Craziest Gadgets » Green Gadgets

Turn a Floppy Disk into the Millennium Falcon and an X-Wing

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Thu, 24 May 2012 23:05:21 +0000

Got some spare floppy disks lying around? Use a few simple tools to turn them into cool miniature Star Wars spaceships. This Instructable shows you how (with bonus rubber band ball Death Star). You’ll need 3 floppies, plyers, a hammer, and small finishing nails. And if you complete that, you can now move on Darth Vader’s Tie Fighter:

That’s a 5 floppy ship, for advanced builders only. Sweet but my skill and patience level ends at turning old floppies into coasters…. I mean landing pads for spaceships.

Turn a Floppy Disk into the Millennium Falcon and an X-Wing

Solar Powered Garden Alarm Scares Animals Away

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:08:36 +0000

Keep unwanted animals out of your garden with a Solar Powered Garden Sentry. This stake mounted alarm detects motion via a pair of motion sensors. When a deer, raccoon, heron, rabbit, or wandering pet is detected a 115db chime or siren goes off and a red LED light flashes to scare off the intruder.

There’s even a remote control to disable and reset the alarm. Keep your flowers beds, ponds and vegetable gardens intact in your yard this summer. It could probably work to scare off human intruders too, to some extent. $99.95 from Hammacher.

Solar Powered Garden Alarm Scares Animals Away

Solar Powered Guitar Tuner

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:10:19 +0000

Tune your guitar anywhere, electricity-free with the Tascam Solar Guitar Tuner. This guitar tuner has an internal battery, powered by a solar panel. It can run on continuous battery operation for six hours and also be charged by USB in case you rock and roll all night and party every day. The tuner has four modes: needle, strobe, fine, and meter. It has 12 tone equal temperament and detection accuracy within 1 cent (A = 440 Hz). I don’t know what all that means either, but I do know that it’s pocket sized and has a standard mono jack and a built-in microphone to pick up the sounds. Rock on.

Solar Powered Guitar Tuner

Reusing RJ-45 Jacks and Plugs for a Key Rack

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:14:10 +0000

Here’s a smart idea to repurpose RJ-45 plugs and jacks. If you work in IT or have a collection of wires in your basement, you’ve probably seen the colorful RJ-45 plugs, typically used for ethernet connections. But as this Instructable shows us, it’s a simple matter of just cutting off the wires, looping the cable inside the rubber housing around a metal keychain and you’re done (basically). Of course you need the jacks to complete the wall-mount part of the key rack. I’m not sure how sturdy it will be as these cables are not usually plugged and unplugged so many times but I do like the color coordination and geeky reuse of possibly outdated cables.

Reusing RJ-45 Jacks and Plugs for a Key Rack

Jabba the Hutt Purse is this Season’s Must Have Fashion Accessory

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:34:04 +0000

How awesome is this Jabba the Hutt purse with attachable (by a metal chain, of course) Princess Leia in a chain link bikini coin purse? This Jabba the Clutch was upcycled by Cat Penfold, hailing from the land of gyros (Astoria, NYC). The vinyl clutch has a textured exterior that looks lizard-like, making it perfect for Jabba. The purses are hand-painted with acrylic paint and sealed with a UV-protective glossy coating. Recreate your own little Jabba’s palace scene wherever you go. Really cool, really geeky. It’s a one of a kind handmade item and as such is priced at $100.

Jabba the Hutt Purse is this Season’s Must Have Fashion Accessory

Solar Charging iPad Case

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:54:33 +0000

Charge your iPad on the go by harnessing the (free!) power of the sun with the Solar Charging iPad Case. The case also has a built in battery which will allow you to use your iPad2 for up to 10 days of use. The solar panel uses photovoltaic ink which can convert both indoor and outdoor light into electricity.

The case also protects your device while traveling yet still allows access to it’s ports. A built0in stainless steel stand props up your iPad at an angle for watching movies or typing too. The case can charge more than just iPads which makes it great for traveling; it has a USB port to charge phones, headsets or anything else that runs on USB. Compatible with iPad2 and iPad3 and weighs just 1.5 pounds. $199 at Hammacher.

Solar Charging iPad Case

Squishable Notepad: Mighty Morph Picasso Pad

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:03:05 +0000

Turn your notepad into a mini-Picasso sculpture with the Mighty Morph Picasso Pad. This pad was designed by by Canadian artist Victoria Wonnacott and contains 1000 sheets of 100% recycled paper. But what makes it cool is that you can squish and bend it any which way to create a distorted facial expression to match your own distorted facial expression you have when your boss tells you that you need to stay late… for no reason… again…. on Valentine’s Day… without pay. It’s like a stress ball you can write on (although technically yes, you could write on a regular stress ball, but you know what I mean here).

Squishable Notepad: Mighty Morph Picasso Pad

Kick this Mushroom to Charge Your Cell Phone

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:41:30 +0000

Finally a marriage of green technology and violence! Bracketron has just announced the Mushroom Green Zero charger. Appropriately named, it looks a bit like the fun fungi. By there’s no fungus among us, as this is green technology. These GreenZero chargers automatically detect when your device is charged or not plugged in and shuts itself off, avoiding vampire electricity trickle- no power consumption when on standby. The cool part about the Mushroom charger is that you slap it or kick it to start the charging:

You probably don’t want to practice any MMA moves on that thing but it’s always fun to have things you allowed to give a good whack to. The compact Mushroom GreenZero has an integrated cable reel that makes it good for traveling and it comes in three different models- USB, microUSB and Apple 30 pin. You can preview it at CES next week and it will be available for purchase in March.

Kick this Mushroom to Charge Your Cell Phone

Case-On’s Turn CD Cases Into Artwork

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:42:00 +0000

Here’s an interesting product that turns your old CD cases into works of art. Case-On’s are essentially small clips that are specifically designed to fit CD jewel cases and clip them together. You probably have tons of CD cases stashed away somewhere after you made the transition to MP3 full time (I know I do). What if you turned each one into a little picture frame? Case-On’s does that.

You could combine them together to form one giant frame like poster frame above. You can use the cases as three dimensional building blocks to make any shape you want (well, maybe not a circle, but you get the idea), turning them into photo-cubes, or little boxes, or uniquely shaped wall frames or whatever you can imagine. A great reuse of something that’s just lying around your home. They cost $10 for a set of 40 clips.

Case-On’s Turn CD Cases Into Artwork

Wood Necktie Great for Working Stiffs

Craziest Gadgets Jeff — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:58:39 +0000

Got wood? Wear some around your neck with the Wooden Necktie the toughest tie around. It’s a flexible, lightweight, eco-friendly tie made from recycled barn wood. Each one is handmade in the US of A and due to varying grain patterns and such, each one totally unique. The tie is segmented so it hangs naturally (and won’t stab you in the thigh when you sit). An elastic band fits any size neck:

Talk about on-trend for the current fashion season! (no I have no idea what that means either exactly but they say it a lot on Project Runway…make it work people, thank you Mood). So you can’t wipe your face with it in a restaurant like you do with your regular ties…ok technically you could but you wouldn’t want to, but it still looks great and for someone looking for a non-traditional tie, you got it. Just $31.99.

Wood Necktie Great for Working Stiffs