By Evan Ackerman

One of the most popular attractions at Maker Faire are the Tesla coils. There were several scattered around, although the most prominent are the twin 10-foot coils constructed by Nevada Lightning Lab. The coils have no problem bridging a 25 foot gap with several million volt discharges, and they can wirelessly power nearby electronics as well as cook hot dogs.

There was also a somewhat smaller (okay, WAY smaller) coil from the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics. It was a sparky little guy, though, and a brave grad student (or a not-so-brave one who knows how electricity works) donned a suit of metal armor and did battle with the electrons.

More pics, including a lovely closeup of a discharge and a long exposure of a three phase Jacob’s ladder, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Evan Ackerman

Last week on BotJunkie, we began the week watching a video of a crawling floor cleaning robot, wanted to try our hand at a robot vending machine, kept our mouths shut about what purports to be the world’s smallest voice controlled robot, took issue with someone’s list of the 16 most ridiculous killer robots, were intrigued by an iRobot patent for a Roomba with a square front, came to grips with a robot shirt, put down twenty bucks for a kit that makes six different robots (sort of), got a little preview of Maker Faire, listened to a robot bagpiper play some impossible tunes, were impressed by a 7 year old’s suggestion on how to save the Spirit rover, watched a humanoid robot get emotional, and found out why you shouldn’t do the robot.

So far this week we’ve posted our robot coverage of Maker Faire, which includes a giant robot hand, some cute paper robots, and a photo gallery. We’ve also posted a story on an iRobot patent for a dock that automatically empties a Roomba’s dustbin.

Bot with Stuff, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

CES is a veritable playground of every type of electronic device you can think of, but one of the things that really caught my eye at this year’s show was a line of laptop bags and gear cases of all things. Now if you’re the type who just crams all of their toys in a bag and couldn’t care less about what happens to them, there’s a good chance you’ll have no interest in this post. But if you’re like me and need to be assured your stuff isn’t going to get dinged or scratched up in transport, you might want to take a few seconds and check out my hands-on look at the Cocoon laptop bag.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

I can’t say the Click Clock, designed by Paul Koh, does anything particularly revolutionary when it comes to alarm clocks. It’s got your basic 12/24 hour setting, a backlight, snooze function and a lock on top preventing you from accidentally making changes when you’re fumbling around in the morning. But what it does have is a distinct and unique looking pixel display that shows both the current time and the alarm setting at all times. In other words, I just think it looks cool, and if you agree you can get one from the MoMA Store for $35.

[ Click Clock ]

By Evan Ackerman

We covered Ben Lewry’s LCD guitar back in 2007 when it was a prototype, but here at Maker Faire we got to check out the latest version in person. The “LCDetar” took him 3 months to build at a cost of about $5000; it comes with a Wiimote built into the headstock that communicates with the visualizer built into the body of the guitar so that you can alter the patterns with a thrash or two:

Each guitar is a custom job, but you can contact Ben Lewry at Visionary Instruments for more info.

[ Visionary Instruments LCDetar ]