You think the guitar you own is high tech? Well does it have a 500MHz processor? Can you even SSH into it? I thought not. This MISA - Touch Pad Digital Guitar is packed with tons of technology but thankfully it outputs MIDI so you can just jack it into your existing gear and jam away.

Thanks Michael

“The guitar itself is CNC machined out of solid ABS plastic. This is an extremely solid body, not like injection moulded plastic which is thin, lightweight and hollow. The screen is an 8.4″ LCD 800×600 resolution. The CPU is a 500MHz x86 compatible AMD Geode which makes life easier, I guess. The operating system is Gentoo Linux which I’ve stripped down to be as lean as possible. Graphics (framebuffer access) is done with DirectFB which acts as a fast layer on top of the hardware. The neck is 144 “keycaps” sitting on top of a special keymat that I had tooled. They are not pressure sensitive - but I made the decision early on not to include this because I don’t feel it is neccessary, it would make the instrument harder to play and less reliable.”

What does it take to pimp out a Range Rover Sport into a limo? A little more than a paint and polish that’s for sure! Have a look at some of the build pictures that Midlands Limos sent in below for an idea of how invasive the process is. Next time I ‘m in the UK I will have to have a ride in this limo!

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Thanks for a fantastic year! The start of a new one is just around the bend. Since everyone will be watching the clock in the next few hours, here are some clocks that are probably more interesting that the ones you will be watching tonight.

If you are going to build something you might as well over design and over build it right? If you don’t agree you can go and pick up whatever you need at your local Walmart. Here we have an excellent example of over engineering something, you can get spring loaded mouse traps for about a dollar, but there is no laser system, status LEDs, arming circuit and pneumatics in one of those. Jake Easton must of had lots of fun when he was building this Extreme Mousetrap! It’s surprising that the one your get for a dollar even has the smarts to latch onto its prey without any of this sophistication. If you want to catch a mouse the real way you need to do it with one of these.

“The Better Mousetrap Specifications:

• Pneumatic Cylinder: 1/2″ Bore with 3/4″ Stroke
• Air Pressure (Max): 60 PSI
• Strike Force at 40 PSI: 102 lbs
• Key Lock Switch and Manual Hammer Override
• Visual Monitoring: Power, PSI, and Armed - Detect - Fire
• Case Construction: 6061 0.25″ Polished Aluminum
• Inputs: 12VDC and Air Line
• Dimensions: 12″ x 6″ x 2.5″
• Weight: 5.5 Pounds”

Joe Carruth has harnessed the power of the sun by creating a huge Solar Mirror Array in Colorado. This array boils 12 gallons of water to generate steam and the steam powers a twin piston steam engine. The steam engine is attached to a 12KW Generator with a straight shaft. Considering that this solar array could fit in my back yard the amount of energy it produces is very impressive.

The system is shown powering a large saw but it didn’t seem to operate at full capacity so based on that I am not sure how much energy is actually being generated but regardless, it is significant. Now there needs to be a form of energy storage other than expensive batteries to make this system ideal. How about using the system to pump water into a large raised area, then when electricity is needed you could drive a wheel?

If you don’t want one of these solar collectors in your backyard you can centralize the dishes as the video below demonstrates.

Via: Green Power Science

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Thanks to t0n10 from Poland for sending in this cool project tip. Often bigger isn’t better, but when it comes to binary clocks. Bigger is definitely better! Have a look at the massive binary clock that the guys at Wroclaws Technology University made. 

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David Smith has built the smallest train I have ever seen. The Claim that it is the worlds smallest is probably true. Watch the video to see a good description of how the drive mechanism works. It is truly out of the box thinking.

"After carefully inserting the train-shaped tubing into its oval slot, I bonded the layout to a styrene support block that was in turn bonded to a mounting plate attached to the motor. This was an iterative process that involved fitting and sanding and fitting and sanding until the support block was exactly the right height. The mounting plate was made relatively large to provide a convenient means of attaching the mechanism to the layout under the building."