The Pandigital Novel is an eBook reader that costs $179 off the shelf. It has a large 7 inch colour touchscreen and runs Google Android in the background that has a custom software interface on the top for reading eBooks.

Someone has managed to bypass the custom software to access Android direct which makes the eReader in to a nice 7 inch Android OS tablet.

Once the custom software is bypassed it allows apps to be installed such as the Amazon Kindle App and other eBook reader apps. Also it allows you to install games and most other apps that you can think of. [Read more…]

Check out this cool printer. It is built of LEGO and uses a felt tip pen to print on standard paper.

The kit cannot be purchased in a standard kit, ie, it’s not LEGO mindstorms controlling the system. Instead the creator managed to design, build and code it all from scratch using analog motor electronics along with sensors and a printer driver. The LEGO printer connects up to a Mac using a USB interface.

When using the printer it looks to work like a standard printer on a Mac in that when you instruct a document to be printed, you can select the LEGO Felt Tip 110 printer from the drop down menu. [Read more…]

The Asus Eee PC 701 is a netbook that launched a couple of years ago. It had a 7 inch screen when launched and kick started the netbook scene to what it is today.

This particular Asus Eee 701 has been modded and changed in to a tablet form factor. The guy responsible goes by the name of McG and took the Eee apart, made a few modifications inside and put it back together.

Since everything did work well, he went ahead and began to use it for the function it was originally designed for: to read eBooks, watching movies made by DVD Shrink, and to use as a portable media player. In case you would want to mod your EeePC, you could also choose better Touchscreen drivers with 90 deg, 180 deg and 270 orientations.

[Read more…]

This Nintendo Gameboy has had a port added that allows it to transmit video signals to a TV via a custom built box.

The custom built box is actually an old VHS cassette that is home to a bunch of electronics and sits in-between the Game Boy and TV.

The details are a bit on the light side in that the video just shows the Game Boy TV working, but doesn’t provide details of how it works. [Read more…]

Hack a Day have managed to mod a SNES controller to include USB support and accelerometer support. This was achieved by using a Teensy USB development board along with a 3D accelerometer which were both crammed inside the SNES controller.

The Teensy board is used to allow the controller to connect to a PC via USB, but can also read signals from the 3D accelerometer and pass them back to the computer. The buttons are translated to key presses on the keyboard and the movements translated to mouse movements allowing the controller to be used to navigate around games such as Portal.

Other uses of the modified SNES controller could include support for more games and the creator also says it could be used to brute-force passwords if movement is translated in to various keystroke inputs. [Read more…]

Over on the Benheck forums a user has uploaded some pictures of what he claims to be the worlds first portable SEGA Saturn.

The only information provided about it is that the unit has a 7 inch screen, a joy stick, triggers, memory card slot and the VCD card is also integrated allowing for video CD’s to be played back.

It runs on a 9 volt battery which apparently is good enough to watch a movie and somemore. [Read more…]

Back in the NES, SNES, Sega Megadrive (Genesis) days there was the occasion to blow in to a cartridge to clean the contacts so that the game would actually load. NES_harmonica, an eBay seller, has decided to convert his old NES carts in to working harmonicas that actually provide music when you blow in to them.

Currently there are several carts on sale which include Dick Tracy, Legend of Zelda and Super Mario 3 each of which has a starting bid of $7.

Each NES Harmonica game cartridge was created by using a Hohner Pocket Pal harmonica making each of them very playable (in a music way, not gaming way as the innards have been carved out). [Read more…]

It’s the question on everyone’s mind these days… Does a Lava Lamp work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter? Luckily Neil Fraser did all the leg work here and helped answer the question for you putting all our minds at rest.

This amazing experiment comprises of a lava lamp, camera, home-made centrifuge, Google Nexus One and a room large enough to handle a 50 kilo spinning centrifuge.

The centrifuge was built from Meccano and has a diameter of 3 meters. On one side is a holder for a Lava Lamp and Google Nexus One phone (for measuring gravity). On the other side is a camera to record how the lava lamp reacts and in the middle a complex motor system that needs to be oiled and kept running smoothly so it doesn’t spin out of control. The whole unit spins at 42 RPM. [Read more…]

Think back a good 20 – 25 years to the mid 80’s where computers such as the Sinclair Spectrum 128k+2 existed. You might also remember the Commodore VIC-20 that like the Spectrum +2, also loaded games and software from a cassette deck (or datacorder as Sinclair named it). It also had a 1 MHz CPU. The VIC-20 was kind of classed as a bad C64 due to the C64 selling extremely well.

This particular VIC-20 has been loaded with software called TweetVER which is short for Tweeting from a Vintage CompuTER. The software is about to be connected up to a twitter account found here and on the 20th of this month, the VIC-20 will send a live tweet from it’s speedy 1MHz based computer. Please note that there are 3 or so tweets on that account already, but just ignore them as they were not sent from an old computer. [Read more…]

Etsy seller randall180 created a unique lamp for an office desk out of the casing of an old iMac G4. The iMac had stopped working a while back, so randall180 decided to put it to good use, carve out the innards and make him self a light for the office.

For those of you who wanted to get your hands on the lamp, it’s actually out of stock now. I assume only the original was available to purchase due to the 1 G4 breaking down. Check out another picture after the jump. [Read more…]

This steering wheel has to be the most unique idea I have ever seen for an iPhone. It is built of Lego and is capable of rotating left or right an iPhone sat in a Lego dock.

The whole system is built from Lego Technic including the small stand it sits on. No instructions have been provided so you’ll have to watch the video closely to see what is needed to build it yourself. See the video after the jump. [Read more…]

This is one of the most random gadgets I have seen in the last few years. The device is called the automated turn switch off machine and all it does is switch a toggle switch off every time you try to switch it on. I can’t see any other purpose then perhaps reminding you to switch off all your electronic devices when you are not using them – and that’s really stretching the purpose of it in my opinion.

When switching the toggle switch on the lid opens and a wooden hand type device jumps out and switches the switch off. The device has no micro-controller inside and everything is analogue. Check out the video below. [Read more…]