Mace wowed crowds at the Maker Faire with his dope glasses, sick rhymes and tycoon showers. Perhaps the last two were exaggerated but these glasses really are cool. The 20 x 6 matrix of LEDs are “driven by SPI from an integrated Arduino-compatible” board mounted on the right temple and powered by a Lithium-polymer battery mounted on the left temple. Charging and code downloading are done via USB. Swag is attained by wearing the glasses.

You can see more pictures of the shades on Mace’s Lytro profile. Mace said he’s planning to sell a kit of the glasses on his website once he’s polished the device; he seems to be having trouble with the hinges. He also said that if he can’t find a low cost solution he might turn to Kickstarter. It would be funny if Mr. West backed and filled up the fundraiser on his own.

[via Hack A Day & Reddit via MAKE]

Currently a mere concept, the geniuses behind Ions dream that their invention will have a magnetic base, a pivoting hinge and possibly a dimming function.

You can help make Ions a real product by going to Kickstarter Quirky and answering a short survey regarding its development.

[via Fancy]

But even though I think the CordLite is overkill for its intended purpose, I see its value if I treat it as a Swiss Army cable. It’s a cable and a flashlight!

Pledge at least $30 (USD) to CordLite’s Kickstarter fund and you’ll be one of the first to own one if it goes into production. I suggest you order a backup CordLite for when you can’t find the first one.

[via Zagg]

The DZ7164 comes in all black, with a silicone band for comfort. The face of this watch is quite large, but that’s good in my book since I like big watches, especially ones with digital displays. The dot-matrix LED display reminds me of the Seiko Final Fantasy watch that they made a couple of years ago or the Spoon S.A.M.

It costs around $89 over on Amazon and is also available in white, blue, silver and a couple of other colors. If you like shiny things, the SBA (DZ7092), sells for $170 and offers a stainless steel case and mirrored display.

[via Hi Consumption]

A company called Intermatix has announced that its ChromaLit Contour LED light bulb is now available in a 100 W equivalent. The bulb was previously available and 60 W and 75 W equivalent.

The company says the bulb produces a uniform and glare free light that is diffuse and distributed around 330°. The company offers a choice of color temperatures so you can choose the color the most closely reflects standard light bulbs. The company also claims that its bulbs are 30% more efficient than traditional LED bulbs. The price for the 100 W bulb is going to be around $20.

The clock is controlled by an ATtiny44 and has a bare PCB board with LED spires that radiate out from its center, reminiscent of a traditional wall clock. Each spire has three digits, corresponding to 1, 2 and 4. When the inner and outer digits are lit up, it shows a binary five. Then the next spire will start the count. Confusing enough for you yet? The hours are displayed with a red LED, and they correspond to the positions of an analog clock, so at least those are easy to read.

If you want to build your own, you can check out Mike’s post on Jumptuck where he explains how he made the clock.

[via Make:]

The aliens light up even when the room is not dark. You get an entire column of Space Invaders in a tall LED backlit lamp that sports a nice modern design. It measures about 47 inches-tall, and just under 8 inches-wide. This is perfect for the corner of any geek cave. In fact one of these would look great in every corner of your room.

It comes from Etsy seller pieromenetti and will cost you appx. $202.03(USD). As far as I’m concerned, it is worth every penny. Of course I’m a sucker for all things Space Invaders.

[Etsy]

The LEDs are activated when you tap the brick and are supposed to last for hundreds of hours, which is good because I’m not sure if the batteries inside are easily replaceable.

ThinkGeek sells Brick Brites for $10 (USD) per pair. You can choose from red/white, blue/white and green/white LED variants.

Instead of plugging this IV bag into one of your veins, simply connect it to a USB port on your computer or a USB power adapter, and it’ll glow. There’s a small grid of LEDs inside, which can provide blue, white or orange light depending on the version you buy. You can even fill it with water, without risk of damaging the light – though the idea of a water-filled light plugged into an outlet or my laptop kind of freaks me out.

I suppose that these might be cool filled with fake blood for a Halloween decoration – assuming you like to get all your Halloween shopping done in April. Personally, I HATE hospitals, so I don’t see the appeal in having these hanging in your house, but if you actually get pleasure from being hooked up to an IV (or hooking people up to them,) feel free to order some. They’re available over at Japan Trend Shop for $37(USD) each.

Created by Bitbanger Labs, Remee looks like a sleep mask with LED lights embedded in the side facing your eyes. Basically, six red lights will strobe, sweep and blink at customizeable intervals to stimulate your visual field, improving REM sleep and increasing the chances of lucid dreaming, so you can control your own dreams.

Remee is available in various designs, from plain ones to masks with patterns and colorful images. The project is raising funds on Kickstarter through May 18th. A pledge of $80(USD) or more will get you a standard Remee mask, while $100 will get you one of the interstellar prints shown above. The project has already reached its funding goal, so they’re definitely going to be produced.

Designed by a guy named Lloyd from down under in Australia, the Hi-Five watch would incorporate a round LED display into the turntable section, with the digits being displayed like grooves in a record. The watch also would have a date mode, which is indicated by the red dot in the bottom left corner.

In addition to its novel display, the Hi-Five would incorporate an MP3 player, so it could both tell time and play whatever tracks you’d like on its virtual platter. It’s not clear if the LEDs could be used to animate the time in a spinning motion, but I think that would be a nice addition to at least offer that as a display mode.

While TokyoFlash already offers a DJ-themed watch called the Kisai RPM, I kind of like this more literal take better. The only thing not to like about this watch is that it doesn’t yet exist. If you’re like me and would like to see it produced, head on over to the TokyoFlash Design Blog and vote for the Hi-Five. Hopefully, that’ll convince them to put these into production soon.

Created by Rob Sanchez, Ryan Rogowski and Kipp Bradford, the Tabber is a kit which can be attached to the neck of your guitar, using an array of bright LEDs to illuminate the appropriate finger points along the frets of your guitar. What’s really cool about the Tabber is that you can connect it to your smartphone, and have it light up based on the chords programmed into an app. This lets you learn on the go, and without being tied down to a computer or video game console.

The Tabber will work with either electric or acoustic guitars. It’s currently in the prototype stages, and raising funds for a production run over on Kickstarter now. While the prototype still looks a little bulky, the production version will be extremely slim and not interfere with fret fingering at all. A pledge of $150(USD) will get you all the parts to build your own Tabber, while $200 or more will get you a fully-assembled Tabber kit.

To achieve the effect, Thecnocrat glued one LED each into eight ping pong balls, hooked the setup to an Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller board and wrote a code to recreate the light trail effect. He attached the whole thing to a black shirt with a YouTube logo and he was ready to load.

A lot of Hack A Day commenters are saying that the use of Arduino is overkill in this case and offered several simpler solutions. I only understood the ones that didn’t involve electronics. Still, it’s a free world. If a Vimeo user wants to be a YouTube window, I say let him.

[via Hack A Day]

It would seem kind of weird to put up lighted fire exit signs in your home, which is why Giangi Razeto and Massimo Pinto’s Zento Luminous Door Handle concept makes sense.

The door handles were designed as an added safety feature so everyone in the house can find the doors or “exits” when there’s a fire, blackout, or some other emergency. The door handles will be powered by an independent battery-operated system to make sure that they’ll always light up even when the power’s out.

It’s not clear if the Zento is an actual product you can buy, or just a concept – but you can find more images and details about it over on its creators’ website.

[via Yanko Design]

To promote its zero-emission F-CELL fuel cell technology, Mercedes funded the creation of a vehicle that could be turned “invisible” – in reference to the vehicle’s limited impact on the environment. They pulled it off by wrapping their ride in flexible sheets covered with a grid of LEDs. A camera on each side of the vehicle then relays what it’s seeing to the other side of the minivan, creating the illusion of invisibility. You can see the invisible Mercedes in action in the video clip:

It’s a pretty cool concept, though you have to stand back pretty far and be viewing the vehicle at an exactly 90-degree angle for the effect to work. I’d love to see someone work out higher resolution version of this illusion, along with head tracking so it would work no matter what angle you were standing at (like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’s invisbility shield.) Still, Mercedes’ promo beats your average crummy ad campaign, IMHO.

To see some behind the scenes photos from the shoot, head on over to Mashable and check out their gallery.

The bespoke LED enveloped suit was the creation of John Spatcher and it needed to be quite bright, since it’s the only light source for the film, which was shot at night. Sutton used a Red Epic camera while riding a skidoo to capture the action, and it’s really pretty spectacular. Check it out for yourself:

Between the lighting of the suit and the darkness, as well as the slowed-up action, there are moments where you think that Hughes is surfing on waves in the ocean, instead of a snowboarder going down a slope.

[via If It's Hip It's Here]

So besides its looks, what’s different about the Ramos? In order to stop the alarm on this clock, you’ll have to enter a code into the Defuse Panel, an independent keyboard – much like that you’d find on a burglar alarm – that you can place anywhere within a certain radius. Assuming you don’t just keep it under your pillow, you’ll be forced awake because of the intellectual stimulation necessary to perform this task. It will definitely stop you from pushing the snooze button over and over again, and ending up late for work. Depending on how much you end up pledging, you’ll either get the standard model, effective within 50 feet or so, or the long range model, which works within 100 feet.

The Ramos Alarm Clock sells for $160(USD) for the plain-Jane LED model, but the highly desirable Nixie Ramos sells for $350, and you can even spend more money on custom versions. The long range version is pretty interesting, because you can put the Defuse Panel on another floor or room in your place, ensuring that you’ll wake up.

And if you have any funny ideas about unplugging the alarm clock – that won’t help either, since it’s got a battery backup unit built in. You can find out more about the Ramos Alarm Clock over on Kickstarter.

[via Uncrate]

The Aurelia Lamp is inspired by the shape and transparency of the Aurelia aurita, or Moon Jellyfish, but instead of being illuminated by environmental light (yes jellyfish don’t actually glow on their own,) this one gets its light from a ring of LEDs.

I just love the way the fixture casts its otherworldly glow. Each lamp is made from PMMA clear acrylic and measures 18.4″ (H) x 14″(W) x 14″ (D). The LEDs it uses are rated at 50,000 hours, so you won’t have to worry about them burning out any time soon. As an added bonus, the lamp uses just 18 watts of power, thanks to its energy-efficient lighting tech.

The Aurelia is available in three jeweltone colors, and it offers a three-way “touch ring” dimmer for adjusting brightness. It’s designed to work with circuits ranging from 100-240V AC and 50-60Hz – though I’m not sure if you need to buy different adapters depending on where you live.

You can find the Aurelia Lamp over at All Modern for $495 (USD).

Designed as a collaborative effort between Heather Sable & Samuel Jerichow, the V-BL47 watch is supposedly based on “Blutonian technology” from a vessel which crash-landed on Earth back in 1947. Left behind in the crash was a device determined to be a Blutonian timepiece – the inspiration for this watch. Heck, Heather even says she’s half Blutonian, and her given name is Hea’thër. Sam, on the other hand, is from Germany. Whether you buy the story or just like cool watches, you’ll want to read further.

As conceived, the V-BL47 watch would use a combination of LCD and LED technology to tell time. The glowing TRON-like display would use an always-on LCD to block out the appropriate areas of the display, while the LEDs would illuminate the display from behind. Additional LEDs would provide the glowing fiber-optic-like lines on its soft black silicone strap. I wonder if some sort of electroluminescent display would better provide the brightness shown in the concept drawings though.

At first glance, you may think this is another one of those difficult to read timepieces, but it really isn’t. Check it out. Each of the four quadrants on the face of the watch simply display a digit. The digits are distorted onto polar coordinates to fill a quarter-circle, but can be easily read once you understand what they each look like.

Simply read the display in a clockwise fashion, starting on the bottom, and you can easily read the time. Your friends, on the other hand, will be completely befuddled.

The same paradigm can be used to display day and date, and a tiny dot in the middle of the display indicates when the time is PM. Now look at the watches below and see how easy it is to read them?

I’m sure if you wore one, you’d get used to it enough where you could tell time at a glance.

Again, the V-BL47 is still just a concept – but a very good one in my opinion. If you’d like to see the V-BL47 watch actually get produced, head on over to the Tokyoflash Design Blog now and cast your vote. I already did.

These ornate “Steampunk” heels are adorned with lace and embellished with rhinestones on all sides. The edge of the shoes are also lined with smoked glass beads and vintage charms, which give the shoes a gothic vibe, in my opinion.

The coolest thing about these heels (and the reason they’re here on Technabob in the first place) are the LED lights. I mean, they aren’t the first pair of footwear that light up, but they’re the first heels I’ve seen that do in a long, long time.

They’re also pretty much the only ones I know that come with a remote so you can set the color of the LED lights and decide how fast you want them to fade or light up. I can just see someone wearing these heels now while getting down on the dance floor…

Anyway, they’re being made and sold by The Ratchet and Cog on Etsy for $180(USD) a pair. Any takers?