Tag Archives: tape

This smart laser distance meter measures and documents in the most intelligent way

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Whether you want to measure the dimensions of a table, know the perimeter of a room, or detail the angular height of a staircase, you’d ideally require a range of equipment: measure tape, level, notebook, pen and more. Putting technology to laser precision, Chinese designer has envisioned HOTO: Smart Laser Measure Pro. The idea of this distance-measuring device is very simple: measure and document it in the most intelligent way.

HOTO is a convenient, accurate, and least cumbersome way to measure and document just using a device and dedicated mobile app. A small rectangular form factor makes HOTO really convenient to carry, in fact you can hang it by the wrist courtesy of a carrying string. The gadget is a worthy upgrade to the HOTO laser measure first edition.

Designer: Lu Zheng and HOTO

The smart gadget features a single-button operation, which is the biggest distinguishing aspect of the device in the market saturated with laser distance meters which have a host of onboard buttons and functions to carry out different tasks.

Just point HOTO laser at what you want to measure and double-press the solitary button on the device. The device will instantly vibrate to notify that measurement is ready. The data is displayed on the built-in LCD screen, it is clear and uncomplicated.

Connect HOTO to your mobile device over Bluetooth and you can store the information in the dedicated app for future reference. According to the designer, HOTO is precise to the last millimeter.

No object is too small or placed too big for the HOTO; it can display measurements ranging from 0.05m to 50m. So, draw blueprints and mark measurements directly on them right on your phone, or click a picture, measure dimensions and tap to share the memo. It’s never been easier!

The post This smart laser distance meter measures and documents in the most intelligent way first appeared on Yanko Design.

ERA – Portable Cassette Player with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will make you part of the tape renaissance

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Sony Walkman was one of the most iconic pieces of personal tech. As the first commercially available personal cassette player, the Sony Walkman TPS-L2 revolutionized portable music consumption in more ways than one. Now, as retro becomes the new modern, the TPS-L2 forms an inspiration for the ERA – Portable Cassette Tape Player that intends to match the vintage with a modern outlook.

Gen-Z considers cassette tapes vintage artifacts, but the incredible innovation has allowed the music industry to ripple through the years to reach the subsistence today. In the years of prime, it permitted music to be shared through recordings to each individual with access to cassette players: personal or otherwise.

Designer: Hugo Jonasson

Despite all the modernization, cassettes still have a role in the industry. Major artists are joining indie creators in the tape renaissance and taking advantage of retro tech. The trend in parts explains the rise in cassette sales in the past couple of years. Designer Hugo Jonasson wants to be the early adaptor of resurgence, a reason he has conceived the ERA – Portable Cassette Tape Player that draws inspiration from the past but has its footing in the modern environment.

This retro-modern portable cassette player boasts Wi-Fi, Bluetooth connectivity and has a 3.5mm jack to let you plug in a headphone of choice. To become slightly more modern than the Walkman from the bygone era, the ERA features a small display beside the physical play/pause and track change buttons. Separating the buttons and the display is the volume knob akin to one in the radio set of the yesteryears.

The ERA can connect with the smartphone, presumably over Bluetooth, to display the battery status, the current track, and more important information. If you’re an audiophile with no bias to the medium you’re consuming your favorite music on, as long as it is pleasing to the ears, portable cassette players like the ERA deserve your attention.

The post ERA – Portable Cassette Player with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will make you part of the tape renaissance first appeared on Yanko Design.

College Students Develop Edible Tape for Holding Burritos Together

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The brainchild of a group of presumably messy eaters at Johns Hopkins University, Tastee Tape is an edible adhesive tape designed for holding burritos closed so you don’t wind up with burrito guts all over your lap while you’re trying to eat one. That’s cool. In only slightly related news, the Mexican Pizza returned to the Taco Bell menu five days ago, and I’ve already had at least sixteen.

Tastee Tape is constructed from a “food-grade fibrous scaffold and an organic adhesive” and comes affixed to a piece of waxed paper. To use a piece, you simply remove it from the paper, wet it, and slap it on the overlapping portion of a burrito’s tortilla. They won’t say exactly what the tape is made of, but my guess is some sort of seaweed. Or, who knows, maybe it’s just duct tape, and they’re lying to us. I’ve eaten duct tape before.

Alternatively, peel back the wrapper of your burrito as you eat it instead of just yanking the whole thing out at once and leaving yourself wide open to a pant and/or shirt stain. I mean, this isn’t rocket science. This is far, far more complicated. Hey, you don’t happen to have any extra napkins on you, do you?

[via TechEBlog]

This mindfully designed tape dispenser brings one-handed application to this useful stationery!

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Won’t it be great to use a tape dispenser just one-handed without all the mess that ensues? This cool stationery does exactly that with its smart design.

A tape dispenser is a cool invention that looks simple but solves a very essential purpose that millions have utilized at some point in their life. But if you do want to be a little picky, tape dispensers also have their own set of shortcomings. First of all, you need to use both hands and the functionality similar to a glue gun or nail gun is longed for here. Secondly, no matter how hard you try, the fingerprint marks and contamination while removing the tape will always be a problem.

To add to this, the process of using tape from such dispensers is a bit long and won’t it be great if that is addressed? This is the O N tape dispenser by Fountain Studio, designed specifically to address all these issues while being aesthetically functional and good-looking. Most of all, it brings one-handed use to the good old tape dispenser, a feature that all of us will highly appreciate.

The design of O N is centered on the two holes at the bottom. The first hole keeps the tape bonded and pressed to the rubber pad for uninterrupted, continuous usability. The second hole has a button along the cutter sign to cut the tape off when required. This way, the user doesn’t have to bring the second hand into play which can be an irk at times with conventional tape dispensers.

Other than that the O N tape dispenser has a similar-looking tape refill dispenser that rolls along as the tape is used. To make it easy for the user, there is a hole in the body to check the amount of tape left.

Clearly, this is a very intelligently designed concept prototype that I’m wishing hits the market sooner rather than later. It is actually that good – bringing a very useful evolution to the tape dispenser that each one of you is going relish!

Designer: Fountain Studio

How something as mundane as a roll of tape became groundbreakingly useful

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Oscar Lhermitte’s TAPE wasn’t designed to be a material that sticks together box-flaps, or wrapping paper. It was designed to be a template, a canvas for information one keeps needing to refer to while working. Lhermitte’s stroke of creativity combined the roll of tape with the humble Post-It, creating perhaps one of the most useful tapes ever, apart from the magnetic tape and duct tape.

The TAPE treats the entire roll of sticky film as a canvas for useful information. Made from vinyl, the TAPE comes with loads of useful diagrams, like paper sizes, Hex-bolt sizes, font sizes, drill-bit diameters, and even a working scale and protractor. You wouldn’t normally want to ‘waste’ this tape by using it to stick cardboard boxes together, but Lhermitte designed the tape’s adhesive to be strong enough for packaging. In my opinion, the tape’s better suited for sticking on your workbench, on the front of your notepad, or even your laptop.

TAPE was created by Lhermitte as a part of his Quickstarter challenge, which involved putting together a brief and designing and developing a product in a mere 3 months in order to help boost creativity. So far, the TAPE’s set the bar pretty high!

Designer: Oscar Lhermitte

It’s Always Easy to Find the End of This Tape

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Tape is one of those really useful things that has always had a bit of a fateful flaw. Since it sticks to itself, it can be incredibly frustrating to find the end of it once you start using a roll. A team of industrial designers came up with a simple, yet smart solution to finding the end of the tape.

The so-called “Easy to Find End Tape” was designed by Jaehyung Kim, Deockeun An, and Cheolwoong Seo. Its design features a unique bumpy shape which means that the end of the tape is always easy to grab on to no matter where you leave off.

It turns out this design first surfaced all the way back in 2011, and has yet to go into production. Maybe someday 3M or someone else in the tape business will take it upon themselves to make tape rolls like this.

[via Toxel]

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This Crazy Rube Goldberg Machine Is a Tape Dispenser

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What if I told you that it takes a full five minutes to get a single piece of tape out of this insane Rube Goldberg machine? Hey, it’s about the journey, not the tape. At least that’s what I would keep telling myself if I had to wait on this machine to get said tape.

This overly complicated machine was built by Youtuber DaksDominos. It took him two months to put it together, and he had to get through 187 failed attempts before finally getting this video of a success. The amount of stuff happening on this machine is crazy. Remember, he had to set everything up again each time. That’s crazy. Isn’t this the definition of insanity? How does anyone have that much patience? Or maybe he just really needed a piece of tape that badly.

Anyway, you can watch the whole process right here without having to invest two months and 187 failed attempts. That’s the benefit of letting someone else do all of the work for you. It just goes to show you that with enough SOLO cups, ping pong balls, Hot Wheels tracks, and tape, you can do almost anything, as long as you don’t mind that it takes forever to do.

[via The Awesomer via Sploid]

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The Milton Bradley OMNI Was an 8-Track Tape Board Game

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Boy, it’s been a really long time since I saw or heard an 8-track tape. These technological antiquities were insanely popular back in the 1960s and 1970s, but gradually went the way of the dinosaurs as they were replaced by more compact and longer-playing cassette tapes. But one thing that 8-tracks had that cassettes didn’t was the ability to quickly jump around to different stretches of music which run on different tracks. This led to the use of the cartridges for use in everything from toy robots to playing the voice tracks for animatronics at Disney World.

One of the more interesting uses for 8-track tapes was this unique 1980 board game from Milton Bradley, called the OMNI Entertainment System.

The $119 system offered a variety of cartridges, including quizzes, contests, and party games. This game system took advantage of the tapes’ ability to change tracks, and contained binary data on non-audible tracks which stored scoring data and the correct answers. Players pushed buttons to provide their answers to questions, and the player would read data from a non-audible track, then pause awaiting their answer. Once they entered their answer, it played the correct answer and adjusted their score appropriately.

Techmoan recently got their hands on one of these unusual game systems, and demonstrated how it works in this extensive video:

It’s a fascinating video, and well worth your time if you’re into retro tech or mechanical engineering. If you’d like to get your hands on an OMNI system for yourself, you can still find them from time to time on eBay.

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Sony and IBM created 330TB data tapes for a massive analog archive

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Storing data on magnetic tape is back, baby. Sony has announced that thanks to a partnership with IBM Research in Zurich, the pair have developed a magnetic tape cartridge capable of storing 201 gigabytes of data per square inch for a total of 330 te...