An open-ended educational project at the intersection of gaming and computer science education, Project Bloks is an open hardware platform anyone can use to teach coding to children.

Project Bloks is made of three core components: the “Brain Board,” “Base Boards” and “Pucks.” The Brain Board houses the main processing unit and is built on top of a Raspberry Pi Zero, providing power and connectivity. It can communicate via WiFi and Bluetooth.

The Base Boards create grids or different programming flows, and feature capacitive sensors. The Pucks are essentially code instructions in physical form, including dials and switches, arrows and bottoms. They turn things on and off, up or down. These are cheap, requiring no active electronic components.

“You really need a lot of expertise,” explains Jayme Goldstein, the leader of the project. “You need to know electrical engineering, you need to know hardware engineering. You’ve got to spend a lot of time developing the infrastructure before you can even get to the educational design. Next is the money. There’s a lot of research and development associated with hardware, along with opportunity costs.”

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Project Ara, a modular phone technology where users can swap out broken parts or splice in upgrades, is scheduled to ship out later this year to developers, and then next year to consumers.

The device is designed to solve longevity problems related to single-block devices, containing six modules (including the camera lens) that can be traded out or up on demand. Some of the similarly-sized modules are also interchangeable, letting you decide where, for instance, you want your camera to sit on the back. Developers can also build further hardware modules, creating open-source possibilities much like the Google Play app store has enabled for software development.

Other functions, however, are built into a single core, including the CPU, antenna, battery and screen display. This part of the announcement came as a bit of a disappointment to some fans and followers hoping to see a more fully modularized system. Google, however, has implied that such modularity is yet to come.

From Google: “Project Ara is a new modular computing platform, allowing devices to be customized for style and function. Choose your high-res camera, add a louder speaker, swap in a better battery. Imagine the possibilities. And we’re releasing a developer kit with device later this year. We are looking to module makers to create technology never before seen on smartphones. We’re hard at work on an open marketplace to connect the next generation of ideas with the broader Ara community. Google is looking for beloved brands and forward-thinking developers to join us.”

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A viral hit when it was just a concept, Project Ara is now coming to life in 2015: a mobile phone with interchangeable modules you can exchange on demand to vary its functionality, upgrade its components or potentially even hack your own additions. A ‘Ship of Theseus’ approach means buyers can trade up parts as needed or replace broken pieces without scrapping their whole phone.

Spearheaded by Google’s Advanced Technology & Projects group, the newly-released design is dubbed Spiral 2 and includes “a 1280 x 720 display, 5-megapixel camera, wifi and bluetooth connectivity, light & proximity sensors, a 3G modem with either a band 2 or band 5 antenna, thermal imaging system, battery, speaker module, USB charger and space for 2 different types of processors.”

But it doesn’t end there: imagine a whole range of potential parts, acting like apps do within the phone’s digital world, that plug in and swap out as desired – you could add unique, custom and/or personalized tools and pieces that only you need, or change configurations for home versus work versus travel.

Injection-molded polycarbonate plastic parts are stylistically versatile – they can be user-customized to feature images, colors  and patterns chosen by individual users. An initial roll out will take place in Puerto Rico but buyers can expect to get their hands on this in the mainland United States within the year.

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Not all of us can afford to drop a few hundred dollars for an Oculus Rift, but wouldn’t it be cool to play around with virtual reality? Google has released a low-tech, low-cost VR headset that you can build from stuff you already have lying around.

To use Google Cardboard, you have to have an Android phone (sorry, iPhone loyalists) running Android 4.1 or above.

An open software toolkit lets developers create virtual reality apps easily. Google hopes the platform will encourage developers to build an accessible generation of immersive digital experiences.

Building Google Cardboard is as simple as gathering a piece of cardboard, lenses, Velcro, a rubber band, some magnets, and an optional NFC tag.

The templates available for download on the Cardboard website include instructions for cutting and assembling the cardboard enclosure. If you choose to include an NFC tag, your phone will recognize when it’s put into the enclosure and automatically launch the Cardboard Android app.

When you’re done cutting, folding, and gluing, Cardboard goes right up to your face like a View-Master. Google Cardboard’s images show a pre-cut piece of cardboard printed with instructions for putting it together, giving us hope that they will someday release an inexpensive pre-made kit that will let us unwrap. fold, and start playing within minutes.

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Remember that potato clock you made for your high school science fair? Apparently, the bar has been raised quite a bit. Ann Makosinski, a 15 year old student from Canada, made a flashlight for her science fair project – a flashlight powered entirely by the body heat of the hand holding it. To be fair to the rest of us, though, this wasn’t any old science fair; this was the Google Science Fair, a global competition that brings out the best and brightest in the 13 to 18 age range.

Makosinski used Peltier tiles to create the flashlight. These tiles produce electricity when they are heated on one side and cooled on the other. A temperature difference of just five degrees is enough to power the LED bulb on the Hollow Flashlight. When the ambient temperature is colder, the flashlight will receive more power from the user’s body heat and provide more light. The average amount of electricity generated by palm heat was about 57 milliwatts in tests, and only about half a milliwatt is required to light the LED.

The Peltier tiles are arranged around a hollow aluminum tube – hollow so that the inside can receive air that will cool the backs of the tiles. In tests, the flashlight worked for around 30 minutes, but its useful time could vary widely depending on ambient temperatures. If the flashlight were ever to be mass produced for sale, Makosinski says that she would make some tweaks to her prototype design to make the light more durable and efficient.

Part of Makosinski’s inspiration for the project was her desire to reduce the use of disposable batteries. These single-use power sources are toxic and can leak harmful chemicals into the ground. But her invention can also be priceless in parts of the world where access to electricity is scarce. The inventor’s interest in harvesting sustainable energy that would ordinarily be wasted won her a $25,000 scholarship from Google.

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