The d-touch music system has continued to evolve since we saw it the first time. It is completely free, why not give it a try!

"The release of audio d-touch is itself part of a research project about novel computer interfaces. Our aim is to advance the field by gaining insight on how tangible interfaces may be used in the real world. Please help us by trying out the applications, letting us know what you think and spreading the word about audio d-touch! To inform our research we remotely record usage data from the system, in the respect of our users’ privacy: we do not record images, but only the positions of the objects in the interface and the sounds recorded on them."

There is something very cool about clocks, you have constantly changing information that your design needs to represent. This Single Nixie Tube Clock is a very interesting clock design, it uses a low voltage plug in wall transformer and makes the high voltage needed for the clock on the circuit board. We have seen lots of cool tube clocks in the past and this one is sure to not be the last.

"With PIC microcontroller I used a "watch" crystal at 32,768kHz. It’s value is pretty cool and now we will see why. PIC16F84 has internal TMR0 counter that increments itself no matter what the PIC is doing at the moment. Think of it as a threaded sub-program. This counter can generate an interrupt when it’s value overflows from 255->0. We can also prescale this counter to slow it down a bit so we can make it generate an interrupt on every 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 or 256 overflows. So, when we finally connect our 32,768kHz crystal on PIC microcontroller, we should also know that the speed it runs at is divided by 4 and this characteristic is only found with PIC microcontrollers. This all means that our PIC runs at 8,192kHz which tells us that TMR0 will overflow 32 times per second. Now when we prescale it by 32 it means that it will overflow once per second and generate us an interrupt."

If you like building electronic kits, have a look at this cool Tube Clock Kit that is built around a nice looking Russian display tube. Thanks to Limor Fried from Adafruit Industries it’s open source so if you would prefer to make your own from scratch you can do that! Have a look at a the Adafruit Industries behind the scenes video that Rocketboom make after the jump.

 "This is our first clock kit design, made with a retro Russian display tube!

• Cool glowing blue tube with 8 digits and alarm on/off dot
• Adjustable brightness
• Alarm with volume adjust
• Precision watch crystal keeps time with under 20ppm (0.0002%) error (< 2 seconds a day)
• Clear plastic enclosure protects clock from you and you from clock
• Battery backup will let the clock keep the time for up to 2 weeks without power
• Selectable 12h or 24h display
• Displays day and date
• 10 minute snooze
• Integrated boost converter so it can run off of standard DC wall adapters, works in any country regardless of mains power
• Great for desk or night table use, the clock measures 4.9" x 2.9" x 1.3" (12.5cm x 7.4cm x 3.3cm)
• Completely open source hardware and software, ready to be hacked and modded!"

(more…)

This Rock Radio would be a good match for the Granite Speakers that we saw before. What would be real cool would be a full set of components that were encased in cement, that way you could have a stereo system that no one could steal. For the high end finished look you could mortar the joints between your components.

Thanks Guss.

"It started of being a very nice rectangular brick shape. Then I found out that a thick layer of cement shields the radio from actually receiving radio waves. With my "Now it doesn’t work anyway" philosophy, I took a big hammer and created this Flintstones look, and the radio works!"