If you want to be notified whenever the Space Station is flying overhead this Space Station Lamp project by Nathan from Mechanical Integrator is sure to help out. A number of LEDs edge light a piece of frosted plexiglass and a Teensy microcontroller does the work. Some Python code is used to check to see when the Space Station is over head. If you are interested in making something similar Nathan has provided all of the details. He also had a successful Kickstarter raising over 18 thousand back in 2011 so there is a good chance you could still buy one of these! 

Via: EEWeb

Congrats to Jeremy Blum for graduating from Cornell University! He made a cool Remote Controlled Graduation Cap that he controls using a custom built wrist control box. The cap has an RGB LED in it and is capable of not only grabbing user submitted color suggestions but also a variety of pre-programmed ones. If you would like to see how it works Jeremy has made it open source and you can see the code here. 

Hate parking your car in those endless winding car parking buildings? When you return to your car there are often door dings because the spaces are very small so the owner can maximize the number of cars that can be crammed into the building. What’s the solution? A robotic system where the transport and parking of your car is handled automatically!

I think there are some other great uses for the technology. Have you ever been hard at work just to be interrupted by a 10 minute walk to a useless meeting? Why not have your work space mobile and have it transport you where you need to go and have meetings on the go. Have a look at 7:18 in the video for a glimpse of what this may look like.

Thanks to Geva for sending in this great project. A brain monitor is connected to an Arduino so it can detect when the user is concentrating. When this happens a mild electric current is applied to the water in which there are hundreds of microbes swimming about. As soon as the current is applied they immediately start swimming towards the top of the screen where the negative pole is. Kind of freaky, not sure if there are any practical applications for this but it is sure cool!

Want to build your own? Check out how to Control Microbes with your Mind also.

This Hand Controlled Tetris Like Game uses an Altera FPGA to captures a video signal and looks for a players hand skin color. The system tracks their hand movements and looks for the user moving their hands forward and back by determining how tall the skin colored object is over time. The goal here is to prevent the falling tetris like blocks from falling by rapidly pushing and pulling on them. If you want to use this as a starting point for your creation Tian Gao has documented the entire system here.

Thanks for sending this in Tian!

The prize this week is a breadboard power supply. This contest will run for one week (May 26 – 31, 2013). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item above and what it can be used for. Please note the image above is a side view of the thing.

Please do not give the answer in the comments.

Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with “Name the Thing Contest” as the subject, and the message body consisting of:

• The name of the item in the above picture
• An example of what the item pictured above can be used for

The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries.

Below is a picture of the prize.

This documentary video gives us a behind the scenes look at the Japanese Bullet Train Shinkansen.

“The Tōkaidō Shinkansen is the world’s busiest high-speed rail line. Carrying 151 million passengers per year (March 2008), it has transported more passengers (over 5 billion, entire network over 10 billion) than any other high speed line in the world. Between Tokyo and Osaka, the two largest metropolises in Japan, up to thirteen trains per hour with sixteen cars each (1,323 seats capacity) run in each direction with a minimum headway of three minutes between trains.”