intelligent displays that are built right into everyday products." At the research level it is already capable of displaying color video.
posted on Mar 24, 2004 - View this thread

"Circuit bending is the electronic art of the implementation of the creative audio short-circuit. This renegade path of electrons represents a catalytic force capable of exploding new experimental musical forms forward at a velocity previously unknown. Anyone at all can do it; no prior knowledge of electronics is needed." - Reed Ghazala. More proselytizing from Ghazala, and a LiveJournal for up-to-the-minute advice, feedback and opinions.
posted on Jan 28, 2004 - View this thread

Hack your car. AutoXRAY scans internal vehicle computers and gives detailed diagnostics and real-time graphing output.
posted on Jan 12, 2004 - View this thread

Daphne Oram, Godmother of Electronic Music • During WWII, Ms. Oram worked for the BBC as a sound engineer while indulging an obsessive curiousity of experimental audio in her free time. In 1958, she finally convinced the BBC to open the seminal Radiophonic Workshop, which also fostered the talents of sci-fi composers Delia Derbyshire and Ron Grainer. During that period she developed a technique known as Oramics: manipulating 35mm film to create electrical charges and thus, editable sound.
posted on Sep 27, 2003 - View this thread

Welcome to the Electric Town. Akihabara, a shopping district in Japan filled with electronics at duty free prices, can seem a bit imposing. You may never visit it yourself, but others have, and oh, the toys.
posted on Sep 15, 2003 - View this thread

Volvo SCC definitely provides some great new ideas - both innovative and practical for the near future (i.e., heartbeat sensor, adaptive headlights)
posted on Jul 15, 2003 - View this thread

Would you prefer this to being patted down? A scanner the government is testing for airport screening reveals much more than meets the eye to be comfortable for most passengers. The agency hopes to modify the machines with an electronic fig leaf - programming that fuzzes out sensitive body parts or distorts the body so it does not appear so, well, graphic.
posted on Jun 26, 2003 - View this thread

Anita Mk VII the "A New Inspiration To Accounting" OR "A New Inspiration To Arithmetic" was the world's first electronic desktop calculator. Launched in 1961, the Mk VII and Mk VIII were the only commercial calculators available for a period of two years.
posted on Apr 21, 2003 - View this thread

Pocket Calclulator Show looks like it started as a sideline of a shortwave radio show about "products from the electronics revolution of the 1970s and 1980s", but its of primary interest for their collections of classic nerd toys. Thrill to the memories in the Digital Watch Museum, the Walkman Museum, the Boombox Museum, and especially the collection of Magical Gadgets, which includes a not-so-useful-anymore cb radio to 8-track adapter, an incredible casio talking clock/calculator (listen to it talk!), and, of course, that great pioneer of personal sound technology - the Bone Fone (it vibrates, you know!)
posted on Nov 14, 2002 - View this thread

"Your car will be watching the road even if you're not" Or so says DaimlerChrysler in their new ad campaign. Electronic eyes, infrared systems, ways to keep your eyes on the road better.... All in good time, as we all expected - but wouldn't you be worried if your car could just stop itself if it saw a squirrel in the road? (via the Wall St. Journal ad 10/9/02)
posted on Oct 10, 2002 - View this thread

A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver. It was supposed to evolve into an oscillator (through a genetic algorithm). This is astonishing and shows the power of evolutionary algorithms... [via missing matter]
posted on Oct 7, 2002 - View this thread

Nüp2 Incorporated will revolutionize the electronic memory business. Using our patented memory technology and our patent-pending "Topolithographic" manufacturing process, we will develop and produce solid-state electronic memory having gigabytes of storage in a tiny package for just a few dollars per Gigabyte. Hoax? Vaporware? Revolution in data storage? You decide.
posted on Sep 17, 2002 - View this thread

There are lots of toys modeled after automobiles, but no automobile has ever been modeled after a toy (?), until now. The insanely popular Choro-Q line of toy cars of Japan (ebay pics here) have inspired a whole new line of impossibly cute real cars, to be unveiled in November of this year. The tiny, brightly colored electric autos look like something straight out of a Roger Rabbit cartoon, seat one, go 50 miles on a battery charge, and cost around $10,000.00 - $16,000. Must...have...one...
posted on Jul 16, 2002 - View this thread

We're exporting toxic technologies to third world countries. We all know computer components contain lots of chemical badness, and it seems that as much as 80 percent of US electronics trash is sent to developing countries, where it is becoming a major health hazard.
posted on Feb 25, 2002 - View this thread

Circuit Bending is hacking electronic games and musical toys to produce new sounds. Twisted Speak'n'Spells and Pikachus, for example.
posted on Jan 31, 2002 - View this thread

Since the gift season is right around the corner, what are all the audiophiles looking for? Is it a minidisc? Or mp3? Or some kind of combination? Maybe something to integrate into your stereo system?

Which side of the tradeoff is worth it? Cheap capacity with real-time recording limitations or ease of use and multi-format support with high priced memory?
posted on Nov 27, 2001 - View this thread

See-through electronics as prison-chic [NYTimes link] The see-through iMac and other transluscent and transparent appliances turn out to have a practical uses in at least one segment of the population.
posted on May 14, 2001 - View this thread

Half.com expands to list used electronics. The site (owned by EBay) now allows sellers to list used electronics, computers, sporting goods, and trading cards, but receiving a defective or damaged computer will prove to be much harder to rectify with Customer Service than receiving a scratched CD or DVD. Not to mention the postage cost...
posted on Apr 25, 2001 - View this thread

This nonsense has to stop: " One of the most heavily guarded secrets in the computer business and the closely related consumer electronics industry is how many products are returned by customers because they are defective or the customer cannot figure out how to use them."
posted on Mar 12, 2001 - View this thread

In what appears to be a suicide mission, Gateway announced it is backing away from lucrative services and software (which accounted for 100 percent of its fourth-quarter earnings) in favor of refocusing on computer sales, an area that recently has not made a dime for the company.
posted on Mar 5, 2001 - View this thread

There's been a lot of talk of late about signal-to-noise ratios here on MeFi (er, Ashcroft who?...). Generally, we think of noise as something that always degrades the quality of a signal. Sometimes, however, the opposite can be the case. Here's a neat little demonstration of a non-linear system in which noise can be used to amplify a signal that would otherwise be too be faint to detect any other way. It exploits a phenomenon known as Stochastic Resonance.
posted on Jan 28, 2001 - View this thread

The CES Hall of Shame. The ten stupidest products these guys saw at CES this week. My favorite: Panasonic's Internet-Capable Microwave Ovens. [shudder]
posted on Jan 12, 2001 - View this thread

Crazy Eddie is back, and he's on the Internet. Rising from the ashes of what the accountants call "one of the twentieth century’s most infamous financial statement frauds," the consumer-electronics retailer is offering once again to "beat any price you can find," along with all-new radio commercials! Just like being in New York in the 80s again.
posted on Dec 3, 2000 - View this thread

I used to go to Edmund for my neato geek hack supplies, but then I discovered American Science And Surplus (formerly JerryCo). Between them and All Electronics, my geek needs are satiated.
posted on May 25, 2000 - View this thread

Home brew MP3 player. All we need now is for someone to make a cdr version instead of smartmedia (AIWA has one for the car).
posted on May 17, 2000 - View this thread

(via /.) comes the much-rumored new 4.8 Gb personal mp3 player. I heard about this a long time ago, but it seemed like a fantasy. 4.8 gigs! That's hours and hours of mp3's! My entire collection at home and work is less than 4 gigs. They claim it's going to be released next week. If they can sell if for under $300, I bet they won't be able to produce enough for the demand. The revolution has begun.
posted on Nov 10, 1999 - View this thread