Daniel Eindhoven has designed an interesting new Tesla Coil, this Double Resonance Solid State TeslaCoil has a new coil design which has the capacitor bank integrated into the primary coil.  The new coil configuration has been dubbed the Eindhoven Primary.

“A new composition of the primary coil for a Double Resonance Solid State TeslaCoil (DRSSTC). It is a combination of wire and capacitors. By making the coil like this you get rid of all the parasitic inductions of the capacitor bank, it reduces wire length and saves a lot of space. Calculating the resonance frequency also becomes much easier.”

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.”

The Harford Hackerspace has been building a CNC machine. You can see all the build details here. This machine is a huge success! The Z axis can lift an amazing 65 lbs and it has no problem cutting metal throwing stars. What more testing do you need? I think we can call the build done at this point.

“The CNC machine’s construction has advanced to the point where we can begin to cut items.  Being a bunch of teenagers trapped in adult bodies, someone decided that we should cut a throwing star from sheet aluminum.  One copy of CamBam and 6 minutes later and the star was ready to be cut!  After a few adjustments and a bit snapped in half from being dragged through the metal too fast, the cutting was underway.  The star took about 10 minutes to cut and was an excellent first attempt at metal production.  The next step is to use the CNC to cut more precise parts for itself and help bring about the Robot Armageddon.”

So going to CES was not in the cards for me this year. Not a problem since I am not all that interested in the mainstream stuff anyway. I am more interested in the far out gadgets and some of the crazy products that may not find it in consumers hands. I have mainly been following the coverage from Zedomax, Hack a Day and Makezine. This phone watch that does everything was found by my friend Max from Zedomax, as the guy rattles off the featured it sounds like this thing can do everything! I think they borrowed the engineer who came up with the Swiss Army Knife and had him help in the design of this watch.

You can see more details about the Kempler and Strauss W Phone Watch by going to their site. They have some of those annoying sites that doesn’t allow direct page linking so when you get to the site look for W phonewatch in the right column.

On a side note, I have heard a few people pronounce gigabyte like this guy does (jigabyte). Is this an alternative pronunciation in some countries? I always thought is was just a non-technical person whenever I heard it but this sales rep must know his stuff?

“The W PhoneWatch incorporates a GSM phone that supports the 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, and 1900MHz bands. The 1.5-inch TFT LCD micro-touch touchscreen features a screen resolution of 128 x 128 and displays 260,000 colors. The watch measures a mere 57 x 45 x 18mm and weighs only 2.5 ounces.
Fully compatible with Bluetooth v2.0 headset and hands-free devices, the W PhoneWatch incorporates a still camera that captures JPEG images at resolutions up to 640 x 480. The integrated video camera captures video in MPEG 4 (AVI) format at a resolution of 128 x 104. The W PhoneWatch supports video playback of MPEG4 files and music files including MP3, WMA, WAV, and AMR.
The W PhoneWatch feature set includes: phonebook, SMS, call history, MP3 player, video player, video recorder, camera, utilities, games, and a file manager. The multiple-language interface includes support for English, French, Russian, Arabic, German, and Italian.
The W PhoneWatch, which can be charged by USB or via the included battery charger, provides up to 150 minutes talk time, up to 150 minutes of music playback, and up to 100 hours of standby time.“

If a small pipe CNC machine can be made why not scale it up and make a huge one. I have never seen a large CNC machine made with this configuration. I am real curious to see what it is like when bluefacedthief completes it.

Mikey Sklar has put together an interesting wallet, it is made out of hard drive platters. As you know we have a soft spot for anything made from Hard Drives here at Hacked Gadgets.

“I took apart a dead hard drive that I had dumpster dived last year initially for the magnets, but I could not take my eyes off of the platters. The magnet would just be trouble with my ATM card magnetic strips as well as sticking to everything else around. Using a rivet gun I was able to quickly adhere two car keys and my AAA card to the platters.”

If you know someone who doesn’t respect electricity have them watch the above video from Fast MHz. The best part of the video is around the 21 second mark when a Dell power supply is zapped with 16kj of electricity. It looks like the power supply may have permanent damage from the experiment! The subwoofer shown at the 56 second mark has a remarkably long throw, must be a very expensive speaker. Or maybe the speaker was over voltaged.