From arcade tables and streaming weather stations to a DIY Amazon Echo and even cat exercise wheels, the amount of possibilities one can cook up with the Raspberry Pi is near-limitless. For audiophiles looking to jam out to their Pink Floyd discography on the $25 computer, there’s now a solution for that, too. Designed by hardware developer Pi 2 Design, the 503HTA – Hybrid Tube Amp is created specifically for any of the 40-pin versions of the Raspberry Pi family to bring that “Sweet Tube Sound” to the versatile Single Board Computers. When in use, the tube amp is capable of driving professional headphones from 32 to 300 ohm with…

Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The Monday List. Each Monday, we’ll link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you. Be sure to check in each Monday morning for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight from the source of your favorite…

Don your favorite bathrobe, cream that coffee and get comfortable with this week’s SolidSmack Weekend Reader. The Weekend Reader features a handful of the most interesting articles featured on the ‘Smack over the past week ranging from tips and tricks to inspirational designs, processes, and more. So lay back, relax and take a load off while reading the top ten stories on SolidSmack this past week. Oh and uh…don’t forget to shed some much-needed sunlight on your face, too. Model of the Week: Star Wars Remote Training Droid “We all know you can’t first become a Jedi Master until you get all whiny about droid maintenance and zapped in the…

Responsible for churning out everything from construction helmets to hot tubs, vacuum forming is easily one of the most fascinating forms of manufacturing for the non-technical crowd due to its relatively simple process: heat plastic and pull it around a shape to create multiples of that shape. Aiming to package this vacuum forming experience with a user-friendly interface, Mayku – a new hardware startup founded by a pair of London-based design entrepreneurs – wants to enable professional creators, weekend tinkerers and small businesses to make professional grade products directly from their desktop with the $349 FormBox vacuum former. Powered by suction drawn from a user’s existing vacuum cleaner, the FormBox…

While some dusted off their lightsabers or danced around the house in Darth Vader socks this past unofficial Star Wars day (May the Fourth be with you), Frank Howarth of the YouTube channel Frank Makes celebrated exactly how you would expect him to: by turning wood on a lathe. Unlike his usual lathe projects, however, Howarth did the seemingly impossible by turning a Star Wars Death Star out of bamboo plywood. Says Howarth: “The build consists of making two segmented halves that seam together at the trench. Each half is made of 9 rings. Each ring has 13 segments. (13 seemed like an evil number). There is one extra ring…

With so many cool things coming out each week, it can be hard to wade through all the rock-awesomeness. With ‘Cool Tools’, we’ve done the hard work for you. This week we saw an interesting new take on the simple goldfish bowl, an ingenious solution for housing speakers in a storage cabinet, a powerful new curve-based photo app, how to understand a Picasso painting, the new Radiohead music video and more… Ready? Let’s go! This week we look at: DESIGN Waterscapes by Haruka Misawa “This series explores the relationship of objects in aquariums.” The Modern HiFi Stereo Console “The Hifi-Console is a Bluetooth enabled mid-century inspired stereo console built for…