arduino

When I see a cute critter like Fizzgig or an Ewok in a movie, I want to take it home with me. I get the same feeling when I see Pixar's sweet Luxo Jr. lamp mascot. It's like a little metal puppy you want to hold on your lap and take care of.

The sprightly lamp has now hopped out of the screen and into the real world thanks to a project created at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand by Adam Ben-Dror, Joss Doggett, and Shanshan Zhou. This lamp is black, rather than white like Luxo Jr. The project is called Pinokio and the lamp is imaginatively named "Lamp."

Pinokio uses six servos, a Webcam, and Arduino to track human faces, play hide-and-seek, hear sounds, and try really hard to get your attention.… Read more

Don't drink and text. Don't drunk dial your ex. That's all good advice, but it will be extremely hard to follow if you happen to be the owner of the Beer Keyboard.

The Beer Keyboard is exactly what it sounds like. It uses beer cans in place of keys. Just gently press down on a can and you trigger the proper letter or number on a computer.

The keyboard is made from 44 beer cans and an Arduino-powered touch capacitive controller. It was hatched by Prague-based brewer Staropramen and Robofun Create, a company dedicated to building unusual tech items.… Read more

A very odd flock of birds landed in Albuquerque, N.M., this past week. There wasn't a feather in sight as four winged creatures sat on bare branches, flashing their eyes and lifting their wings. These art objects are fashioned entirely from recycled phone parts.

Escape, an installation piece by U.K. artists Neil Mendoza and Anthony Goh, turns unremarkable phone scrap into curious and engaging little birds. Each bird contains an Arduino controller.

When hooked up to the cell network in Europe, the birds can take and make phone calls. Here in New Mexico, they are reprogrammed to react to the proximity of people approaching them. … Read more

GPS shoes already exist, but they've been more about tracking the wearer than giving directions. A project by U.K. artist Dominic Wilcox solves that oversight by putting directions right at the tips of your toes.

The prototype leather shoes were made by hand in old-world style by Stamp Shoes, but with some decidedly new-world technology tucked inside courtesy of interactive arts and technology expert Becky Stewart. … Read more

The mundane task of turning on the lights generally involves a simple flick of the switch, but Norwegian designer Stian Korntved Ruud thinks it could get a lot more interesting.

Korntved Ruud, who graduated last year with a master's in industrial design from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, created "Circuit breaker," a series of five switches that force users to interact with the panel and thus present new ways of turning the lights on.… Read more

Princess Leia, eat your heart out.

If you need a little extra something in your struggle against the Galactic Empire, what better than this charming headdress? It's enough to stop a platoon of stormtroopers dead in its tracks.

But Blinklifier is no sci-fi film prop. It's the subject of research on feedback loops being presented at this month's 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Computer Human Interaction (APCHI 2012) in Matsue, Japan.

Tricia Flanagan of Hong Kong Baptist University and colleagues are proposing Blinklifier as a wearable computer that emphasizes the user's eye movements with a colorful … Read more

The New York Port Authority had egg on its face recently when a stranded jet skier managed to breach JFK International Airport's security perimeter and walk across several runways.

Raytheon, maker of the $100 million Perimeter Intrusion Detection System, has some explaining to do.

But it's not all bad. Inspired by the breach (and Shark Week), Justin Huynh and friends at engineering firm Liquidware have concocted their own intruder alert system for far fewer bucks.

Essentially, it's a simple laser tripwire that sends alerts to Twitter when activated. So far, it works with toy sharks and not hapless jet skiers. … Read more

It's the app game that won't go away. Angry Birds Space is still sitting pretty on the App Store's top paid apps chart, but how many times can you pull back a virtual slingshot before you start pining for something more?

Students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design have given Angry Birds a whole new dimension with the creation of a physical slingshot controller for the desktop version of the game. … Read more

Here's a high-tech dress that's tailor-made for the red carpet.

Emily Steel, a student of industrial design, digital photography, and fashion at New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington, has stitched together a garment using slide film, LEDs, and a LilyPad Arduino, a set of sewable electronic components. … Read more