Awesome Tech

How can a wallet be smart? Simple – it has a way to be found if you lose it. Most of the wallets on Everyday Carry’s list of smart wallets include a place to insert an Apple AirTag, making it easy to track its location from your phone. Selections include the hard-shelled Ridge Carbon Case and the soft leather Billfold Wallet 2.0 from Geometric Goods.

Ryder Calm Down loves to make things. Inspired by how dot-matrix printers lay down ink, he built an oversized print head that attaches to the back of his pickup truck and sprays out water droplets at the right time to create letters and numbers. The system uses a Raspberry Pi to control relays and solenoids that open and close valves.

Apple’s AirTag is a great way to track items but it doesn’t fit well into a wallet. Rolling Square’s AirCard offers a similar global tracking function and is the size of a credit card. The aluminum card measures 2.2 mm thick and doubles as an RFID blocker and an NFC/QR code business card. It also has a built-in 105dB speaker, so you can easily ping its location.

The members of the Japanese group Bozestyle are proud of their bald heads. In fact, they’ve made them part of their performances. To bring their music to life, they rig their heads with buttons that can be used to trigger electronic sounds. Their version of The Imperial March is one of our favorites, but check out their Instagram for more.

A typical flipbook animation displays its images at roughly 12 frames per second. Andymation wanted to know if he could smooth out the steps in his flipbooks by filling extra frames with AI interpolation software. Will the additional frames improve the look of his animations or make them just look incredibly weird?

Mercedes’ sleek concept car pays tribute to the 300 SL Gullwing and C 111 Concept while looking ahead. Its curvy body is designed to optimize aerodynamics, while its electric drivetrain provides speed and efficiency. Inside, you’ll find cool touches like an F1-style steering wheel, shiny quilted silver seats, and a dot-matrix screen that spans the dashboard.

You might think that the Atari 2600 or Nintendo Entertainment System was the first game console to let you play different games using cartridges. But a much lesser-known console, the Fairchild Channel F, featured the first game cartridge. Gaming Historian looks at the origins of this system and the significant impact it had on gaming for years to come.

These desktop speakers from Klipsch nods to the mid-century modern style of their early speakers. The Promedia Heritage 2.1 features a classic box design with a woodgrain vinyl finish and textured grille cloth. Its 2-way speakers offer dynamic highs and mids, while an 8″ sub kicks out 100 watts of bass. The system supports wired and Bluetooth wireless audio sources.

During a visit to 3M’s Innovation Center, James from The Action Lab checked out two very different rooms they use to test sound waves. The first is an anechoic chamber that deadens sound reflections, while the reverberation chamber is designed to reflect sounds. Then, he tested various sounds to see how differently they behave in each space.

Elecom’s battery pack looks like a canteen, but it juices up gadgets, not humans. Its looks match its durability – it’s rated an IP67 waterproof rating and is dustproof and shockproof. Its 15000 mAh battery charges phones multiple times, and it has 32-watt USB-C fast charging. It’s compatible with Nestout modules like the LAMP-1 lantern and FLASH-1 LED panel.

Those Kenner Star Wars AT-AT toys were awesome to play with, but we had to use our imaginations to get them to walk as they did in The Empire Strikes Back. For engineer James Bruton, that wasn’t good enough, so he got to work rebuilding a version of the imperial walker with a servo-powered drivetrain that lets it really walk.

The OLED version of Samsung’s wraparound 49″ display takes gaming to the next level. With deep blacks and vibrant colors, this 32:9 ultrawide screen immerses you in the action. It’s got a 240Hz refresh rate, 0.03ms response time, and is compatible with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro for smooth panning. It also has built-in smart TV apps for streaming content.

Back in the 1990s, Microsoft dropped its first virtual assistant onto PCs with Clippy, a talking paperclip designed to help guide us in the use of our computers. Instead, Clippy was annoying, and most of us looked for a quick way to disable the feature. Great Big Story sat down for a few minutes with illustrator Kevan Atteberry, the man who designed the character.

The first officially-licensed Xbox wireless arcade controller looks like a winner. It has ten arcade-quality buttons and a joystick and is fully programmable. Plus 8BitDo supports modding by using standard button sizes and a Sanwa mounting plate. Compatible with Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows 10/11. Pre-orders start shipping on 6.30.2023.

Modern crash test dummies are shockingly expensive to buy. Engineer James Bruton didn’t have a spare million bucks lying around, so he decided to build his own. He made his dummy from wood, metal, 3D-printed plastic, and rubber. While it isn’t quite as refined as the industry-standard units, it’s fully outfitted with sensors like the real deal.

After realizing how much time he spends on his phone, JBV Creative was inspired to build an electro-mechanical artwork as a commentary on the distracted nature of today’s gadget-dependent society. The finished piece features a group of phone-holding figures that wobble along on a conveyor belt, smash into a wall, fall down, and do it all over again.

Guitar and amp maker Fender cranks up the volume with this portable, 60-watt speaker with six custom-tuned audio drivers. It has touch-sensitive controls embedded in its natural maple lid and a built-in carrying handle. Its substantial battery offers up to 30 hours of playback per charge, and it has a 1/4″ port for connecting a guitar or bass and playing along.

RCLifeOn built a unique drawing machine that creates geometric illustrations on an acrylic sheet using a computer-controlled fluorescent marker. Bright LED lights help the images glow brilliantly. For now, images must be manually erased between drawings, but he plans to add an eraser mechanism.

This specialized aircraft takes off vertically using four electric fans, then rotates its wings to fly horizontally. The compact X-P4 shown in this video is designed for logistics missions and can carry up to a 15-pound payload to a distance of up to 60 nautical miles. PteroDynamics is working on larger models which can carry up to 220 pounds. (Thanks, Sean!)

Shane at Stuff Made Here wanted to see if he could program a robot with such accurate penmanship that it could fool a handwriting expert. He used an off-the-shelf X/Y plotter, then wrote software to convert typed words into pen strokes that mimic human writing. He also programmed a robot arm to place and stack multiple postcards.

Hitting a flying baseball or wiffle ball takes practice, but you can do it with time. With a game against a team of professional wiffle ball players on the line, Mark Rober engineered a cheat to give him a chance. He started by studying the physics that enable curveballs and created mechanical balls that change trajectory as they approach the batter.

Work Louder’s latest keyboard has hot-swappable mechanical keys along with programmable rotary encoders, quick-access buttons, and a 1.9″ IPS screen that can display widgets to help with focus and time management. Its incline is set using a removable magnetic ruler, and it’s available in ANSI and ISO layouts for various languages.