Cool toys and Gadgets

If I keep coming on PS3 superiority on handling Blu-ray materials, I might get flamed with fanboyism. May be it is better if I state the opposite first. Why PS3 is not a good standalone? PS3 is loud, the noise tops my projector runs at high beam mode. Bluetooth remote sucks, additional IR dongle requires to add PS3 on Universal remote control. Hardware constraints; no multichannel audio support on analog output, advanced audio codec limits on LPCM though HDMI. Last but certainly not least, it’s awfully ugly!

But truth hurts; we’ve seen how PS3 leads loading time in a small group test, here’s another victory for PS3 fans – An exclusive Blu-ray player benchmark test from Blu-ray.com - The dreadful beast once again crowns the best in system booting, disc loading and operation. It is not only stands out among 12 Blu-ray players in test, but performance trumps contestants in Blu-ray Disc Java department by a large margin.

No surprise there, the results reflect the superiority of cell power processing in comparing with hardware-based units. The best-equipped standalone can’t even come close to the level of PS3 achieved; on the other hand, user has to deal with cooling noise works against the excessive heat resulting from the cell processor.

Test in question didn’t cover audio quality or image reproduction in legacy DVD upscaling or blu-ray disc, but unit’s ability to handle intensive Java content and interactive menu. You can visit Blu-ray.com to see more information on how the test was conducted and categorized.

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• Creative Zen Moo MP3 Players are cow-tastic
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• Rumor - Cowon to release 16GB flash players this year

Even though it was announced last month, the Cosmos Black case bundle from Cooler Master just got an addition that is definitely worth mentioning. In fact, it got a HyperZ600 CPU cooler added to the package, which suddenly makes it much more worthwhile.

This new case is, of course, all black and the HyperZ600 CPU cooler is meant to keep the latest high performance processors running cool without drowning you in noise. The cooler itself features a 120mm fan capable of 800 to 2200 rpm. It also has a spacer that goes between the fan and the top of the cooling fins to better channel the air. This also has the benefit of reducing noise greatly.

We don’t know what CPUs this cooler would be compatible with, but it does seem to be rather universal. If the HyperZ600 cooler sounds interesting to you, then you should take note that it is only available as a part of the Cosmos Black bundle.

[via SlipperyBrick]

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• Arctic Net’s Cooler Scoop Mild Hypothermia in the Summer

The helpless cries and LCD spasms of a very bent GB under the modulating influence of LoFi Ninja's keyboard rhythm section. That synched screen-streakery is a thing in and of itself! - LoFi Ninja - Circuit bent Gameboy

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Meet Dan! He's our associate publisher at MAKE and Magazine.org just did an interview with him -

Dan Woods is Associate Publisher for O'Reilly Media's Maker Media Division, which includes MAKE: Magazine, makezine.com,book publishing unit MAKE: Books, e-tail site MakerShed.com, and Maker Faire, a live event targeting armchair MacGyvers and Ben Franklins. Before taking on that post almost five years ago, Woods served with the Sebastopol, California-based O’Reilly Media’s book unit for nearly two years.

Dan is one of those behind the scenes folks you'd don't on the site that often who works hard everyday making what we do at MAKE possible.

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The MAKE/CDM/Etsy sonic fun-derland event returns - this time @ our new location, Third Ward in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY! Kicking off the new monthly schedule, the first meet-up will be Thursday, Dec. 11th. Peter of CDM gives details -

Bonus – Make Your Own Beep-It Optical Theremin. For the cost of parts (about $10), Mike Una is giving a workshop – no experience required, and you’ll leave with your own Beep-It. (Space is limited!)

Double Bonus – You! We’re looking for hardware and software projects to share.

Not in New York? Stay tuned – we’ll have some ways to join up live online with both the CDM community and the Etsy community.

If you are in New York:

Directions to the Space

Party: 7-10p, 12/11 (snacks/drinks + lots of sounds for everyone, from non-musicians to hardcore musical hackers!)

Make Your Own Beep-It Workshop: 7:30-8:30p (arrive promptly!)

Here’s what the event is about, as described by, well, me:

Part party, part mixer, part Science Fair, and part performance, this is an informal chance for geeksters and the geek-curious to come together, relax, and discover new sounds. The evening is a gathering of inventors of circuit-bent toys, custom software and patches, interactive digital & visual instruments, custom electronics, electricity-powered noisemakers, DIY robots and new acoustic instruments. And it’s open to everyone from hard-core hackers & newcomers to music lovers who want to learn about the DIY music scene.

And here’s a big bonus: if you liked Michael Una’s Beep-It DIY optical Theremin, as debuted here, you can make your own for the low, low price of parts: about ten bucks.

Michael Una will demonstrate his optical theremin synthesizer Beep-it and conduct a workshop wherein attendees will build their own optical theremin. The basics of analog synthesis will be discussed. No skill level is required- all tools and parts will be provided by the participation fee.

Pay for your parts by Wednesday 12/10, and reserve your spot at the workshop, at EventBrite:
http://beepit.eventbrite.com/

Logo design by the amazing creator of the CDM logos and endless musical posters, Nat aka onetonnemusic.

See you next week, in New York or online!

We welcome people showing up with gear and creations at the last minute – bring cables, an extension cord, and (if you’ve got it) small speakers / headphones / PA (though we’ll do our best to provide some sound). But it does help to know who’s coming if you want to give us some advance warning, and we can help publicize your work in advance.

Head over to Create Digital Music to fill out the project submission form. I'm quite psyched for this - it's been a while since the last event and this one looks to be fully awesome!

More:

Beep-It optical theremin

Handmade Music Night photos

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Photograph by Jeff Lieberman

Want robots to be musical, creative, and expressive? Better brush up on your engineering. Musician/ roboticists Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman constructed a web-connected "robotic mechanical orchestra" that plays a marimba by firing rubber balls out of a cannon, strikes traditional percussion instruments, and also rubs mechanical fingers along wine glasses. The machine, Absolut Quartet, uses artificial intelligence to creatively riff on melodies composed remotely by users on the web.

"At the core, the machine is just motors, metal, and software," say the MI T alums. "However, the design of these elements gives the whole machine a 'personality' and this is what allows a creative dialog to exist between the machine and the online user."

Of course, that dialog can't just work once -- it has to work over and over again. The guys wanted the technology to "disappear," leaving a purely creative experience. But that meant making 3,000 custom parts and 10,000 stock parts work in harmony.

And then there are the 500,000 custom rubber balls firing a 4-meter arc onto the keys.

"For any reasonable maintenance, this can only fail roughly 1 in 10,000 times," the duo explains. They tried four fundamentally different shooting mechanisms before they found one that worked -- springs and a rotating arm.

They then consulted an engineer to settle on magical, maintenance-solving ingredients such as polyethylene glycol dimethacrylate, which they used to make the suede fingers resonant. But they also needed the skills of a professional glass harpist so they could get 35 tuned wine glasses.

"Being both musicians and roboticists, we have always been interested in combinations of the two," say Paluska and Lieberman. In the finished work, centuries-old percussion and glass armonicas meet modern industrial robotics. Musician/inventor Benjamin Franklin, who built the first glass armonica, would have been proud.

>> Absolut Quartet: absolut.com/absolutmachines

>> The Build: bea.st/sight/absolut

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 14, page 18 - Peter Kirn.

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Frostedminipete kicked his PT-100 keyboard up quite a several dozen notches by adding the following very effective circuit-bends -

• Starve pot [simulates dying batteries...low pitch, etc]
  
• Lead distortion pot
  
• Snare/hihat/bass distortion pot
  
• Bass drum distortion pot
  
• Chord distortion pot
  
• Warbly/wahwah switch
  
• Pulse 1 (fast) switch
  
• Pulse 2 (warbly/slow) switch
  
• added 1/4" output w/ speaker on and off switch

Excellent additions, not to mention a pretty sweet paint job. [Thanks Marc ;)]

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Saving electricity in the home is a good thing. We all benefit. Cutting back on the power you waste can save plenty of money on the electric bill too. But we’re only human and could use a little reminder sometimes. A reminder that isn’t some treehugger starring in a PSA on TV.

The Wilting Flower from English designer Carl Smith will remind you. It’s a little known fact that people pay more attention to a flower then they do to a preaching hippie. Plus, the flower looks like it’s bathed. This little wilting flower changes from blue, to red, to yellow, to purple, then turns off, as our power demands increase. But as it changes, the petals slowly close and the flower keels over in its vase. In other words, you are a murdering bastard and it hopes you feel bad.

The Wilting Flower is a prototype for the moment, but it should sell for around $90 if it gets to market one day.

[Daily Mail]

This Guitar Hero mod posted by Youtube user Egyokeo blew my mind. A MIDI drum kit and some custom software on a PC send button-press input via the Xbox Input Machine (XIM) hardware to an Xbox running Guitar Hero.

Since I injured my middle left finger playing Guitar Hero 2 way too much when it came out, I've been dying to get back to playing it. But my finger hasn't healed. I was holding the neck too tightly on the X-plorer guitar controller and it hurts to bend it anymore. I've never had an injury playing the drums, so I thought "wouldn't it be great to be able to play Guitar Hero on the drums?" So I thought about how that might be accomplished... researched, implemented, borrowed, and here I outline the finished product.

Here's the whole chain of what's going on:

1. Me banging on my drumKat MIDI drum pads
2. drumKat MIDI Out to MIDI/USB adapter to PC
3. PC running my own custom MIDI Hero software
4. MIDI Hero calls into XIM which sends input to the Xbox 360 console

To make the songs playable with two-sticked drum input, some of the pads simulate multiple button presses for the 3 note chords and an input buffer on the PC automatically holds all notes until just before sending another hit event. You could tweak the setup to use a MIDI keyboard or even a MIDI guitar.

There are a lot more details on Egyokeo's site as well as the blog maintained by XIM creator OBsIV. Unfortunately, there are no instructions for actually playing like this. I'm pretty sure it involves secret ninja stuff.

MIDI Hero: Play Rhythm Games using any MIDI Instrument
Building your own Xbox 360 Input Machine (XIM)

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Section: Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Lifestyle, Transportation, Reviews, Features

Gadgetell Quick Review: Navigon 2200T

Cool:

• Low Price(about 200 bucks)
• Good mounting hardware
• Reality view and Lane Assistant Pro feature is really helpful
• Speed warning
• Small size
• Lifetime traffic service

Uncool:

• Sometimes difficult to navigate the screens
• Traffic alerts not factored into initial route plans, but instead notifies you there is a problem and gives rerouting options
• Limited voice selections

The Crux:

Overall, if you can get past some quirks, the 2200T is a very good GPS and the lifetime traffic service makes it a stand out device for the low price.

This is a guest review by Robert Borgesi.  Rob co-hosts the website review program, “ChannelFlip Web” with Iyaz Akhtar on ChannelFlip.com.  Additionally, Rob is a tech enthusiast with years of computer building experience.

 

Overview

The Navigon 2200T features a 3.5-inch touch screen in a thin form factor and comes with free traffic updates for life.  Navigon products feature the “Reality View Pro” which displays highway signs as they appear in real life to make navigation simpler.  The Navigon 2200T comes with mounting hardware and a car charger. 

Out of the box

This GPS has a low price at about 200 bucks.  The 2200T is a very compact device.  While it has a large and easy to read 3.5-inch screen, the whole device can easily fit in your pocket. 

The mounting arm is quite good.  It is easily adjustable, sticks to the window well, and it stays where you put it. 

Using the 2200T

The Reality View and Lane Assistant Pro feature shows 3-D exits and close-ups of turns which allow you to see the road as it looks in real life and tells you which lane to be in.  The Navigon 2200T also gives you speed warnings which tell you when you are over the speed limit and can be set to warn you when you are over the speed limit by 1, 5, 10, 15, or 20 mph.  More importantly, the warnings can be disabled all together.

This model comes with lifetime traffic service which give you traffic alerts without having to pay fees. 

Long term testing

Over the course of using the Navigon 2200T there were a few things that stood out.  First of all, navigating the screens was not intuitive and took a lot of getting used to.  You have to enter location, then press “navigate” more than once before you finally get to the actual navigation.  Also, it was difficult to figure out how to cancel or change navigation once you have started and get back to the home page.

Define: “Local”

Another issue I had while using this device was with the Points of Interest.  I was only 20 miles from a major international airport and when I asked to navigate to an airport close to me; the airport was not listed until I was within 5 miles of it.  I guess I didn’t know “local” meant within walking distance.

Avoiding Traffic

One feature I found very helpful was the traffic alerts.  There was a huge accident on one of the major highways I was traveling on and the Navigon informed me of the problem and rerouted me around the accident saving me hours of sitting in traffic.

Wrap Up

So overall, for a low cost, you get a very functional GPS unit with a few quirks that may turn some people off.  However, the benefit of lifetime traffic service set it apart from comparable GPS units and makes it worth buying.

Product Page: [Navigon 2200T]

Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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