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ICYMI: Cellphone motor as mic and fuel from sunlight
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Researchers created a hack that lets a smartphone's vibration motor act as a microphone, picking up conversations unbeknownst to the user. Harvard University folk created fuel using artificial photosynthesis that is triple as effective as previous systems, making gas out of sunlight, CO2 and water. And finally, YouTube user BOOM LLC Robotater has a pretty entertaining potato video on the site; if you're looking for the case that lets you switch an iPhone to Android, that's here. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Vibratron plays impossible music with ball bearings, is your new master (video)
First they came for Jeopardy!, then they came for our vibraphones. We still own baseball, but the "humans only" list has grown one shorter now that the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Club has birthed Vibratron, a robotic vibraphone. Vibratron's Arduino Mega controls 30 solenoid gates that drop steel balls onto the vibration keys, producing a note; an Archimedes screw recycles the bearings, turning them once more into sweet, sweet music. We should also note that Vibratron doesn't put decent, salt-of-the-earth vibraphonists out of work. That cacophony in the video is "Circus Galop," written for two player pianos and impossible for humans to perform -- and still pretty hard for humans to listen to. See, Vibratron is here to help you, fellow humans. At least for now. Click the video above to get acquainted.
