Just plug the WiiChuck into to bottom of your Wii Nunchuck controller, and you’ll have access to all of the wonderful data the controller can generate. No more cable cutting! The teensy adapter board provides quick access to the Nunchuck’s interface, letting you use data sent from the controller’s 2-axis joystick, two buttons and a 3 axis ±2g accelerometer.

And if you’re into Arduino build projects, you can head on over to TodBot’s site and grab some open source libraries to get you started with reading the data from the Nunchuck and using it in your own programs. The best part is that each WiiChuck costs just $2.95 (USD). Head on over to SparkFun and grab one if you have any interest in hacking your Nunchuck.

Designed by inventor Wayne Poulton of Addject, Machine PP3 glides and spins along any smooth surface while his little bug-like red eyeballs light his way. His buddy bOb is only described as “a bit more skittery” than PP3, and buzzes along to keep him company on your desktop. With no 9-volt battery, he’d not likely to be as mighty as PP3, either.

Still, with his googly eyes, and vibraty metal ball feet, what’s not to like. You couldn’t possibly separate this dynamic duo, could you?

Both Machine PP3 and bOb can be found over at UK hobby shop AntiGravity for £9.99 (appx. $14 USD) each.

SparkFun Electronic’s mechanical engineer Casey came across this oversize belt buckle and said to himself: “self, I bet we can cram that new MP3 player development board we’re working on inside that massive brass buckle, because I really want to wear one, because after all, chicks really dig guys in huge brass belt buckles.”

Turns out that their MP3 player development board didn’t exactly fit, so the guys at SparkFun set to creating a custom circuit board with the similar componentry, and fit it perfectly to the rectangular opening in the face of the buckle. Now why the buckle has a huge opening in the middle, who knows? Maybe it’s so you can put an engraved name plate on the front. Sweet.

You’re probably asking yourself how you change tracks on this thing, right? Well thanks to an on-board accelerometer, you’ll just need to do a little pelvic thrust to jump to the next tune. And if you really get your groove on, a tri-color LED gets to blinking when you do your badass dance moves.

While you can’t find the belt buckle MP3 player in a store, you can make one for yourself. Just head on over to Spark Fun for the complete parts list, circuit schematic and source code.

Ari’s hulking watch began life as a simple binary pocket watch, but at the urgings of the BenHeck.com forum community, he turned it into a wrist watch–something he had considered from the beginning. Not many watches are attached to a huge battery pack, but that’s okay. It’s one of the modern equivalents of the pocket protector, only heavier and more awesome.

Eventually, the watch will even have a USB charging cable, to keep it juiced in the only acceptable way.

[via BenHeck.com forums]

Created by Lonneke Gordijn of the Dutch outfit known as DesignDrift, the Fragile Future 2 lamp combines the modern, linear look of circuit board traces and LED illumination with the contrasting organic shapes of puffy dandelion heads.

Each one is custom-built and is made from modular pieces, so you can build complex wall fixtures using anywhere from 3 to 50 light modules.

All I can say is that you’d better not sneeze anywhere around this thing.

The Fragile Future 2 is available from Generate LE.

Adafruit’s Botanicalls Twitter Kit lets your plants communicate over the web, letting you know when they need water, or if they’re feeling happy that they’ve been recently cared for. And since Twitter can notify your mobile device of new posts, you can receive a text message when your plant is feeling blue.

The easy-to-assemble electronic kit uses wired moisture sensors to detect your plant’s state of mind and send information out to the Internet via an on-board Ethernet jack. Connect the board to your PC using a USB cable, and the Arduino-based circuit can be programmed to send custom messages to Twitter.

The kit is available from Adafruit for $160 USD. All I need now is for my dogs and cat to start Twittering too and I can finally take a nice long vacation.

[via MAKE]

As a result, the trusty C64 has become a popular platform for “circuit bending”, which is hardware hackers’ terminology for taking old technology, applying circuit modifications to output audio or video effects that the original device wasn’t necessarily designed to produce.

Now you can own your own circuit bent C64, without any electronic know-how. The circuit bending wizards from Bighead Electronics have made this extremely limited edition pre-modded C64, appropriately called the Bent64.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The system comes completely loaded Paul Slocum’s Cynthcart, a custom program which helps the heavily modded Commodore produce a wild cacophony of retro noise as you press keys on the keyboard.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The Bent64 is a ready-to-go electronic musical instrument, capable of cranking out 3-note polyphonic analog sounds, applying effects with a “whammy” tuning knob, and even stereo support if you can wrangle a second sound chip and install it in the provided socket. The Bent64 can even output a psychedelic light show through a composite video output, so you’re ready to rave out of the box.

Oh yeah, it’s still fully functional as a standard C64 with the flip of a switch before you boot up. So you’d better brush up on your Commodore BASIC.

[eBay Auction Page]

The latest Open Source creation from Evil Mad Science Labs, “Peggy” gives you the parts you need to make a pixelated grid of LEDs in any design your little heart desires.

Peggy is named for her 25 x 25 pegboard which can hold up to 625 LEDs in place for your custom signs. It’s able to drive just about any LED you’d like, and can be run off of 3 ‘D’-cell batteries or on an optional AC adapter. The kit includes the pre-populated circuit board, battery pack and a photosensor which lets you automatically turn off the display in daylight. And yes, the whole thing is driven by a fully-programmable micro-controller, so you can create animations, blinking and flashing displays if you know what you’re doing.

Keep in mind that you’ll need to buy your own LEDs, and will need some basic soldering skill and a soldering iron to create your own signs. The kit is available from the EMSL Shop for $80 USD. You can also pick up a batch of LEDs while you’re there. (For those more adventurous, there’s a bare-bones version of the board without the electronics already installed for $50).

The system can be programmed to display widget-like channels on your television, using a library of freely-available software. There’s even a built-in IR sensor so it can you can change widget “channels” with a remote control.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Designed by engineer Robert Quattlebaum, the Ybox2 connects to your computer network using a built-in 10BaseT Ethernet port, and outputs video to your TV using a simple Composite video output (NTSC or PAL). The device is based on Uncommon Projects’ original Ybox platform, which first surfaced back in 2006 (shown in the video above).

The entire Ybox2 can be built for about $50, less than half of what the original version cost to build. At the heart of the system is a programmable Propeller 32-bit multi-processor, and the latest version improves on the original by adding an internal speaker as well as a multi-color status LED.

You can find more details, including the board schematics, parts list, and source code over on deep darc.

[via MAKE]

The Circuit Watch uses a pair of tall stacked LED segments to illustrate the current time. The bars on the left show the current hour, while the bars on the right display appear to be split into two sections, one which displays tens of minutes and the other which shows individual minutes.

The watch features a sleek, stainless steel case and a matching metal band. STORM offers several different accent colors for the protective crystal, including mirrored, black, red, blue and brown. However, the LEDs always remain red, no matter which version of the watch you choose. The Circuit Watch is available in limited quantities from STORM’s online shop and costs £109.99 (appx. $225 USD).

The GeoSafari Digital Recording Lab lets kids (and kids at heart) experiment and create their own electronic sound effects. There are 59 different projects they can build, creating everything from an alarm clock, to a robotic voice, to an “electronic parrot” that records and plays back whatever they say.

All projects are done by connecting wires to spring-loaded terminals, so no soldering is required. I’m sure if you decide to go “off book” and do some circuit bending, you’ll get some really interesting sounds.

[Order from Amazon]

As expected, the new console sports a 120GB hard drive and an HDMI port, but it also has what appears to be an updated motherboard, with a new CPU and GPU chipset revision. What’s not yet clear is if the new CPU is on the fabled 65nm platform, which would consume less power and generate less heat than prior models. One sign that the system could have a new, lower power CPU is the fact that there are several fewer capacitors on the new circuit board.

Other than that, there a new video chip for outputting the HDMI signals, and a couple of additional accessories in the box. The 360 Elite includes an HDMI cable, and a special audio breakout connector if you want to funnel your audio signals to a different place than where your HDMI cable is connected.

All in all, it seems like the 360 Elite is the way to go if you’re thinking about buying a new console, but if you already have a 360 Premium, and it’s working for you, there’s no rush to run out and upgrade.

[via Opposable Thumbs]