Unfortunately I don’t know exactly how fast it cooks food. In fact, I don’t know how fast food is cooked in general. I just wait until my sister says it’s time to eat. Anyway, ID Cook does say this on its product page: “Cooking time: 60 minutes Chicken.” So yeah. No idea.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I wonder how one goes about retrieving food off of a 200°C surface. I’m sure it’s in the manual, because the Cookup is undoubtedly a long-term investment. You’ll get savings from not having to buy fuel for it, but you’ll have to burn a lot of money upfront – the stainless steel and plastic Cookup INOX sells for about $429 (USD), while the wood and aluminum Cookup200 sells for about $715. You can order both from ID Cook’s website.

[via Notcot]

He calls the project the Solar Sinter. The device is powered by solar energy and uses the hot rays of sun to melt the silica in desert sand to form the 3D objects. You can see in all the images here that the finished products aren’t as precise as a real 3D printer would make. However, the fact that to uses solar power and the sun to let plain desert sand into anything is really cool in my book.

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It looks like the Solar Sinter is able to heat up layers about a quarter of an inch thick with each printing session. The software that allows the printing of the 3D objects is open-source ReplicatorG. You can check out the video above to see the Solar Sinter in action. If you are in the UK you can see the actual device on display at the Royal College of Art graduate exhibition through July 3, 2011.

[via Colossal Art + Design and CreativeApplications]

This remote-controlled, solar R2 unit was created by Kimura and Daisuke Goto, engineering students at Japan’s Hiroshima International University, for no other reason than to prove that R2 could automatically recharge himself if left in a sunny place.

It’s a pretty cool feat, although he looks a little naked without his trash can shell. Without that, R2 could get a pretty bad sunburn. He also would probably die instantly the minute it rains.

[via DVICE]

The genius in question is a 49-year old woman named Angeles Duran, a resident of Galicia in Spain. And apparently, an American is to blame for putting the darned idea in her noggin. Duran says she read about an American who claimed ownership of the moon and most of the other planets in our Solar System. Where did she read that? The Onion? Anyway, Duran, who has the audacity to say “I am not stupid”, says she plans to charge everyone who “uses the Sun”. She probably needs the money to pay the American, who no doubt has been sending her Moon usage bills.

picture from Wikipedia

[via Raw Story via Slashdot]

It looks awesome, but I was surprised at how complicated this high-tech art really is. Since Solar Equation is a balloon, it bobs and sways with the wind. Simply projecting images onto a fidgety surface would not be cool at all. So, according to Switched, “Lozano-Hemmer and his engineering team had to develop a 3-D tracking system to monitor the position of the balloon.” This system monitors the balloon’s position an amazing 30 times per second, and then coordinates with the servers to which the projectors are connected to, ensuring that the projected animation is always smooth. But that’s not all; this sun is interactive too! Want to mess with the animation of Solar Equation? There’s an app for that. Visitors can use their iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad to. change the animation in real-time.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

So what’s the use of a second sun? Lozano-Hemmer says, “while pertinent environmental questions of global warming, drought, or UV radiation might arise from the contemplation of this piece, Solar Equation intends to likewise evoke romantic environments of ephemerality, mystery and paradox.” In other words, it can stand for whatever the hell you want it to, or you can just look at it and admire it’s sheer beauty. And then shake your head and say, what a huge waste of electricity. Solar Equation will be on Federation Square until July 4.

[via Switched]

The pocket-sized solar charger has a built in 1600mAh battery pack that can juice up to full capacity in about 8 hours of full sun, or about 3 hours when connected to your computer’s USB port. A color-coded ring lights up in red to indicate that your Xbox 360 has died the battery drinking in solar energy, and glows blue as it drains.

Just plug your cell phone, game console, media player or digital camera into either the Freeloader’s USB port or connect one of the ten included adapters and you can operate your gadgets directly off the Freeloader Pro’s battery or use it to charge up your gadget’s internal power source. The kit also includes the CamCaddy, which lets you easily charge up digital camera and camcorder battery packs in a jiffy.

The Freeloader Pro solar charger ships in June and is available for pre-order over at UK gadget shop I Want One of Those for £69.99 (appx. $97 USD).

Kyouei Design’s Mobile Lights store solar energy during the day, and automatically turn on when its dark. If there’s not enough daylight to keep them charged, that’s okay, since each segment has a set of AA batteries inside to keep them glowing too.

Each set of three LED lights hangs from your ceiling by sturdy nylon fishing line, creating a swoopy kinetic sculpture in any room. You can find Mobile Lights at Kyouei’s online shop for ¥21,100 (appx. $213 USD).

Not only can the visor play DVDs, audio and video files, it can play retro video games on its 7-inch LCD 16×9 widescreen display. Just hook up one or two (included) gamepads and you can play a number of emulated 8-bit games (many of which come on an included disc).

The jack-of-all-trades plays DVD, SVCD, VCD, DVCD, CD, CDG, CD-R and CD-RW discs, as well as digital media files stored in MP4, MP3, WMA or JPEG formats. It can even send game or movie audio to your car’s stereo thanks to a built-in FM transmitter.

Thankfully, it looks like this is only available as a passenger (right hand) visor, so you shouldn’t be able to play while you drive (unless you happen to live in England or another right-hand drive part of the world, of course). If you’re ready to turn your car into an accident waiting to happen, you can pick up the system from Chinavasion for just over $100.

[BTW: I don't remember James Bond shooting hoops in Tomorrow Never Dies either].

Artist Gianni Motti’s Big Crunch clock is gradually counting down the approximately five billion years we have left until the sun blows up. The 20 digit LED display (pictured) began counting down back in 2005, so the way I figure it, we have somewhere around 4,999,999,991 years to go. Ironically, the clock runs on solar energy, so the same power source that gives it life will ultimately be its demise.

On the plus side, the entire clock will surely fail and disintegrate billions of years before it’s blown to smithereens by exploding solar gases. Now doesn’t that make you feel better?

[via VVORK]

The Bright Blind comes from the minds of designers Makoto Hirahara and Hisakazu Nabeshima (for Japanese design collective Studio Mongoose). It’s a window shade that hangs on your wall and is backlit by electroluminescent sheets to provide simulated daylight in even the darkest of offices. Just like a real window shade, brightness is adjusted by twirling the plastic shade control.

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The shade is currently just a hand-built prototype, so I’m hoping they decide to produce these for purchase soon. Head on over to the GNR8 Pipeline site for more information (and a ton of other cool design concepts).

[via CribCandy via Coolest-Gadgets]

The guys over at Watchluxus have turned me on to this amazingly intricate mechanical device which demonstrates the workings of our the Solar System in unbelievable detail. Richard Mille’s Planetarium-Tellurium provides a glimpse into the exact positions of the Earth, Venus, Mercury, the Sun and the Moon.

While it might not include all of the planets, and the Earth has been enlarged for aesthetic reasons, it’s capable of telling viewers an astounding amount of information including the current axis of the Earth, it’s position relative to the Sun, the rotation of the Moon, as well as the positions of Venus and Mercury among other things. It’s also an extremely sophisticated clock and perpetual calendar, which can even tell the current signs of the Zodiac.

Mille enlisted the counsel of a renowned astronomer-physicist to help with all of the calculations that were needed in order to accurately convert these movements into a mechanical system. To put the precision into perspective, the least precise calculation is the current axis of the Earth, which can get off by plus or minus 1° every 7.7 years. Most of the other calculations are far more stable, like the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, which should be accurate within 1° for up to 2 million years!

From what I’ve been able to glean, Mille actually plans on producing these clocks for purchase, although I haven’t been able to find out any details on that yet. Given the insane amount of detail and fine craftsmanship, I’d expect that you’d be able to buy a really nice car or a small condo for less than what these will ultimately sell for.

ThinkGeek’s USB Desktop Tanning Center lets you roast your epidermis to three shades of tan, ranging from Starbucks Vanilla Latte to Ooompa Loompa. It even comes with a pair of those googly eyeball protectors so you can look cool while getting your tan on.

After reading more of the product description, I realized that you’d be pretty hard-pressed to power four 100-watt UV heat lamps via USB. Hopeful that this was an April Fool’s gag, I then checked my calendar, and realized it is indeed January. Then I clicked “Add to Cart”, and I was so relieved.

[via Thoughts from the Sidelines]