Shadowplay starts out looking like a piece of illuminated art. Its gently glowing circular form sits serenely on the wall until it receives some human attention. When touched, parts of the LED ring turn off, creating strategic shadows.

When you approach the clock and touch the middle of its face, it projects two shadows mimicking clock hands. The shadows point out the current time while a small LED blips around the edge to show the seconds.

The Shadowplay clock is a concept from design studio breadedEscalope. They built it using an Arduino microcomputer that senses your touch, tells the time, and decides which LEDs need to be turned off. The studio hasn’t release information on whether they plan to produce and market the clock, but here’s hoping we can eventually hang this beauty on our walls.

The post Timely Touch: Hidden Clock is Illuminated With a Push first appeared on Gajitz.

During the course of creating a full-body, six-degree-of-freedom motion platform for racing simulation, two San Jose State University students took a little side trip to make this deceptively simple-looking robot. It has the amazing ability to perfectly balance a ball in the exact center of the platform, even when you try to knock the ball off.

The robotic platform is a proof-of-concept for the duo’s larger project. The students, Tyler Kroymann and Robert Dee, formed Full Motion Dynamics to realize their goal of the larger motion simulator. This smaller machine also works with six degrees of freedom and a resistive touch panel mounted on its platform as an input device.

Whenever a ball is placed on the Arduino-powered platform, the platform corrects it position to keep the ball perfectly centered. When an evil hand darts in to flick the ball off of the platform, it reacts quickly to correct the ball’s position. When the hand lifts the ball, the platform vibrates as though protesting the absence of its purpose. Full Motion Dynamics has received such interest in the little robot that they are planning to release it commercially as a whole or in kit form.

The post Platform Robot Can Perfectly Balance a Ball on its Center first appeared on Gajitz.

The movements of ballerinas are like the graceful brush strokes of a watercolor artist. They are flowy, light, and far more complicated than they look. Designer Lesia Trubat has developed a way to capture those brush strokes of movement by outfitting pointe shoes with electronics and connecting them to a proprietary app. She calls the system Electronic Traces, or E-Traces.

A Lilypad Arduino microcontroller board attached to the bottom of each shoe records the pressure and movements of the feet and sends the information to a mobile device.

From there, the dancer can see their foot movements drawn out on the screen in graphics. They can view the movements as a video and even print out extracted images.

The movement data can be used to track dancer’s progress in learning a particular routine, compare their moves with those of other dancers, and make corrections to foot placement.

Trubat feels that the technology could be used for dance styles other than ballet and would be particularly helpful to those who are just learning or who are self-teaching.

The post Wired Ballet Shoes Trace Movements to Make Visual Art first appeared on Gajitz.

The right Halloween decor can make or break your whole holiday, and Instructables user TheNewHobbyist has created the pitch perfect Halloween display. Using styrofoam heads, and Arduino UNO, a karaoke machine, projector, and a few other bits and bobs, the creative tinkerer built a quartet of singing busts for the Halloween porch.

TheNewHobbyist modeled the project after the crowd-pleasing Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland/Disneyworld. The display consists of four heads that sit on a table and sing a spooky song when the display is tripped by an industrial photocell switch. The projected images came from a YouTube video of four singing heads that, when projected to line up perfectly with the styrofoam heads, seem to create life-like decapitated minstrels.

In the Instructables explanation, TheNewHobbyist explains that having a mechanical engineer as a father was a big help in creating the creepy display. The effect is surprisingly realistic; the projected faces and recorded music really make the faces look like they’re singing and are sure to freak out all of the unsuspecting trick-or-treaters who come by looking for candy. Hop on over to Instructables for the technical specs and instructions to make your very own haunted Halloween display.

The post Spooky, Scary Sight: Decapitated Singing Halloween Heads first appeared on Gajitz.

We used to take Tetris everywhere with us on our Gameboys, but this is the 21st century and we’re all about constant, unfettered access to fun. Never mind all of the other portable consoles, smartphone games and everything else we use to amuse ourselves – Marc Kerger has invented a wearable game of Tetris.

The Tetris T-shirt features a screen with 128 LEDs; behind the scenes are two Adafruit Matrix controllers and four 3D printed soft button controllers. An Arduino controller and the battery compartment are housed in 3D printed covers to keep them protected from your sweat. The battery compartment is removable and presumably (hopefully) the T-shirt is washable.

Although the shirt doesn’t play the iconic Tetris music, the gameplay is surprisingly fun and easy looking…but you’ll have to learn to play upside down. Offering to let someone else play the game on your shirt  might just be a great way to make a new friend, though. Kerger’s shirt is a one-off personal creation that he doesn’t plan on selling because of its high cost, but you can get the programming instructions from his own info source: the Pumpktris on Instructables.

The post Chest Full of Fun: Wearable, Playable Tetris Game T-Shirt first appeared on Gajitz.