Mankind has been fascinated by the concept of an invisibility cloak lengthy before Harry Potter came along, but regardless of where our love for invisibility cloaks came from, we’re still waiting to get our hands on one. Now some smart scientists are busy working to come up with another variant of the invisibility cloak, and the good news it, it can hide things in 3D. Previously invisibility cloaks only hid things when viewed directly, but the moment you moved to the side, it was very obvious that something was amiss. With the “Carpet Cloak”, the trick is to change the speed and direction in which light travels through the material, meaning changing the material’s refractive index. that is achieved by using a polymer crystal made up of tiny rods, which can change the ratio of air to polymer by changing the thickness of the rods. certain, it sounds like a lot of hokey, but we’re happy to use whatever method they want, as distant as we get our invisibility cloak gift-wrapped nicely under our Christmas tree that December.

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Orginal post by Mike

The folks at the FCC are currently scrutinizing the Sony HID-C10 (HID stands for “Home data Device”), and hopefully it will be passed so that we can have a look at it sometime next year. There is scant knowledge concerning the HID-C10, but we believe that it will be hooked to TV, taking advantage of its 801.11b/g capability assuming its Wi-Fi certification is approved. Currently, the lines are extremely blur when it comes to the functionality of the Sony HID-C10, but hopefully as moment progresses, we’ll be able to see and take in more of what the HID-C10 is full well capable of.

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Orginal post by Mike

An idle mind is the devil’s worksop, but thereupon again sometimes idle minds conjure up wonders like that homemade accelerometer-controlled USB gamepad which houses a PIC18F2550 from Starlino within.

The cipher for the firmware was written in PicBasic Pro and it implements a HID USB device with 2 axes and 4 buttons (only 2 buttons connected in the prototype). The device is detected by Windows XP/Vista as a standard USB gamepad and can be used with many games and applications. I am using a 2 Axes Buffered ±2g Accelerometer from DIMENSION ENGINEERING, it has a built in voltage regulator that allows powering the accelerometer directly from the USB bus (5V).

If you’re interested in making one of your own, head on here.

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Orginal post by Mike