Cubelets snap together to form robots that can move, turn, detect or emit light or sound, as well as motion or temperature, they can also perform simple logic to determine what adjacent blocks should do. The blocks hold together magnetically, and automatically know what to do without any programming or wiring needed. At this point, there are 15 different Cubelet components you can work with, with more on the way.

The Cubelets kit is available from ModRobotics and you can pre-order it for $160 (USD). For that price, you get six Cubelets, two sensors, two “action” blocks, and two “brains” with a battery pack. The large kit costs $520 and includes 20 pieces. They’re designed for kids eight and up and run on rechargeable batteries. (Charger sold separately for $15.)

Sure they’re expensive, but how else are you going to build your robot cube by cube? The possibilities are pretty endless. Once the price comes down and more blocks become available, I’d love to see what can be accomplished.

[via TechCrunch]

It was created by the UK-based designers Sash Reading, Heather and Ivan Morison. They’ve dubbed it Three Cubes Collide and it was made from 1,700 3D-printed pieces, which were engineered and fabricated by Queen & Crawford. The kite uses a lightweight and durable fabric called Cuben Fiber to help keep it airborne.

I don’t know about you, but I think this thing is kind of awesome to see in flight. The modular design is supposedly scalable, so regardless of the size you print, due to its lightweight materials and carbon fiber rods, it should float.

What’s next, 3D-printed airships?

[via designboom]

Another tiny music player to enter the market soon is the Kube2. It’s not as thin as the latest generation iPod shuffles, but the company behind it, Bluetree Electronics, has dubbed it as the “world’s smallest touch mp3 player” regardless.

The Kube2 features an aluminum body with a touch sensor to navigate through the screen and menu. A quick swipe will allow the user to switch to the previous or next track. Placing a finger at the top or bottom of the Kube2 will raise or lower the volume, respectively.

And if you’re particular about the look of your Kube2, then you can get some removable sticker skins to customize how it looks.

The Kube2 has a battery life of 6 hours worth of continuous play and charges up to completion in an hour. It’s available in Singapore now with a price tag of approximately $35 (US), and it will be shown off at CES 2012 in January prior to its worldwide release.

[via designboom]

Each of these hollowed-out bricks and question mark blocks is designed for storing a pair of Wii-motes, but really can be used for just about anything like pens, tools, plants or anything else that’ll fit in a 4″ cube. I suppose you could use them to store your gold coin collection or canned mushrooms too. I’d steer clear of fresh ‘shrooms though, as they might end up leaving a mess.

Here’s another fun idea – paint your wall sky blue to look like a level from Super Mario Bros., then place a bunch of these cubes on shelves at various heights along the wall (or screw them directly into the drywall) so they look like they’re floating.

Both the red bricks and question mark blocks are available over at Strapya World for ¥1,500 (~$18 USD) each.

The $300 (USD) Sound Cube is the latest in TDK’s Life on Record audio series, and looks like another potential winner. The 17-pound portable enclosure measures 9.8″ x 9.8″ x 9.8″. It houses a pair of 5-1/4″ full-range coax drivers, and the other two sides are filled with passive reflectors that look like speakers. It’s designed to placed centrally in your room, radiating sound outwards from the middle of your space.

In addition to standard RCA, 3.5mm and even 1/4″ audio jacks, the Sound Cube has a USB connector for plugging in your iPod or even a flash drive for music playback. It doesn’t have an actual dock for media players, but it has a non-slip surface on the top so you can use it with any player you want, instead of just iOS devices. It’ll even run on 12 “D” batteries, and has a handy leather carrying strap if you really want to use it away from an outlet. Early reviews over on Amazon are quite positive, claiming room-filling sound (for smaller spaces), with just 20-watts per channel. Plus, it just looks cool, dontcha think?

[via The Awesomer]

Each of those STP16CP chips can control 16 LEDs each and they can be cascaded off each other to cover all needed for the entire build. Nick toyed with the animation code that controls the dancing LEDs of joy by first calculating their positions and sequences using the high-level mathematics language MATLAB. After settling on something that looked cool, he wrote the software on the PC and then crammed all the hardware into a wooden box, then shot it on video for you to enjoy.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The schematics and math equations on the project site give me a headache. The final cube looks awesome though.

[via Hack A Day]

He started the assimilation of his car by cutting and forming plastic sheets. He mentions that these mods are securely fastened to the car using brackets and screws, so they won’t fall off on the road, at least at sub-Warp speeds.

He actually wants the complete front quarter of the car to be assimilated, and plans on adding green LED lighting at some point. I wonder if he’ll get stopped by the cops for violations when he’s driving his car around.

Go figure that Craig’s Borg car mod happened while his wife was away for the weekend. He could always just say that he didn’t have anything to do with it, and put the blame on Seven of Nine, Locutus or the Borg Queen.

[via Make:]

The clear acrylic LED cube features 64 RGB LEDs, wired together into a 4x4x4 grid, connected to a controller circuit. The cube has a trippy array of pre-programmed blinking, fading, and morphing color patterns which can run for over 30 minutes without repeating a design.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The cube measures 5″ x 5″ x 6.5″ and comes with an AC adapter to keep it running. I think it would be really cool to set up a whole bunch of these in a dark room, and just sit there and chill out as the colors wash over you.

Want one? Head on over to ThinkGeek now, where you can get the Hi-Tec Art RGB LED cube for $99.99 (USD).

This new device charger concept by designer Zheng Weixi called the Magic Charger uses the Rubik’s Cube concept with rotating cubes of green and white. As the faces of the puzzle are moved, the motion is captured and turned into electricity.

The power can then be sent to your gadgets via a USB port hidden in the core of the Magic Charger. This is one concept I never see coming to market. You would have to play the thing for a long time to generate any usable power and if you cheated, no juice for you.

[via Yanko Design]

Created by an engineering team at the University of British Columbia’s Human Communications Technology Lab, the pCubee is a handheld display comprised of 5 flat-panel LCD screens. The cube automatically adjusts to movements and allows users to interact with objects inside a virtual 3D world rendered inside the cube. Check out the video below to see how truly impressive the effect can be:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

No word if and when the technology will be commercialized, but this is definitely the type of 3D technology that gets me excited. Thankfully, with no stupid looking glasses strapped to my head.

[via 3D Display info]

OrigAudio rides on the “green” bandwagon because they’re made of recycled craft paper, but you can have ones made of cardboard or coated plastic as well. You can choose from several neat stock designs, or you can send custom designs to be printed on the speakers. OrigAudio also comes in a triangular shape if you really want to have a unique set of speakers.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

You can order a set of two speakers at OrigAudio’s online store for only $20 (USD), or you can get a  6-pack – a total of 12 speakers for $80. As I said, OrigAudios don’t need a power source; just plug them into any device that has a headphone jack and you’re good to go. Check out a review of the OrigAudio on YouTube, and skip to about four minutes in to hear them at work. More pics of the speakers are available at OrigAudio’s Flickr page.

[via Cool Material]

This Gesture Cube kind of reminds me of those Microsoft Surface interactive tables. You know the ones I mean? I keep seeing them in CSI:Miami, making using a computer look like something out of Minority Report.

The Gesture Cube was designed by a European team comprised of IDENT Technology AG, ZINOSIGN and LUNAR, and puts gesture controlled interfaces into something different than you’ve probably seen before. The portable cube serves as remote input device to a host of different devices around your home, such as media servers, computers, and household appliances.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Its interface would be based on electric field sensing technology, which can detect movement and gestures in 3D – without the need to touch the screen. Looks incredibly cool. I want one now!

[via Gizmo Watch]

A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter is actually a piece of conceptual art by Caleb Larsen. Sounds pretty impressive, but it’s not much to look at until you understand what it exactly is. You see, the crazy thing about this cube is that once you get your hands on it and plug it in, it will automatically put itself back on sale on eBay. The box continually pings a server on the Internet looking to see if it can find itself for sale on the auction site. If it cant, it automatically creates an auction for itself.

If a person buys it on eBay, the current owner is required to send it to the new owner. In turn, the new owner must  plug it into an Ethernet cable, and the cycle repeats itself, until somebody breaks the chain.

You can check out the most recently completed auction for the cube here, and follow A Tool To Deceive and Slaughter and its various auctions on its own dedicated website.

[via TrendsNow]

Larry Lars may have sucked all the cuddle out of this little guy, but there was no skimping on detail. From the minifig hands-as-ears to the spear clutched in his little square Ewok hand, this is a pretty faithful rendition. It’s just less round.

You can check out quite a few CubeDude figures on Larry Lars’ Flickr stream, including a slave Leia figure that managed to retain a few of Leia’s, uh… rounder, more cuddly bits. I’m not sure if “huggable” is really the best description, but she certainly seems softer than the poor ol’ Ewok.

[via Super Punch]

The 2-inch Mint Cube features a striking cubic design that’s punctuated by large analog meters on three sides of the cube. One gauge is a traditional VU meter, another tells you how much battery life remains, and the last one tells you what station the built-in FM tuner is dialed to. The gauges each have a bright backlight, which makes them easy to read in the dark.

On the top of the player are ten deep-set analog buttons, like the ones you might find on an old Sony Walkman. Press in the MP3 button and it stays in place until you press FM button, which pops the MP3 button back out. Very retro indeed!

Now mintpass says they designed the Mint Cube with men in mind, but I don’t see any reason why they can’t be for cool girls too. Geeks don’t discriminate! If only these things actually existed, then guys and girls could both buy them. For now, enjoy the virtual gadgetry.

[via Unplggd]

Aside from the ION 330 ITX, the PC is equipped with an x64 SSD by Corsair,  4GB Twin2X4096-6400C5 DDR by Corsair, a 90-Watt Pico power supply unit by Logic Supply,  Windows Vista Premium, and an LG GH22 DVD Writer drive. Here’s a more thorough look at the little green thing:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The design is too loud – and too green – for my taste, but the fact that it rotates makes it one of the best mods that I’ve seen. Check out the Casemod Blog for more pics and info.

[via The Awesomer]

Shown above is the mother of all puzzles, a conjoined sextuplet of cubes to keep you on your toes. But if you’re more of a puzzle amateur like me, I think the triple should provide ample challenge.

After you finish that, you can graduate on to the quadruplet version.

And then the quintuplet. It’s all a bit like Mr. and Mrs. Rubik took too many fertility drugs.

If you’re ready to have your mind bent, you can find all four versions of these conjoined Rubik’s cubes over at DealExtreme.

[via Gear Diary]

Salami, kielbasa, cheese, bread–there’s all sorts of goodness in this cubewich! It’s got everything but real puzzle factor, because I’m sure if you tried to turn it, the whole thing would just fall apart, and that would be a waste. Guess you’d just have to eat it instead.

I’ve been trying to think of other foods you could do this with besides fatty and processed meats and cheeses, and I’m drawing a blank. I guess you could cube come chicken, but would it be the same?

[via ForeverGeek]

Created by illustrator/designer Eric Pautz, the Rubik’s Lamp is composed of 26 interlocking colored cubes which can be rotated into an almost limitless array of color combinations.

By rotating the cubes, the lamp can produce forty-three trillion unique color patterns. Cool. I don’t even think I can count that high… 1… 2… 3… 4… eleventy… um, nope.

Now on to the bad news. Turns out that the Rubik’s Lamp is only a concept design, and has yet to be produced. From the looks of the colored acrylic panel design, it seems to me like something that someone over at fabrication-on-demand shop Ponoko should be able to bring to life. Eric, are you listening?

The great thing about this costume is that unlike some other group costumes, you would be very recognizable apart or together. The bad thing is that it looks insanely uncomfortable and awkward to haul around all those cardboard boxes. Let’s just say, bobbing for apples will not be a part of your evening.

Essentially a bunch of guys got together and taped a bunch of cardboard boxes together, painted them, and used electrical tape for the black outlines. Then, presumably, they went out and let the praise and accolades rain down upon their cube-covered selves.

See the slideshow and be inspired to make your own at Instructables.