I have never seen this demonstration before. Water running through two small open cans into a larger metal collection container wired together to create 10,000 to 15,000 volts. Is it an accumulation of static electricity? If someone knows what is happening I would love to hear about it!

Via: Zedomax

Got a dusty computer room? Don’t clean, just purchase a USB mask.

“The USB Mask looks essentially like it has a pair of PC case fans on either side that are powered by the black USB cord that comes out of the front of the mask. From the photos, it also appears you’re supposed to wear a standard dust mask underneath the USB Mask for additional air filtration. I suppose if you have an incredibly dusty office or a seriously horrific case of allergies or asthma this might do you some good; let’s say you’re allergic to dogs and work at a pet store, or if you’re in IT and your inevitable basement office is being invaded by creeping black mold, then this might be a good idea for you. Alternatively, if the air quality is that bad, you might just want to consider a new line of work. The USB Mask is available in Japan for 2480 Yen. (just over $20 USD) No word on any plans to sell the Mask overseas, but I’m sure your favorite gadget import company will have it soon.”

Via: Gear Log, Ubergizmo, New Launches

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The Dish Maker looks like an interesting product but I think the “recycling” process might be understated. I am assuming that the dirty dishes will need to be washed before being placed back into the machine so a dish washer will still be needed.

Video after the jump.

“Hate dishes? the DishMaker is a new kind of appliance that can replace dishes altogether by making cups, bowls and plates on demand and recycling them when you’re done. the device uses up the same room and energy as a dishwasher, while it replaces all the cabinets and dishes in your kitchen. the DishMaker takes advantage of a little-known shape-memory property of acrylic so that one dish can be recycled a thousand times without consuming the energy that does into a single-use ceramic dish.”

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Check out the latest keyboard project over at uC Hobby. If you want a free LCD display from uC Hobby, read this.

“Here you see the controller board sitting in the new box with the wires soldered on. I did do some modifications to the switch box PCB. The red jumper wire provides an isolated ground for the LEDs. The two wires, orange and white in upper left get power from the USB connection to light the keys.

The other five wires are the switch common and signals for F9-F12. The unconnected blue wire is F12. I will hook it to something eventually.

I used a business card as an insulator between the two PCBs when I closed up the box. The corners of the keyboard controller PC were cut off to fit it in the box. Everything fit nicely.”

Have a look at this cool High Altitude Balloon Experiment that is unfolding. Bre Pettis (many know him from Make) is one of the people involved with this project. There is lots of construction details and specs. up and tons of construction pictures to look at. The launch date is March 4th so stay tuned…

“This project is launching a (relatively) high altitude balloon carrying a number of digital cameras and some other instrumentation. The project was conceived and is being implemented in a short time with a crowd of eager volunteers and little prior experience and a lot of optimism.
Goal: Get it ready to go this weekend so we can fine tune during the week.

The helium fill system consists of:
* 1 T-bottle of Helium, 2400 psi, 290cf
* A helium regulator with a barb fitting output output epoxyed into constructed PVC pipe adaptor (see below)
* [a fill diffuser?] diffuser determined unnecessary because gas output not strong enough to damage or shred test balloon (condom)
* PVC pipe regular output adaptor: outer diameter of PVC pipe 1.25″, 12″ section joined with right angle elbow to 6″ section to form a L. open end of 12″ section sanded smooth and 6″ end capped—cap drilled to accomodate end of regulator which has been vigorously/permanently epoxyed into endcap. all PVC parts sealed with primer and pipe adhesive.”

What a fantastic idea! With the push of a button the Robotic Beer Launching Fridge will get a cold beer from inside the cooler and launch it right too you. Just make sure you don’t accidental sit on the launch button or you might be explaining a black eye. I think the next step in development should be the introduction of multiple remotes, or even fixed buttons that will launch the beers over to different locations.

Video after the jump.

“Have you ever gotten up off the couch to get a beer for the umpteenth time and thought, “What if instead of ME going to get the BEER, the BEER came to ME???” Well, that was how I first conceived of the beer launching fridge. About 3 months and several hundred dollars later I have a fully automated, remote controlled, catapulting, man-pit approved, beer launching mini-fridge. It holds 10 beers in its magazine with 14 more in reserve to store a full case. It is controlled by a keyless entry system. Pressing unlock will start the catapult rotating and when it is aiming at your target, pressing unlock again will stop it. Then the lock button can be pressed to launch a beer in the selected direction.”

Via: Zedomax

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Have a look at this laser light show! Guaranteed to get some attention…

Video after the jump.

“The main event of the GRL Rotterdam tour - ‘L.A.S.E.R TAG’ - 60mw geek graffiti madness.
Watch the video here on the Graffiti Research Lab website.

In the spirt of GRL’s and Eyebeam’s open source beliefs, we are posting the code and executable for the Laser Tag application online for you to download, dissect, reuse and hopefully improve. The code is C++ and compiled in a super old school Codewarrior IDE for windows but it is oepnGL based and written using openFrameworks which is a cross platform library for writing creative code. So it should be very straight forward to run in Visual Studio, DevC++ or even xcode on a mac.

In its simplest form the Laser Tag system is a camera and laptop setup, tracking a green laser point across the face of a building and generating graphics based on the laser’s position which then get projected back onto the building with a high power projector.

There are a bunch of things you need to do to get Laser Tag up and running yourself, so here follows the required equipment and setup instructions. This will assume that you using windows but it will also apply for other OSs too.

EQUIPMENT

We used:

1 PC Laptop - ASUS A8JS - Core 2 Duo 1.83 Ghz 1GB Ram Nvideo Geforce Go 7300 256MB - VGA and DVI out.
1 Pansonic PTD5600U 5000 ANSI Lumens 1024×768 DLP Projector.
1 Watec 221S Security/Astrononmy Camera with manual iris zoom lens.
1 Bogen magic arm and super clamp.
1 Pinnacle PCTV USB capture card.
1 60mW Green Laser (super illegal in a lot of places and very dangerous)
and loads and loads of AAA batteries.”

Via: Engadget

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