Your clicks have told us that Gadget Freak is your favorite Design News feature, and we've listened.
Here's a tour of our best recent projects, from the Arduino-based plug-and-play project board to the guitar-distorting FaceMelter3000. A Kindle controller, an electronic recycling dumper, and an electronic bicycle shifter are thrown in for good measure.
Click the image below to scroll through our slideshow of 11 notable recent Gadget Freak projects:
A lot of ingenuity in this Gadget Freak inventions. My personal favorite as far as utility and impact is the modified Kindle reader that is helping the disabled make better use of the latest and greatest consumer technology. But given that man's best friend is my best friend, I have to say the remote pet kennel opener would get a lot of activity in my house. Cool stuff.
This slideshow is a lot of fun. I like the Frankenkindle, at least half because of the name. I also like the smart recycle can. I think there's a huge need for this type of info right at the point of recycling. There are times I have not recycled an item in a public place because I wasn't certain whether I could or where it should go. But my favorite has got to be the FaceMelter. Shades of Jimi!
I agree with you, Ann. I also am particularly impressed by the FaceMelter. This is quite a variety of gadget by a variety of inventors. We have the home-shop folks as well as students.
I liked the "Gadget Freak Case #202: Frankenkindle -- An Easier-to-Use Kindle Modifying a Kindle enables a woman with cerebral palsy to control the e-reader easily"
In my personal opinion, more such device/interfaces have to develop for medically ill patients. They are the most people's need to be self confident and to do things in their own way, without any external help.
Good points, Mydesign. One of the beauties of the Frankenkindle is that it solved a real-world problem. The Glenn Johnson saw the problem and decided to create a solution, and the solution helped improve someone's life.
Yes, I hope so too, Curck. Not sure what the IP implications are when you alter a trademarked product for resale. Glenn would probably need to obtain some agreement from Amazon. At any rate, we can expect to see more gadgets from Glenn over the coming months.
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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