One very loving father spent two months tricking out a standard child’s Iron Man costume with real tech for his 5-year-old son—not just a CO2 air compressor to fire missiles or repulsor waves, but a complete BeagleBoard computer running a makeshift JARVUS along with an Arduino board to handle all of the advanced suit functions. Sure, it’s just a toy now, but give the father/son team a few years to see what the suit can really do. Here’s a full rundown on the tech inside:
• Repulsor Air - Blows air with CO2 air pump on hip and hose back to his hand. • Repulsor Missile - Using CO2 air pump can also launch a paper missile. • Repulsor Sensor/Light - A magnetic switch sensor lights his repulsor hand light and fades out and in his glowing eyes. Arduino handles this effect. • Repulsor Sound Effect(s) - Originally not working. Worked around problem by using right-mouse, middle-mouse button and configured Elightenment17 to playback sound effects using Mplayer script. Mouse buttons activated by Arduino Digital output triggered by sensors. • Arc Reactor - A LED night light from Costco embedded in his chest. • BeagleBoard: Powerful Computer - With BeagleBoard already running in JARVUS box on my son’s back need to add other features. Possibilities: Web cam, mobile router with hotspot and a head-mounted display, VoIP, streaming video of Iron Man view. • Arduino: Super Input/Output Board - Handles repulsor effects but can add other sensors to enable even cooler special effects!!
And in the off chance that the LED arc reactor ever fails, we hear the suit is powered by backup generators that run on pure adorableness. [Nice job Enrique!]
Ok, so it’s only a selection of the sale products, but Amazon’s Black Friday sale is actually underway now. There’re some sales on Blu-ray players, headphones, lots of external hard drives, GPS units and such, and one eye-catcher so far is a Sony Vaio VGN-SR140 13.3-Inch laptop reduced by $600, which is 38% off. Check it out—you might find the bargain you’re looking for four days early. [Amazon]
Our friend Gary Merson at HD Guru has compiled a list of super great prices on top-branded HDTVs, like a Samsung 40″ Series 5 1080p LCD at Circuit City for $800, a Sharp 46″ 1080p for around $900 at Best Buy, and a 50″ Panasonic 720p plasma for $988 at Sixth Avenue Electronics. If you want to spend more than a $1000 on a bigger, better, TV, check out Gary’s full list of today’s deals, and don’t forget to check out yesterday’s deals too. [HD Guru]
The folks over at Laptop have gotten some quality face time with a pre-production model of ASUS’ 10-inch Eee PC 1002 HA, and they seem to like a lot of what they’re seeing. It boasts stylings reminiscent of both the Eee PC S101 (trackpad) and the 1000H (keyboard), and as such is basically a hybridized version of the two, though the test model “wouldn’t power on” so we can’t got much further than that. We do however, know that it’ll house a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom CPU with 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive, and that it’ll have a two-cell battery which ASUS claims will give users five hours of juice (though that sounds pretty suspect to us). The Eee PC 1002 HA is expected to ready to roar on the first of December for $499, but if you simply can’t wait until then to have a look at it, hit the read like for more photos and a really, really interesting video.
I stumbled across a few deals on HDTVs today, so I thought I’d be a nice guy and group them all up for you. First up is a deal from Amazon: buy any qualifying Samsung TV along with this Samsung Blu-Ray player and get $200 off, which means Amazon is essentially paying you four bucks to take the $196 Blu-Ray player off their hands.
You can also get a 42″ Panasonic VIERA plasma HDTV for only $660, which is a good hundred dollars off its general retail price. It’s packed with three HDMI inputs, an SD slot, and a 15,000:1 contrast ratio.
Or, if you can’t get enough Samsung, you can grab the Samsung 40″ 1080p LCD for only $800 from 6th Ave Electronics, which puts it more than $150 lower than what you’d find elsewhere. It’s got a 20,000:1 contrast ratio and a 5 ms response rate. [DealNews]
Hope you’re eager to break into that Halloween candy early, because you’ve got some (re)celebrating to do. If you’ll recall, we first heard that laptops accounted for over half of US retail computer sales back in 2003, and in June of 2005, we found that it was somehow worth getting jazzed over once more when it happened again. Here we are in the latter half of 2008 shaking our heads in disappointment, as IDC has amazingly discovered that notebook shipments into the US market have exceeded the 50% threshold for the first time evar. Go ahead and stock up on rave supplies early — we get this weird feeling that we’ll be doing this same song and dance in 2010 or so.
Oh Rolly… we know you’re an overpriced, 2GB dancing robot with convoluted controls and questionable sound quality. But dammit, your impractical, big-corporate ways have gnawed a soft-spot deep into the noxious cesspool we call a heart. Now this: Rolly model SEP-50BT with Bluetooth control from your cellphone or laptop. Shipping in Japan on November 21st for an expected ¥40,000 or about $427. Sold. Watch it all unfold in the video after the break.
Generally, water and gadgets don’t tend to play nicely together. But I’m a fan of this wireless router/flower vase concept design from Saudi telecom company STC. With it, the router doesn’t have to be shoved away in the corner, its tangle of wires collecting dust bunnies by the pound. Now, how aboud a daffodil—or a cottonball puff simulating the smoke rising out of a sector 7G’s cooling tower. [Dezeen]
In China, they’re currently working on the Siduhe Grand Bridge, what will be the tallest bridge in the world when completed. How tall is it? Well, let’s just say that you could put the Empire State Building in the valley below it and it wouldn’t touch the bridge, with a whopping 360 feet of overhead. So how do you get cables across a chasm that large to build a bridge with? Rockets, of course.
They erected huge towers on either side of the valley to anchor the bridge, first off. Next, they attached 3,200-foot cables to rockets, accurately firing them across the valley to the other side. While other large bridges took care of this process using helicopters or kites, that was just too practical for these guys.
But hey, it worked perfectly, so who am I to judge? The bridge is still under construction, but at this point the really hard part is done. You know, the part with the rockets. Who wants to be the first to drive across it? Anyone?
Oh Rolly… we know you’re an overpriced, 2GB dancing robot with convoluted controls and questionable sound quality. But dammit, your impractical, big-corporate ways have gnawed a soft-spot deep into the noxious cesspool we call a heart. Now this: Rolly model SEP-50BT with Bluetooth control from your cellphone or laptop. Shipping in Japan on November 21st for an expected ¥40,000 or about $427. Sold. Watch it all unfold in the video after the break.
Ok, so it’s only a selection of the sale products, but Amazon’s 
Our friend Gary Merson at HD Guru has compiled a list of super great prices on top-branded HDTVs, like a Samsung 40″ Series 5 1080p LCD 
I stumbled across a few deals on HDTVs today, so I thought I’d be a nice guy and group them all up for you. First up is a deal from Amazon: buy any 
Generally, water and gadgets don’t tend to play nicely together. But I’m a fan of this wireless router/flower vase concept design from Saudi telecom company STC. With it, the router doesn’t have to be shoved away in the corner, its tangle of wires collecting dust bunnies by the pound. Now, how aboud a daffodil—or a cottonball puff simulating the smoke rising out of a sector 7G’s cooling tower. [
In China, they’re currently working on the Siduhe Grand Bridge, what will be the tallest bridge in the world when completed. How tall is it? Well, let’s just say that you could put the Empire State Building in the valley below it and it wouldn’t touch the bridge, with a whopping 360 feet of overhead. So how do you get cables across a chasm that large to build a bridge with? Rockets, of course.
They erected huge towers on either side of the valley to anchor the bridge, first off. Next, they attached 3,200-foot cables to rockets, accurately firing them across the valley to the other side. While other large bridges took care of this process using helicopters or kites, that was just too practical for these guys.
But hey, it worked perfectly, so who am I to judge? The bridge is still under construction, but at this point the really hard part is done. You know, the part with the rockets. Who wants to be the first to drive across it? Anyone?
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