As a resident of San Francisco, I can say how much I hate tow trucks since they towed my car without warning. It just happens that tow trucks “wait” around parking lots to tow cars.

Okay, that said, here’s a cool DIY air suspension system made for tow trucks, I hope it doesn’t make it to the market, I really don’t like technology improvements for tow trucks. I think people in tow trucks are one of the “lowest” grade jobs out there along with parking meter people. Don’t get me wrong, tow trucks are just really “bad” in San Francisco.  If they start doing things more “legally”, I’d have to change my mind though, but that’s not going to happen in this bad economy-era.

Gadget Freak James Kinney was looking for a way to take the pressure off the back end of a tow truck when it’s carrying a heavy load. If you can equalize the pressure of the truck bed so all the weight is not on the back end, there will be less stress to the truck’s suspension system. Kinney developed the air suspension system, called the Mechatronic Microcontroller, in his mechatronics’ class at Colorado State University. The gadget uses a resistive touchscreen from an electronic Sudoku game to select the ride height of the tow truck’s bed to make it level, thus spreading the stress of the towing weight evenly across the truck’s suspension.

via make

Fully Functional NES inside toaster

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Check out this cool DIY Nintendo Toaster that encloses the whole Nintendo inside itself.  What I like most about this project is the toaster pop-out function works for the NES cartridges while the toaster LED turns on if the game is on.

I had an awful lot of people suggesting that my previous project (the Super Genintari/Leviticus) looked like a toaster. I then discovered that I had an extra NES and toaster laying around and knew what had to be done.

Ripped all the main guts out of the toaster and replaced them with an NES board, some orange LEDs, AC adapter and controller ports. Kept the front lever functional as the main power on/off switch and the crumb tray just for fun. Composite audio/video jacks are on the rear of the unit. The temperature knob does nothing.

via make, DIY Page

If you are crazy about basketball, you might want to get one of these NBA Basketball 10″ LCD TVs to show off your spirit for the game.

Because the best place for a basketball is inside the net, here’s a TV that celebrates making the basket. The outside ring is real metal, just like the hoop where you play your game. Inside the hoop, the ball looks and feels like the real thing. NBA logos grace the front and back. What a score.

via 7gadgets, hannspree-usa

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Remember the industrial robot that could swing that big ass arm? Well, here’s another one but is more sensitive for precise control.

This is a small presentation of a university project I have worked on for the last 6 months. Using a real-time system the orientation of the Wii Remote is polled and sent to the Stäubli TX 60 industrial robot. The concept is stolen from a game named Kororinpa but the graphics are little more realistic This was done at the chair Robotics and Embedded Systems Knoll of the Technical University of Munich.”

via hackedgadgets

Wow, if I had enough money, I’d buy one of these ultrasonic golf club cleaners and revitalize all my golf clubs.

Features:

It is a known fact that dirt buildup on the face of a golf club takes backspin off the ball and affects the angle and distance of the golfer’s shot. Clean grooves propel each shot higher and farther, with increased backspin, so the ball sticks on the green. This can change the golfer’s overall score and consistency of game.

Cleaning Golf Clubs with the Clean-A-Club Machine

Choose the Business Opportunity of Interest

• Window Blind Cleaning

• Fire Restoration

• Electronics Cleaning

• Janitorial Cleaning

• Parts Cleaning

• Golf Club Cleaning

Smooth, dirty grips can slip from a golfer’s hands. Many golfers have had the embarrassing moment of accidentally throwing a club.

Dirt and grime age clubs. Expensive clubs can pit and discolor if not cleaned regularly.

With Morantz Ultrasonic Golf Club Cleaners, all the problems associated with dirty clubs are removed. Within 2 minutes, even the toughest built-up dirt in grooves is removed safely and gently.

Looks like Asus Eec Sticks will be available for PC games.

Continue reading ‘Asus Eee Sticks like Wii Nunchucks?’

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Here’s another video demonstrating online game playing at a “park” using WiMax broadband service, something you can’t do currently with even the fastest Sprint CDMA network…

Another retro style in design, these appear to be all the rage these days.

It’s a nice reminder to the young folk of what computing used to be like, and the block shapes are actually quite stylish. There is a soccer player and a race car design, and although they are not directly related to any specific game the memories just keep flooding back anyhow.

Priced at $21.24 each.

Source [Techna Bob]

Cool, this guy’s on TV for tryin’ to build a nuclear reactor. Too bad he didn’t have a SiteHoppin.com shirt on… :p

Apparently bored of his amateur game-building hobby, he decided to try to make a small-scale nuclear reaction in his room, blogging his antics on the web.

Someone blew the whistle on him when he made claims about uranium and doubling the normal background radiation count in his room, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission raided his home. He won’t be getting his Darwin Award or even arrested, though, since the Feds didn’t find anything dangerous.

They did take away his toy though, embarrassingly because his parents asked them to. Defending his experiment in an interview he argued “People do it in universities all the time, it’s just not usual that somebody does it outside of a university”, which is pretty true, after all.

via Gizmodo