Awesometiny Lego chess set
This itty-bitty Lego chess set by Flickr user akunthita is only 12 x 12 studs, which makes it slightly less than 10 cm square. It even has little drawers to hold the pieces. [via The Brothers Brick]
Fun & Games
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
SATIN, a virtual reality spline
Researches at the Politecnico di Milano and a group of other organizations have developed the Sound and Tangible Interfaces for Novel product Design (SATIN) haptic interface. It combines a robotic spline object with a virtual reality display, to allow a designer to physically manipulate and interact with curve lines in a virtual design.
Using a PIC with USB, accelerometer, and gyro for tilt-based gaming
Starlino writes: For the hardware I used the Acc_Gyro sensor and a thumb-size PIC platform UsbThumb built around the inexpensive PIC18F14K50 chip that provides all the necessary USB connectivity and ADC inputs. This setup is actually hardware compatible with my original Motion Gamepad design so all the software utilities and firmware will work on the […]
How-To: Make little green army men from paracord
Instructables user seamster produced this cool little DIY-posable-army-guy tutorial for their ongoing Paracord Contest. It’s OD cord over a wire armature, with one foot glued to a cardboard base.
LEGO minifig-scale Fallingwater
Croatian LEGO fan and architecture student Matija Grguric has made a name for himself with his meticulously-researched recreations of architectural masterpieces — his model of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye made waves when he built it a couple years ago. Matija’s latest project, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, is built at 1:40 scale, uses 15,000 bricks, weighs […]
Speed Vest project build
One of my HacDC cohort, Erica Kane, did the Speed Vest project from MAKE Volume 19. We’re always thrilled when people do the projects in the magazine, document their builds, and share the results with us. Erica details her build on her family blog. She writes in email: As you suggested, I blogged about the […]
Virtual 3D “fish tank” box has screens all around
The brilliant (if perhaps poorly named) pCubee from The University of British Columbia’s Human Communications Technology Lab is exactly what it appears to be–a box with flat screens on 5 sides. Both the user’s position and the orientation of the box are tracked to provide a real-time, perspective-corrected illusion of 3D forms “inside” the box. I want one with an impossible pet inside, like a baby Totoro or something. [via Geekologie]