OTB Gadget Blog

Archive for the ‘Strange Gadgets’ Category

I said things into this strange gadget while very, very high

Who would have thought that something as cute as a regular manga doll can actually be transformed into a robot? That’s exactly what an enterprising person did, using old, unwanted manga dolls to stuf a controller board behind her thick mane. The doll itself measures no more than 4″ in height, so there isn’t enough space to throw in more cool functions and features, so don’t expect it to go about serving you at your beck and call. Some servos have also been included into the chassis – or should we say, doll’s body, to have it gain some degree of movement. Nice to see what dedication can result in, eh?

Source: Hobby Media (Italian)

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Coolest Gadgets UK – For all your UK centric tech and gadget news.
[ Manga doll turned into robot copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Do you have trouble waking up each morning? We’ve seen our fair share of alarm clocks in the past, and some of them require extremely creative methods to help you get out of bed, but ThinkGeek has a more cerebral manner in the form of the Alien Hunt Alarm Clock. This model will see your typical green alien merge from an egg shell whenever it is time to get up, complete with menacing flashing red eyes and evil laughter. You will need to locate your trusty laser pistol (which comes included with each $18.99 purchase), and zap the alien to keep it quiet – which ThinkGeek hopes that using those motor skills of yours will help kickstart your body’s internal engine to shuffle into the shower right after that. Guess it works best from a distance, eh?

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Check out the Coolest Gadgets 2008 Gift Guides, Christmas shopping made easy.
[ Alien Hunt Alarm Clock copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

We know that April Fool’s Day is just less than a week away, so why not be well prepared with the TV Poltergeist Phantom Prank Device from ThinkGeek? For $12.99, you can always drive the resident couch potato mad and perhaps even have him/her call in an exorcist. Why do we say so? This unique device is capable of turning the TV on and off at completely random intervals every 5 to 20 minutes round the clock, for weeks on end as long as the trio of AA batteries powering it isn’t dead. Of course, you must have a pretty cluttered living room for this to work simply because it will need to have its LED aimed at the TV directly all the time, so a neat, well kept house would make it easier for the culprit to be identified.

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Cool Gift Idea: Digital Picture Frames, check out our reviews.
[ TV Poltergeist Phantom Prank Device copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Researchers at the Univeristy of British Columbia have created an innovative 3D display, called the PCubee. The PCubee is made up of five flat panels screens that are placed together to form a cube.

The cube can be interacted with in a number of different ways, you can view a static scene, navigate through a large landscape, play with colliding objects inside the cube and use a stylus to move the 3D objects around.

As you can see from the video this looks pretty impressive, you can find out more details about the PCubee, including how it was made over at the research groups website.

3D Diplay via Technabob

Some of us find it really difficult to wake up, especially after a long hard day at the office and we arrive home dead tired only to realize that you promised your kids to go through their homework with them in detail. Once done, you can barely keep your eyes open – plopping onto the bed only to snore a few seconds later. Fast forward 6 or 7 hours and your ears are greeted by a sound that is second only to your wife’s nagging – that of an alarm clock. You shut it up, and go back to sleep “just for five more minutes” only to wake up during your office’s morning coffee break, adding another blemish to your working record. The Danger Bomb Alarm Clock helps alleviate that by making sure you get up, as it will start beeping like a real bomb a minute before it goes off, and you will need to defuse it carefully by unplugging the corresponding color wire as indicated by a glowing LED located in front. Disconnecting the wrong wire will cause it to explode with a loud noise over and over with no way of shutting it up. $34.99 is the asking price for this interesting alarm clock.

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Check out the Coolest Gadgets 2008 Gift Guides, Christmas shopping made easy.
[ Danger Bomb Alarm Clock copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

If you are the sort of person who likes playing jokes on your friends or coworkers, then April Fools day is the perfect opportunity to have some fun with them.

Our friends over at Walyou have complied a cool list of the top 100 April Fools pranks, which might give you a few ideas of some jokes you can play on your friends.

Head on over to Walyou and check out their fun list of Top 100 April Fools Pranks and Gadgets.

The guys over at Tokyoflash are at it again with their funky watch concepts, this one looks like it might be quite hard to read the time on, the Tokyoflash Binary Flow Watch Concept.

The Binary Flow watch concept displays a load of dots on the watch face, the hours are show in groups of ten minutes and single minutes are shown in three sections, each line shows an hour, a group of ten minutes or single minutes.

Confused? check out the picture below which explains how it works, to be honest I still cant work it out after looking at this picture.

The Tokyoflash Binary Flow watch features an e-paper display, and a watch strap with a combination of rubber and steel. Luckily it is just in the concept stages, but knowing Tokyflash we will probably see this watch go into production in the future.

via Dvice

I once did some research on the invention of airships, and I was always disappointed that we didn’t end up living in an age where dirigibles fly around in our skies like giant birds.

It would appear that this concept high-altitude reconnaissance and surveillance platform known as ISIS (Integrated Sensor Is the Structure), could herald in that age.

Yes, this blimp is designed for combat zones, or at least hovering safely over them (about six miles over it). It is completely self-sustaining, because it can harvest solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This is then used to power the fuel cells, and I am assuming that the water is drawn from the atmosphere. How else could it be self sustaining?

Oh hey, did I mention that it is fully automated? Apparently, it can go anywhere within 10 days. So, I don’t know about you, but I want to see a world where these self-sustainable airships populate the sky like giant cities. Hey, why not?

Believe it or not, I have heard that the first one of these blimps is expected to take flight in 2014. That year seems a little too premature, if you ask me, but I would hope to see one of these things flying over my head in my lifetime.

Source

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Conference Calendar – The global conference and expo finder.
[ Self-sustaining blimps could be our future copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

I’ve seen concept robots before that are meant to go through fires, like the Omnitread.

The Firegard doesn’t have the snake-like construction of the Omnitread, but it does have an interesting wheel construction.

Hopefully, those star-shaped wheels are sturdier than they look, because I’m not certain how they could be bent in such a manner. Clearly, they are designed to go over burnt rubble in a building. On the “head” of this guy is a camera to transmit what it sees to the fire department, so they can figure out what to do in the inferno.

I’ve always noticed that these fireproof robots with the cameras seem to have a design flaw: they appear to be too slow. Both the Omnitread and Firegard look durable enough to go through the flames, but by the time the firemen get the footage and calculate a response, I’m not certain whether a life could be saved.

I mean, by the time you get it set up with the transmitter, it will slowly crawl through a burning building that has probably been on fire for quite a while. Assuming that it sees someone, how long will it take to formulate a rescue plan?

Well, the technology had better get faster in order for this to be practical.

Source

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Cool Gift Idea: Digital Picture Frames, check out our reviews.
[ Firegard robot grows through flaming rubble on its cool wheels copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]