A Welcome Train For The Holidays

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnFyI0a-55s]

[Eric] was charged with the task of setting up the train to welcome people on the porch.  The train had been in the family for a long time, so he didn’t want to modify the train itself. Luckily, it has an IR port. He recorded the IR signal from the remote and used a home made pressure sensor to signal the train to start.

Edge-lit Holiday Cards

edgelit

Got 30 minutes for a holiday project and don’t want to get wrangled into some sort of decoupage disaster? Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories can show you just how easy it is to do edge lighting effects. Pictured above are three holiday cards constructed using scored plastic. You can use many different types of clear plastic for this, not just acrylic. The lighting is just an LED on a coincell. Black tape is used to prevent light leaking from the edges. The red and green version above is two stacked layers. This looks like something fun to scale up for a larger project or just to kill some time.

Make Your Own Holiday Lights

lights

No matter what holiday you choose to acknowledge, you probably enjoy the thought of getting to put lights up everywhere. We know we do. Here are some instructions on how to make your own string of color changing lights. Sure, you can probably just buy a string of color changing lights for cheaper, but then you couldn’t arrange them however you want on the line, and you also wouldn’t get the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

Gift Card Electronics

Gift-giving season is upon us, and it’s time for people to start panicking about what to give to their friends and families. Gift cards have gained in popularity over the years, as companies count on people to forget to use them. But how about gift cards that do more than store a token amount of cash? Best Buy is now selling a gift card that doubles as a speaker. It has a mini headphone jack that’ll plug into any audio player. You only need to spend fifteen dollars to get it. Target’s gone all out, with a gift card that is also a 1.2 MP digital camera. It comes with a USB cord and driver disk, and there’s even one with a 64MB USB flash drive. We’re very interested to see if these will take off, and what people will do with them once the cards are used up.

[via Gizmodo]

Neon Light Christmas Tree

gpugh_topshoptree081

Everyone always complains about the Christmas season coming earlier and earlier, but we think when we can have Christmas trees like the one pictured above, it’s not such a bad thing. Created by English fashion designer [Gareth Pugh], the tree features sixty white neon tubes, and is supported by a freestanding metal rod. It reminds us of the light sabers in Star Wars, which is probably why we like it so much. The tree is just a carrier for the decorations anyway, right? You can check out the tree in person at the TOPSHOP in Oxford Circus, London.