HomeStar Planetarium Projector

There are millions of billions of stars in the observable Universe, yet we only get to see a tiny fraction of them on a clear night sky. Since the Earth is protected by its own atmosphere, the conditions for stargazing are not always appropriate and that’s why astronomers have built special facilities on top of high mountains. I, for one, am pretty preoccupied with the latest discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics, but I certainly can’t access an astronomical facility whenever I please. However, there’s a solution to my stargazing needs, and it’s known as the HomeStar Planetarium Projector.

This unique projector should enable astrofans like me to view over 10,000 stars right at home. The projector integrates a crystal-clear, rotating field of 10,000 stars based on ultra-bright white LEDS and projects it on your ceiling or wall. Every once in a while the projector may also project a random streaking meteor across you room.

According to Coolest Gadgets, the Planetarium Projector features a slick spherical design which is motorized to move the star map at the same speed the real stars blaze across out skies. HomeStar provides two HD images of the northern and southern hemisphere skies and the user is able to adjust the projection angles in order to display the star fields on either the walls or ceilings.

Fight the dark with Stimuli 3.0

Everytime you work hard on some project of yours and you come up with the greatest idea of them all, you see how the sun is slowly going down, taking away the light you need so much in order to continue. The amount of the available light isn’t enough anymore and all you can do is to just take a break and obediently wait for the next day. It is the most terrible feeling and it brings you at your wits’ end.

But here’s an unusual lamp design concept that catches everyone’s eye even if it does nothing special at all. It looks like a science fiction movie setting object, as if it were the result of an alien civilization.

The Chris Natt designed lamp is a device that keeps up the light level constant: this means that the spherical shape and surrounding panels have a specific function, to constantly adjust the lamp’s light levels to correspond with that coming in through the windows. The so called Stimuli 3.0 is “a lighting system whose shape and therefore light output sensitively varies inversely with the surrounding natural light intensity”, says its designer. For example, at dusk, illumination gradually increases as natural light recedes.

The device is provided at its heart with an unique 3 axis gear box that shifts and rotates the panels to either increase or decrease the brightness of the light. Therefore, the panels block out more or less light. That depends on how much light there is coming from outside.

This is a very weird lamp, you must agree, and it would be perfect for an environment designed to astonish and amuse its inhabitants. It looks like a thing of the future and it would be a great achievement for Chriss Natt to actually mass produce such an attractive prototype and to release it on market under a reasonably price. If the concept will get to see the light of the day, then the designer might consider himself a very lucky guy and make a hit.

Knowledge in your Fingertips

I remember the days when I was a little child and all I could ask was “Why?”. “Why is the sky blue?”. “Why do people love to enter a little box (the TV) and talk to us as if they knew who we are?”. “Why do birds fly and I can’t?”. I was driving my parents crazy with all of these silly questions, but imagine: for someone unfamiliar with so many things, with the world out there, older people, who seemed to know a whole lot more than I did, were my first source of information.

As the years passed by, I replaced people with libraries, and therefore books, documentaries which were broadcasted on different foreign TV channels and later, much later, with the Internet. With the help of a simple search on Google, I could find everything I wanted to know without annoying people for nothing.

But how about Touch-Hear, an innovative concept based on a very advanced technology that converts your fingertips into the most useful source of knowledge and, why not, handier than others? That will certainly change our point of view concerning our fingertips, am I right or not?

You must have come across words you did not fully understand, at least once in a while, and I’m sure you wanted to know its exact meaning. There’s a great line you’ve heard in the movie you saw last night and you want to share it with your girlfriend, but you can’t articulate one word, as French has never been a passion of yours. Yes, you could always use the translation, but what’s the magic in it? Now: what if by only running your finger across the letters of a word, even in different languages, “someone” will whisper in your ear its meaning or pronunciation? So, from now on, foreign words won’t be a problem for you anymore, meanwhile famous events and locations will briefly be explained.

The Touch-Hear is a concept developed by the Design Incubation Centre and could make a whole lot easier the process of studying for exams, as it helps the assimilation of additional information. The purpose of the design research laboratory is to “examine the possibility of expanding the human potential through technological devices, innately empowering users in their everyday activities”.

All you have to do, guys, is to read. No more, no less. But… does this concept apply to handwriting, also? Because, in this case, Touch-Hear must be very patient and intuitive, as some of us skipped calligraphy classes taught in the first grades.