tech e blog

10. Illume

Design student Chris Owens created "Illume" -- "a shelf with pressure sensitive plates and embedded LEDs that light up objects that are placed on the shelf" -- for his final project.

9. Playstation Controlled Robotic Arm

A group of college students from "The Universidad La Salle Campus" in Guadalajara Mexico built this nifty robotic arm -- controlled using a modified Playstation controller.

The arm has 3 stepper motors and 2 servo motors which are controlled with a parallax microcontroller, the arm can operate in automatic and manual mode using a modified playstation controller

8. LED Hourglass

File this under: "Creative Uses for LEDs" A student from NSIT (Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology) created this nifty LED hourglass that is basically a 3D version of its real-life counterpart.

In its current state, the LED hourglass less-than-accurately imitates falling sand, with a Z-axis accelerometer able to detect when it's been flipped over (we're guessing that top bit detaches). Planned improvements include a more accurate LED lighting pattern, and enclosing the whole thing in a perspex tube to make it a little more presentable

[Source]

7. Touchscreen SmartMirror

We have seen the future, and it's the SmartMirror. This nifty device was designed by a group of college students from the University of Waterloo.

Widgets can be placed on the mirror and it can also play music, video and more

[Source]

6. LEGO Toilet Paper Folder

File this under: "Cool LEGO Gadgets" UC Berkeley student Kyle Yeats built this nifty LEGO machine that dispenses, folds, and then cuts toilet paper for you. [Source]

5. Transparent Concrete Display

Two engineering/architecture students have created the world's first display made of transparent concrete -- similar to this technology.

The screen consists of concrete with embedded optical fibres, arranged as pixels, capable of transmitting natural as well as artificial light. The light-admission points are on the back of the screen where the fibres are positioned. The light, or the picture, is then displayed in pixels on the front. The light source can be a projector emitting either pictures or film footage. In principle, the screen is capable of acting as a window since – owing to the combination of the screen concept's light-absorption and optical cables – it has a capacity for transmitting natural light

[Source]

4. Monster: The Robotic Drummer

A group of college students (Matthew Webster, John Vernon, and ShengZhu Wu) created a robotic drumming system, called Monster, for their final project. See it in action after the jump.

Our system works using general MIDI, allowing connection to MIDI controllers (keyboards etc) and also sequencer software (Cubase SX or Pro Tools etc)

3. Paper-Based Storage System

According to The Register, college student Sainul Abideen has developed a paper-based storage system that is "one tenth of the cost of a CD, he claims, while offering 131 times the storage capacity)."

From the sound of it, the system appears to be somewhat similar to QR Codes and other newfangled bar code-type technologies currently in use in parts of the world other than here, but Abideen's "Rainbow Versitile Disc" can apparently store far more amounts of data than those -- between 90 and 450GB

[Source]

2. Automatic Dishmaker

Created by MIT student Leonardo Bonanni, this incredible device "can actually replace cabinets worth of dishes by storing them as flat disks."

If the Dishmaker ever becomes a reality, you will never have to worry about dishes again. You just make dishes on demand and try to put all the extra free cabinet space to good use

[Source 1 - 2]

1. Nuclear Fusion Reactor

Thiago Olson, a high school student, managed to build a fully-functional nuclear fusion reactor in just two years. Now that's a cool gadget not many can make at home.

In November 2006, a few tiny bubbles in his neutron dosimeter told him that he'd achieved success: Fusing hydrogen nuclei into helium. While it takes far more energy to run than it produces, Olson's nuclear reactor is pretty bad-ass, producing 200 million-degree plasma at its core -- or, as Olson points out, "several times hotter than the core of the sun.:"

[Source 1 - 2]