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Hardware Reuse Contest Entries Revealed
teqo writes "The outstanding German computer magazine c't had a contest in which they challenged readers to submit their coolest recycling projects for obsolete hardware, and the entries have been revealed to the public now. There is an artsy and a practical category, and although it is in German, the pics make lots of submissions intuitively grokkable." (On the right hand side of the page, click the links beneath "Kunst" -- artistic -- and "Funktion" -- functional.) My favorite is the laptop with a solar-powered backlight.
The only german I know is "Die Bart, Die", and it isn't on the site.
I'm lost!
TELESCOPE!
Click here for a machine translation of the site for you English readers.
Use Minidisc? Join the Minidisc.org forums.
Would be easier if the site was actually readable to someone in the United States.
Not to the intended readership, no. Much easier to read German than English if you are German, you know.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Do they have a precise definition of what constitutes "obsolete hardware?" If they're talking about functional obsolescence, then a calculator may not be obsolete for decades. A CD-R becomes obsolete the moment that someone copies an AOL CD. A Pentium 4 becomes obsolete the moment that it belongs to my grandmother.
I haven't really had the time to browse all of the ideas here, but this one really stands out to me
RFID and Barcode Beer Fridge
If looks aren't decieving, you can use this baby to check your beer supply, and maybe even let you check from work to see what you need to pick up on the way home for the weekend.
Mach flott den Schrott
Ihre Meinung ist gefragt: Bewerten Sie die Einsendungen des Recycling-Wettbewerbs
Mit der Ausgabe 25/04 startete c't Ende November 2004 den Recycling-Wettbewerb Mach flott den Schrott, der die originellsten, schönsten und nützlichsten Konstruktionen aus High-Tech-Schrott belohnen soll. Die wesentliche Teile der Objekte sollen aus gebrauchten Computern oder ausgemusterter Peripherie stammen und sie sollen anders genutzt werden, als der Hersteller sich das ursprünglich gedacht hat.
Der Wettbewerb hat zwei Kategorien: "Funktion" und "Kunst". In der ersten sollen Werke antreten, die im weitesten Sinne eine technische Funktion erfüllen. Dazu gehören beispielsweise Roboter, Messgeräte, Uhren und Lampen. In die zweite Kategorie fallen alle Werke, bei denen allein der künstlerische oder ästhetische Wert im Vordergrund steht.
Auf diesen Seiten präsentieren wir die Wettbewerbsbeiträge. Sehen Sie sich um, staunen Sie, lassen Sie sich zum Nachbauen anregen und diskutieren Sie in den Foren mit, die es zu allen Projekten gibt.
Außerdem bitten wir um Ihre Mitwirkung an der Online-Nominierung der Endrundenteilnehmer. Bewerten Sie jedes Projekt bis zum 18. Februar nach vier Aspekten mit Schulnoten. Dazu finden Sie unter den Objektbeschreibungen jeweils einen Link.
Die besten Konstruktionen nehmen dann an der Endrunde auf der CeBIT 2005 teil, wo wir sie auch auf dem Stand des Heise Zeitschriften Verlages (Halle 5, Stand E38) ausstellen. (je)
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I hope that that was immensly helpful to all of you!
I cut the DIN 5 connector (old style keyboard) and the PS2 mouse connector (MiniDIN 6) off very old obsolete motherboards.
Then I combine them with a 40 cent microcontroller (AVR Tiny11) to make MIDI tone module controllers from standard PS2 keyboards.
It works really well. Press the keys, notes go on, release keys, notes off. Just like a piano keyboard but smaller and much cheaper. There are, however, certain key combinations that don't play full chords. I'm not sure if it's the internal keyboard matrix decoding or the microcontroller's firmware.
Instead of trying to do a solar-powered backlight, I wish more manufacturers would offer the option of a reflective or transflective LCD screen. This is like the screen used in the Gameboy Advance-- in bright sunlight, it looks fantastic. Indoors, they're not quite as nice as backlit, as they are typically sidelit to bounce the light off the rear reflector. It's a tradeoff. But you could use your laptop with no backlight power as long as there was good ambient light.
There was at least one laptop made with one of these-- If I remember right, it had a Transmeta CPU, but it's been a while. NEC Versa Daylite, or something close to that, and I think some of the Panasonic Toughbooks designed for outdoor use have them as well.
I know quite a few Germans myself, and they don't agree with your German friends at all.
So don't think your German friends represent a clear majority opinion, in Germany.
I know quite a few Germans as well... which is because I'm German ;-) I can tell you the vast majority of Germans nowadays really do hate Nazis and racism.
Yes, there are still some idiots that didn't learn a thing, but luckily those are mostly dumb people that don't even know that Hitler was an Austrian and are generally very uninformed about history. And yes, in East Germany some right-winged parties have managed to get a noticable amount of votes. But that doesn't make those people the majority.
It seems you didn't notice the anti-Nazi demonstrations that every demonstration of right-winged parties (NPD, DSU) face. And you didn't notice what happened a few weeks ago when some right-winged politicians from the NPD boycotted a minute's silence for the holocaust victims and later on said stupid things the we Germans were the real victims in the war instead of the Jews. These caused an outrage in Germany and re-started a discussion to forbid the NPD for being anticonstitutional.
There are laws in Germany which make it risky to express your true feelings in public, and so many people would not admit that the Germans still feel quite some pride when they think about the days of the Third Reich.
As for those laws : you can't legislate the true sentiments of a people.
I have no idea where you've got that from, but it's just plain wrong. There are laws that forbid to lie about Nazi crimes, e.g. it's forbidden to say "The Nazis never killed any Jews", but it's not forbidden to say the truth or what you feel.
And yes, we are proud of some things we managed to do during WWII, namely building V2 rockets and developing jet planes as well as parachutes and other technological advances. But we know all too well that many thousands of innocent people lost their lifes to develop these things, and nobody is proud about that.
In conclusion, I really think you either know very twisted Germans and mistake them for being the majority or should listen more carefully what they say.
artistic
- objective sculptures
- shape, light and sound objects
- symbolic stuff
- flat objects
- environment
- jewelry
- fancy stuff
functional
- computer equipment
- furniture
- home and garden
- kitchen equipment
- light engineering
- measurement engineering
- robots and models
- sports and toys
- sound and picture
- clocks
- miscellaneous
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.