flashlight

Teen builds flashlight powered by body warmth

Ann Makosinski is a 15-year-old with a flashlight obsession. She won a bronze award for a piezoelectric flashlight at the Canada-Wide Science Fair last year. This year, her battery-free Hollow Flashlight has taken her all the way to the top-15 finalists of the Google Science Fair.

Makosinski was inspired by the idea that the human body is like a walking 100-watt lightbulb with untapped thermal energy potential. She decided to build a flashlight powered only by the warmth of a hand.

The basis for the Hollow Flashlight is Peltier tiles, tiles that produce electricity when one side is heated and the other side cooled.… Read more

The 404 1,276: Where we follow Justin into the darkness (podcast)

We're taking a different approach to the show today with a story from Memorial Day that takes the entire episode, but trust us--it's worth it. It's a tale of survival, of tech failure and success, the power of nature, and a tightrope walk above surefire doom. What's the closest you've ever come to the end? This is mine.

After you're done with the story, this is the Fenix LED flashlight that got me through the night and this is the SLX Extreme Snow Lizard case that kept me safe.… Read more

Crave Ep. 120: Be careful where you leave your DNA

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An artist combs public places for gum, hair, and cigarette butts, and then 3D-prints portraits of the unsuspecting people who've left their DNA behind. Plus, we take a look at a laser-powered flashlight, and get our heads chopped off in an app for the Oculus Rift head-mounted display. … Read more

Use your Android smartphone to light up the dark with LED Flashlight

This useful app could make pocket and keychain flashlights a thing of the past. LED Flashlight will make your phone's camera flash light up so you can use it as a flashlight. There are some annoying ads and it hogs battery life, but it gives you a bright light when you need it.

Though it's limited in terms of features, the app is almost as bright and as powerful as the LED flashlights you'll find in hardware stores. It will light up about 10 feet in front of you, if not more. The app's menu tells … Read more

Watch high-powered flashlights cook a turkey

The art of roasting a bird with a flashlight requires much more than the typical yellow shiner found at your parent's house; in fact, you need something more than a hundred times more powerful.

While we don't know exactly how many exact lumens -- a standard of measurement used for lighting (where 1 lumen usually equals the power of one candle) -- you need accomplish the zany task, we do know through an informative YouTube video that cooking a turkey with a flashlight is possible.… Read more

Turn your Android device into a flashlight

Flashlight is a simple app designed primarily for Android devices that don't have a built-in LED flashlight.

It does come as a ZIP file, but the app is easy to install and even easier to use. As soon as you open Flashlight it displays a bright white area that can be stretched or zoomed to fill your screen. If you're happy with the white light, that's all you need to do. To switch your flashlight on and off you tap the middle of the screen. The interface has only three buttons, with only one applying to the … Read more

A spotlight on flashlight apps for the iPhone

iPhone owners bracing for possible power outages from the "storm of the century" can make sure a flashlight is handy by downloading a virtual one onto their devices.

No matter how much I try to prepare for an impending storm and loss of power, I can never seem to find a flashlight when I need one. That's why I always keep at least one flashlight app on my iPhone, which I'll certainly use if Sandy yanks my power today or tomorrow.

Flashlight apps work by tapping into the iPhone camera's LED flash, so the light … Read more

Tiny Flashlight + LED is a bunch of cool lights in one Android app

Most Android flashlight apps are extremely simple: on and off. Some add battery meters. Then there's Nikolay Ananiev's Tiny Flashlight + LED. Like most of the others, it's free, though it does have ad banners. No big deal, because it's way more than just an LED flashlight for your smartphone. Like what? For starters, it includes a prominent battery meter. The illuminated, color-coded Power button glows green for on and blue for off. But tap the Options button, and Tiny Flashlight's awesome extras come to light.

We installed Tiny Flashlight in a new smartphone running Android … Read more

See the light with Motorola's Droidlight LED Flashlight app for Android

People have been using their cell phones as impromptu flashlights for years, but anything cell phones do, smartphones can do better, and there's no better example than flashlight apps that replace the dim glowing screen of an active cell phone by boosting the output of your smartphone's ultrabright LEDs to create an actual functioning flashlight. And there's no better example of this ultra-simple, ultra-useful app than Motorola's Droidlight LED Flashlight. It's widely compatible with previous versions of Android. We installed it on a smartphone running the latest Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich.

Droidlight installed so … Read more

Baked electronics: Taste the technology

I love baking. I love technology. I just never thought to put the two together. Israel-based artist and designer Debbi Nitsan, however, is already on the case.

Nitsan created an entire collection of electronics with their original casings removed and replaced with new, 100 percent more delicious, bread casings. The items include clocks, radios, and flashlights.… Read more