Potato gun is in fact one of the simple and cheap homemade gadgets to create. Anyone with basic understanding of how a potato gun works can create it on their own. It takes up to an hour and $30.

Potato Gun Homemade Gadgets

You’ll need some materials to make this spud rocket launcher, like PVC pipe, cleaner and pipe cement. A potato gun uses propane-based aerosol sprayed into a tube. This aerosol is then lit. The gas in the tube expands, which forces the projectiles to travel up the barrel of the potato gun and out. There are three primary parts to any potato gun. There is a barrel, a combustion chamber, and an igniter. The barrel, as well as the combustion chamber, are typically made from PVC pipe. The igniter is typically a lighter such as a barbecue lighter.

As projectiles you can use potatoes, wooden cylinders, bags of flour, eggs or rotten fruit and vegetable. Potato guns, however, belong to rather dangerous homemade gadgets. So it is highly recommended that you use relatively safe fuels, such as hair spay. And it is also highly recommended that you check up the legality of potato guns in your state before shooting or even creating it.

By the way, spud gun homemade gadgets are widely used in film and theatre productions for special effects as pyrotechnic-free method of material projection.

Skype Phone Box Experiment

The entire process of the campaign created by The Viral Factory – one of the best agencies in this domain – is shown on the site www.phoneboxexperiment.com and on Skype itself where you can watch the experiment live. The creators have promised to provide tools for the broadcasting in the social networks. However, there are no instructions of such on the official web site.

Notably, the site is available in several languages however Rob can speak only Spanish, English and German.

Obviously, the main goal of the campaign is to inform the users about the possibility of low cost international calls from Skype to fixed location phones as everybody knows how to communicate from one computer to another already.

Whether Phone Box Experiment will work or not, we’re going to find out in the nearest future!

Bakugan Battle Brawlers

Everything started when a new anime television series Bakugan Battle Brawlers were debuted on a Tokio channel in 2007. The plot is developed around Bakugan monsters and their owners, the battle brawlers. Soon after, a strategic game appeared. It was called Bakugan in conjunction with the series and used metal cards and magnetic miniature figures loaded with springs.

Bakugan Battle Pack

The background legend is rather complicated but I’ll try to make it as clear as possible. One day it started rain with cards. Kids from all over the world picked those cards. Each one had an image with a different creature. Kids started playing, especially good were six children who became Bakugan Battle Brawlers. Again, the world gets in danger. It’s because the balance between the two basic cores of the dimension Vestroia have been damaged. So the team of Bakugan Battle Brawlers has to put everything back to normal state.

Bakugan Apollonir

You know, I had a good hour of scratching my head to understand what it’s about. It turned out that was in vain, unfortunately. Unlike Pokemon this story has nothing to do with the game itself. You just throw the Bakugan balls across arena trying to land them on cards. When balls roll on a card, they open and reveal a little monster inside. Each monster has points. Obviously, the Bakugan having the highest points wins at the end. The main purpose is to win three cards. It can be done in battles or by successful throwing of your Bakugan ball.

Bakugan Falconoid

All in all, the main question is whether Bakugan ball can beat Pokemon. Obviously, no. But. The mechanic principle of Bakugan Battle Brawlers is way more engaging than Pokemon. You improve your throwing moves and watch Bakugan appear… Come on! It’s really cool!

How does it work? Well, it has a 60 mm fan set in its bottom part blowing on the radiator which is the stand for cans at the same time. Still, there is something that confuses me. Conventional fridge cools beverages up to 8-12 degrees while USB Mini Fridge can cool only to 19 degrees when the room temperature is 24. However, this stand doesn’t cover the whole device. Thus, USB Mini Fridge can be useful only if you take a chilled beverage from a normal fridge and don’t want it to warm up quickly. But if you go exactly for this, plug this trendy piece into your computer USB port and chill out!

USB mini fridge

USB Mini Fridge is compatible with any USB device including MAC, PC, Play Station, Xbox 360, including cable boxes. Its measurements are 194×90x90 mm while its weight is 362 g. The cost of this little wonder reaches no more than $33. Pretty nice, huh?

In any case, USB Mini Fridge just looks smashing on the desk! So, you may think of it as of the saucy decoration of your working space which has some practical side.

Lego Mindstorms

I just love playing Lego. I like to construct robots and machines. And I really like programming. I like to write programs and frameworks. And not so long ago I found a way to combine these two passions. Lego Mindstorms - a set that includes several motor, sensors and a programmable module that can read information from sensors and control motors.

I will tell more about the Lego Mindstorms and the ways of programming in it.

The architecture

• sensors transmit information to the control module
• the program running on the module processes information and sends control commands to the motors
• motors make the construction move

Sensors

The standard Mindstorms 2.0 Invention System kit includes:

Light sensor

This sensor is able to do quite a lot. First, he knows how to read the current color and return its RGB-value. Secondly, he knows how to measure light level. Oh, and finally, he knows how to work as a flashlight.

Two touch sensors

• button pressed
• button released
• button bumped

These sensors are able to register three events:

Ultrasonic sensor

This sensor can measure the distance between obstacles and itself. It is able to measure distances from 0 to 255 centimeters.

Servo motors

There are three motos in the kit. Each can rotate at a given angle (promised accuracy to one degree), as well as read the current rotation angle. The last feature will be really helpfull if the motor is fastened to the wheel controlled by user.

Programmable module

It’s a small computer. CPU at 48 MHz, 64 KB of RAM, 256 KB flash memory, USB 1.1 port and the bluetooth radio.

Programs

From here the fun begins. Along with the standard kit comes the program Mindstorms NXT. This is a graphic shell for writing simple programs. As for me it’s not very comfortable. Here, for example, is the screenshot of a program with a single loop and if:

Lego Mindstorm screenshot

Fortunately, there are a number of projects, which allow writing programs on normal programming languages. For example “lejos”. Programs are written in Java, compiled into classes, and then translated into binary format, which is supported by patched control module.

Java is quite true: there are quite a lot of standard libraries, there are strings and even API to work with bluetooth. Moreover, there is a plugin for eclipse. In general, there is everything that a developer can dream of.

A little more about sensors

It’s great that third-party developers also produce sensors for Mindstorms. Search around the internet and you can find the accelerometer, compass, GPS-receiver, a thermometer, infrared sensor, RFID reader, and much more. Unfortunately, one programmable module can support no more than four sensors at a time. So for complex projects you need to use multiple modules working together.

Summary

Overall, Lego Mindstorms is a great way to spend time. I would highly reccoment it to you if you like Lego and want to feel like a mad professor.

1. Scan Toaster designed by Sung Bae Chang (Electrolux). The idea is that it connects to the Internet via USB and downloads news feeds. Then you choose which content you want to have on your bread and it burns it on your slice. The concept is quite nice, but there are still no plans to manufacture the toaster on a mass scale.
2. USB Toaster Hard Drive Dock was the second device I found on the Internet.After reading product description I realized it was not what I was looking for. But still I deciced to keep it in the list as it looks like toaster and uses USB. This one is actually a USB hard drive dock shaped as toaster. It lets you dock 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch hard drives and connect them to your PC. Bbuttons on the front will let you eject your HDD like toast.
3. CrazyPC 5.25 Inch Bay Toaster.
   It’s a single slice toaster that fits in standard 5.25 drive bay and installs in just minutes. For power and software control it uses USB 2.0 port. Hot air is ventilated through a free PCI slot. Comes with Windows software.

This is the list of USB Toasters (or devices that might be called that way) I came up with so far. Do you have any?

Advantages:

• Low price
• No batteries required
• Can be used for any cat

Disadvantages:

• 5 out of 10 owners claimed their cats ignored it

Functions provided by “Control A Cat” remote control:

1. Meow on/off (Mute button)
2. Sulk on/off (Power button)
3. Stop: hissing, scratching, attacking
4. Get of: chair, self, bed
5. Arch back
6. Show affection
7. Remain aloof
8. Land on feet
9. Here kitty-kitty
10. Catch mice
11. Retract claws
12. Stop moulting
13. Use litter tray
14. Cat nap (Pause button)
15. Fur ball (Eject button)
16. Purr volume control

Measures: 2″L x .75″W x 5.25″H
Dimensions: 5.5″ x 2.2″ (14 x 5.5 cm)