The 2012 Blip Festival, an event showcasing music and art that is created with vintage computers and game consoles, takes place May 25-27 at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City. The Blip Festival is presented by 8bitpeoples, The Tank, and Live Nation.

Australian YouTuber Ed creates an astonishing and dangerous light show by electrically overloading a plasma display with a microwave transformer.

via Doobybrain.com

The CatBot is an automated cat laser device created by Instructables user Joe which uses “two servos, an Arduino and a cheap $3 laser.” Full howto instructions are available.

I was buying pet food and saw a $3 laser… I thought the cat might like it. I was wrong. The cat became obsessed. Constantly grabbing the toy off of the coffee table. But she only wants to play for 1 minute then sit and stare at it. So you think, OK I guess she is bored. You put it down….

And she’s back pawing at it.

The CatBot is the solution.

The Boombox Project: The Machines, the Music, and the Urban Underground is a photo book by photographer Lyle Owerko featuring fine art photographs of vintage boomboxes. The book also includes thoughts on the importance of the boombox in the hip-hop movement, as told by early hip-hop pioneers. Filmmaker Paul Stone created a video about the project.

via Drop Culture

Minuskull is a skull-shaped Hi-Fi speaker by French design duo Kuntzel+Deygas.

via The World’s Best Ever

Twine by Supermechanical is a web-enabled sensor module that can connect all manner of things to the Internet (video). Internal and external sensors monitor a variety of inputs such as movement or temperature and then generate messages about that information—for instance, Twine can send an email when a basement is flooding, or a text when a door is opened. Twine is configured by the companion Spool app, which lets users set up simple rules for the device to follow. David Carr and John Kestner of Supermechanical are raising funds and pre-selling Twine on Kickstarter.

Thanks to Jason Laskodi for the tip!

To create this astounding rendition of The Animals’ 1964 hit “The House of the Rising Sun,” bd594 repurposed obsolete electronics into surprisingly workable musical instruments. The flatbed scanner vocals are particularly impressive. Back in 2009 we wrote about bd594′s rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

via Geekosystem

“Collin’s Lab: Schematics” is an instructional video on how to read schematic diagrams of electronic circuits. The video was created by Collin Cunningham for Make.

Schematics are the functional diagram of electronic circuits. With so many designs available on the web, understanding how to read schematics can unlock a world of possibilities for the electronics maker. In fact, if you can read a schematic, you can build a circuit before even understanding how it works!

via Make

Using a four-player 1975 Bally Wizard pinball machine, Canadian Alan Amon has converted it to an atomic alarm clock “an arduino, 8 relays and a gps”. He has posted the entire howto directions on Instructables.

One of the more common problems faced by pinball collectors is where to put the next one. The thought came to me one day – what if I could re-purpose the pinball machine? I could then replace an existing appliance with the pin and my problem would be solved. With that in mind I converted my 1975 Bally Wizard into the most accurate clock in the house. And all I needed was an Arduino, A GPS receiver, an 8 relay board and some assorted odd bits.

via Instructables

Astrida Valigorsky, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Mimi Hui, and Catarina Mota of Brooklyn-based hacker collective, NYC Resistor, formed a partially-edible working toy piano titled The Resistor JelTone. It uses (mainly) gelatin cubes and was created as an entry in the 2011 Jell-O Mold Competition where it tied for first place in the creativity division. Instructions have been posted on Thingiverse on how to create this quirky food piano at home.

The same weekend, after the gelatin melted, a fruit version of the instrument was created for the Handmade Lounge at the 2011 Solid Sound Music Festival.

As part of our experiments we realized that jello and fruit, which contain a lot of water, are conductive. Embedded in each jello/fruit key is a sterling silver pin (food safe) connected to a microcontroller underneath the piano’s base. Below the piano’s case is another sterling silver pin. With this setup, the JelTone can either be played with a metal utensil connected to the microcontroller, gloves enhanced with conductive thread, or bare hands by touching both a key and the piano’s case.

via Make

image via 2011 Jell-o Mold Competition

Mike Krumpus of Nootropic Design has crafted a real alarm clock, the Defusable Clock, designed to look like sticks of dynamite complete with a countdown clock. More than that, the clock is “defusable”. Practicing your bomb-defusing skills has never been more fun, safe or timely.

I thought it would be fun to build an alarm clock that looks just like the type of bomb that we always see in Hollywood movies. I certainly don’t know anything about how a real bomb might look, but in the movies they always have sticks of dynamite strapped together, a red digital readout, and a bunch of curly wires. Instead of just building an ordinary clock, I thought it should have a detonation sequence with a scary countdown just like in the movies. And why not make it “defusable” so I an try to stop the countdown by cutting the correct wire?

Using an ATmega328 microcontroller to power the board, the clock is customizable for those with Arduino knowledge. Nootropic Design will soon offer a kit with the proper electronics for building a version of this clock at home. You may want to start collecting paper towel tubes now so your dynamite sticks are ready when the kit ships.

With some imagination, I’m sure you can make a great looking Defusable Clock, but don’t go scaring anyone with it, and don’t bring it anywhere near an airport, ok? The product page will have plenty of warnings not to use this kit for any evil purposes or get into trouble with your school, employer, or local law enforcement!

via Make

image via Nootropic Design

Crafter Becky Stern shows us how to make her adorable ruffled Twinkle Toes LED shoe clips in this step-by-step CRAFT video tutorial and MAKE Projects instructions. Wearable electronics have never looked so soft and feminine.

video via CRAFT

images via MAKE Projects

“Back to Basics” by Zim & Zou is a delightful collection of painstakingly detailed papercraft replicas of retro consumer electronics. Lucie Thomas and Thibault Zimmermann, the French designers behind Zim & Zou, have spent almost a year on the project so far (see their making-of time lapse video). Last year we wrote about one of the early pieces, a papercraft Gameboy

via Colossal

photos by Zim & Zou

In late June, London’s Science Museum is sure to become a hotbed of art-tech geekery with the unveiling of the newly refurbished and more analog-than-thou Oramics Machine.

Named after its creator Daphne Oram, this early sequencer uses a set of 10 ganged 35mm film loops running over photo-electric cells to produce sound. Tones were produced by hand painting forms to control frequency, duration, amplitude, timbre, etc.

It’s doubtful whether anyone other than Oram every mastered the device, but in addition to her own experiments and compositions, she wrote (painted?) music on the machine for commercials (Lego and Heinz) as well as the soundtrack to The Innocents, 1961′s creepily effective adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.

The machine was the result of engineer Oram’s after-hours tinkering at the BBC, where she eventually succeeded in efforts to create an electronic sound lab. The fruits of the Radiophonic Workshop she founded are familiar to Dr. Who fans who would remember artist Delia Derbyshire sound effects and rendering of the show’s theme song.

So in case you were not aware, “Unboxing” is a thing that is popular on the Internet, whereby a person films themselves opening a new consumer product, often an electronic device or game. A search on YouTube yields 393,000 such videos–some have sexy soundtracks and millions of views. Cool Gear Reviews has released a spot on parody of the genre in “Let’s End Unboxing Videos.”

We previously posted about Revision3′s satirical take on the phenomenon: Unboxing Porn. Viral marketers have also had some fun with unboxing.

via Nick Douglas

See Also:
- Robonaut 2, First Humanoid Robot In Space + Special Unboxing Videos
- Unboxing Porn: Star Wars Shogun Stormtrooper
- iPad Unboxing Porn
- Samsung Omnia (i900) Unboxing Video
- The Ultimate Unboxing

The DOTKLOCK by Andrew O’Malley is a digital clock running on the open source Arduino microcontroller. In its standard form, it displays the time and various animations and abstract designs. But because of its open source nature, the DOTKLOCK can be programmed to the whims of its owner.

The clocks are available for purchase on Etsy.

See Also:
- Arduino The Documentary

photo by Andrew O’Malley

In the future, all robo-citizens will have their own 3D LED cube display. But if you can’t wait, chr has, well, an Instructable on how to make your own.

via BuzzFeed

The New Hobbyist has posted instructions on how to hide a light switch inside a bust of Beethoven, as seen in the original “Batman” TV series. A video demo of the light switch proves it does indeed work.

via Lifehacker

photo via The New Hobbyist

The 6502 microprocessor is 35 years old as of September 16th. Introduced in 1975 at WesCon in San Francisco, the chip cost $25. Many early, hugely-popular home computers and gaming consoles sported it, including: Apple 1 & ][; Commodore PET & Vic 20; Atari 2600, 400 & 800.

The 6502 came into being when a Motorola team led by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch started designing a low-cost competitor Motorola’s own 6800. It was a rogue project as far as the executives were concerned. So, out came a memo: Shut.It.Down. In retaliation, Peddle and Mensch’s entire team left the company to join MOS Technologies where they designed and manufactured the semi-conducting super-star.

Peek and Poke anyone?

Spy Films made a funny promo video for the City of Toronto’s Electronics Recycling program. “We want it!”

via The Daily What

In honor of his late grandfather, engineer Dr. Paul Pounds modified a vintage pocketwatch with a hand-made analog style LED display.

My grandfather was a horologist. When he passed away in 2005 I inherited from him a collection of broken pocketwatches. As my skills are in microelectronics, rather than micromechanics, I felt it would be a fitting tribute to him to produce an electronic movement in place of one of the broken ones he’d never had the time to fix.

The watch features a ticking sound (through the clever use of a cellphone vibrator, resonating against the cover), an iPhone-like ambient light sensor (to adjust LED intensity for comfortable viewing in bright or dark conditions), and a fully adjustable alarm function. The LED display also shuts off automatically when the watch is closed to conserve power.

While the current watch is not for sale, Pounds hopes to eventually offer a “version 2.0″ design for sale in both kit form and premade units.

If you visit Pound’s website, be sure to read his tribute to his Grandfather, a master horologist whose feats of precision machining were truly remarkable, including drilling a hole through a pin lengthwise. By hand.

photo by Scott Beale

In a wonderfully detailed, video-rich post, Lifehacker goes Lady Gaga for Ladyada and our friend Phillip Torrone guestblogs on what makes Limor Fried Lifehacker’s MacGyver of the Day. It’s impossible not to be impressed and awed; after reading the post we think Fried is a tenacious and prolific genius who’s cut a powerful swath for women engineers, designers and makers. Watch only half the videos in which mastermind Fried explains from her secret underground laboratory the many ways you can create your own doomsday devices life simplifying gadgets, and you’ll see why we think she’s more like the woman MacGyver would run crying to for help like a little girl should he actually be caught in a tough spot and needed to, say, make a cell phone jammer. Limor (Adafruit Industries) is quoted saying,

“In contemporary Western society, electronic devices are becoming so prevalent that many people find themselves surrounded by technologies they find frustrating or annoying. The electronics industry has little incentive to address this complaint (…) By building functional prototypes that reflect equal consideration of technical and social issues, I identify three attributes of Noir products: Personal empowerment, participation in a critical discourse, and subversion.”

The post is like a “best of” Ladyada’s most effective and slightly subversive designs, explained in step-by-step DIY terms and gifted to any and all as open source projects. In addition, the videos featuring Fried and Torrone creating and experimenting with the edgy electronics are nerdy and subtly hilarious, making them fun to watch even if you can’t solder your way out of a paper bag. However, if you did want to learn how, we’re pretty sure they’ve got a humorous video tutorial. Don’t miss her fantastic weekly “ask an engineer” show.

The late Hunter S. Thompson, father of gonzo journalism, lends his unmistakable voice to a familiar frustration in this support call he placed to the unfortunate A/V firm that installed his new home entertainment system.

“If your set-up is still there tomorrow night, I’m gonna destroy it, and, uh, write about it.”

via Lazlo Thoth

A trio of San Francisco Bay Area musicians and engineers have created Marv, a “MIDI Actuated Robotic Vibraphone” capable of both playing itself, or playing along with a human performer.

Marv can play music of high complexity, far more complex than a human player could ever achieve, as Marv is capable of striking any and all keys simultaneously, as well as damping each key individually. Marv can play much faster than a human vibraphonist, repeating single notes as quickly as 25ms apart. Marv can play with sensitivity and feeling limited only by MIDI programming effort. Marv is a platform for further research on musical automation and real-time musical interaction.

The brainchild of engineer and percussionist Tim O’Keefe (of Dr. Abacus and Rosin Coven fame) and built with the assistance of Michael McIntyre and Brock Roland, Marv is the result of a year-long labor of love.

Marv will give its debut performance at next week’s BarBot 2010.

See previously: BarBot 2010, 3rd Annual Cocktail Robot Festival

photo by Scouting New York

Scouting New York shot some photos of a Best Buy “E-Cycle” billboard in New York City’s Time Square promoting their recycling program that uses letters that are made from actual recycled electronics.