You can if you watch the below video featuring Rickard Nilsson and his creation. He stuffed a Volvo 240 engine in a tractor and set it loose on the unsuspecting fields near his home. Needless to say, the fields are now ruined. But we’re not too concerned because frankly, this is just awesome!
That’s one fast tractor and also what looks like an accident waiting to happen.
VIA [ Laughing Squid ]
We wish we were clever enough to make all kinds of funny Star Wars references while writing about the above scooter, but sadly we were born creatively challenged. So instead of entertaining you while writing, we’re just going to flat out tell you… what you’re clearly able to see anyway. You’re looking at a Vespa that was lovingly modified to look a lot like R2-D2. Using “some meticulous cutting of adhesive vinyl”, the Vespa went from classic scooter to most awesome scooter this side of the galaxy (there… that’s a start…) We particularly like the suitcase on the back with stickers from other galaxies, far far away.
Want more pics? Hit the jump.
The point in handing out business cards is to get people to get back to you. Hopefully, you made a good enough first impression to the person you handed it out to. But in case you didn’t, then you can let your card do the work for you. All it takes is a little ingenuity, a higher-than-usual budget for cards, and some skills–much like the ones Jay Kickliter has when he came up with his DIY electronic business cards that light when it’s touched.
Jay created the calling cards for a job fair and used a capacitive touch printed circuit board to build the whole thing. It’s a creative way to show off your skills if your line of work is connected to electronics. Jay is happy to teach anyone interested in making their own cards and has published instructions on how to do it on his site.
Hit the break to check out a video of the business cards in action–or rather, in circulation.
Nobody wants to eat puke. Cat vomit doesn’t sound very appealing, either. So if you’re the type of person who gets a kick out of grossing people out with the food on your plate or with the stuff that you put into your mouth, then this gravy boat’s for you. While you definitely shouldn’t put real cat puke into it, you can whip up otherwise gross-looking sauces and syrups to pour over your grub to give people the illusion that your catty gravy boat is puking all over your food.
This Puking Kitty Gravy Boat was made by artist GingerELA, who described it as follows:
It’s a cat. It’s a gravy boat. It’s puking. It’s the first thing I’ve made for myself and I LOVE IT. Inspired by the barfing squirrel gravy boat posted on Laughing Squid, I just had to make my own.
Hit the break to watch a video of the cat ‘barfing’ all over her waffles!
Here’s another oldie, but still good even a couple of years later. We don’t know if this means we’ve been infected with the hipster virus, but we’re sort of digging the above USB Typewriter. Maybe it’s because writing is what we do for a living and old-timey typewriters represent a nostalgic link to writing’s not so distant low-tech past. But we wouldn’t mind typing out these articles from a USB Typewriter, which serves as a fully functional keyboard to your PC, Mac or even tablet but with all the clickety click and carriage return bells from the last century. You can even type with ink on paper, while simultaneously typing on your digital device.
Jack Zelkyn sells these from his Etsy shop and can offer you either a DIY conversion kit for around $80, if you want to use your own typewriter. But if you don’t have one, or can’t be bothered to, you know, do anything yourself, and have the cash to spare, Jack will send you a fully assembled setup starting at $699.
Check out the link at the bottom for more.
[ Product Page ]
Let’s get the sad part out of the way from the start: you can’t buy this monstrosity. But it’s nice to know that in the spring of 2011, with a bit of elbow grease and a $600 budget, some engineering students from the University Of Wisconsin were able to create a subwoofer with a cone 6 feet in diameter. It was simply called The Giant Speaker. Seeing as this was done on a shoestring budget, the best materials for the job couldn’t be selected. The driver was made of fiberglass, instead of the preferable carbon fiber for instance. Still, the team used 24 Neodymium magnets to drive this giant cone with the voice coil driver being fabricated by hand with three layers of 18awg wire wound onto G10 form attached to a fiberglass disk for support. The giant speaker was then placed in an 8′ by 8′ by 2′ cabinet and set in motion by a “20kW PWM voltage sourced inverter (intended for motor drives and microgrids) which was powered by a 400V DC power supply. At low frequencies (~10 Hz) peak coil currents were 100A.” Turn out it was able to run at frequencies between 5Hz and 50Hz, after which the inertia just became too much for the system to handle. In tests, the group found out that the resonant frequency of the building they were in was 7Hz, which resulted in several complaints from the other tenants and lots of high-fives from the students. No word on whether they found the Brown Note.
[ Project Page ] VIA DamnGeeky ]
There’s a good number of things you can make with LEGOs. That’s why they’re so much fun! We’ve come across everything from MC Escher/Star Wars hybrids to a ridiculously detailed Porsche 911. But we’re pretty sure this motorized wheelchair is a first. It carries a person weighing up to 90kg (198lbs) around at blistering speeds of next to nothing, doing 0 to next-to-nothing in forever flat. It sounds like we don’t like it, but we do. It’s just kind of slow. But who really cares? It was made with 7 LEGO Mindstorm NXT’s, 14 LEGO Mindstorm motors, 6 LEGO Mindstorm touch sensors, 12 Rotocaster Muti-directional wheels and “a whole lot of LEGO Tecnic” by one Simon “Burf” Burfield. And while the chair is plenty cool as it is, Simon is working on replacing the current joystick controller with a wireless Bluetooth/Android control.
Hit the jump for a video of the chair in action and links.
This isn’t ground breaking stuff above, but it’s nice to see what a little ingenuity can produce. Created by one Chris Rieger, it’s a 3W LED light bulb that’s 1) levitating and 2) being powered completely wirelessly. Obviously… since it’s levitating. How is this done?
Levitation is managed by a permanent magnet on the light assembly and an electromagnetic coil hidden on the other side of the top panel for the enclosure. That coil uses 300 meters of 20 AWG wire. A hall effect sensor is used to provide feedback on the location of the light unit, allowing the current going to the coil to be adjusted in order to keep the light unit stationary. When working correctly this draws about 0.25A at 12V.
Wireless power transfer is facilitated by a single large hoop of wire driven with alternating current at 1 MHz. This part of the system pulls 0.5A at 12V, bringing the whole of the consumption in at around 9 Watts. Not too bad. Check out [Chris'] demo video embedded after the break.
We’re a little sad that this kind of stuff isn’t commercially available and is only ever seen as cool proof-of-concept videos online. Why? Probably because no one thinks they can make money off this. We disagree. We’d pay top dollar to have these around the office.
[ Project Page ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]
By David Ponce
The nice thing about doing things yourself is that you’re not constrained by the ROI considerations of the mass market channels. You can create anything you want and with a bit of talent you can end up with something like the above. It’s a Nixie tube chess set created by one “Tony” and features 80′s Soviet-era tubes with scientific symbols displayed on them. What’s especially nice about it is that it’s all induction-based, meaning the tubes light up when deposited on the board, but there’s no wires anywhere on the tubes, making them true chess pieces. Well of course aside from the fact that you’re going to have to learn which symbol represents which piece, but that’s trivial to the amount of effort you’ll have to put in if you decide to build your own. Turns out Tony is preparing a DIY kit, though he warns that “This is not a project for beginners – it makes extensive use of surface mount components. Expect to spend up to a week of your spare time on it depending on experience and patience.” There’s no mention of price or availability anywhere but you can keep track of things at the link below.
[ Product Page ] VIA [ The Verge ]
