Category: DIY + Hacks

While most levitation is achieved with magnets, it’s also possible to suspend small objects in air using sound waves. Thanks to engineer Asier Marzo, you can even create your own acoustic levitator, which can float lightweight objects like water droplets, styrofoam beads, and even insects.

Operation was one of my favorite board games growing up – because it really wasn’t a board game at all, but an opportunity to play around with electricity and pretend to be a surgeon. So what could be better than combining this fun game than an edible version made from cake?

Who doesn’t like flamethrowers? Everybody but space bugs and fire extinguishers, that’s who. Now, Allen Pan of Sufficiently Advanced just went and made the best flamethrowers ever. You see, these wrist-mounted fire shooters activate their wearer throws a punch.

Binge watching your favorite shows is making you soft and doughy, but that’s okay – the Cycflix is here to help. Basically, the Cycflix is an exercise-powered home entertainment system that makes you workout for the right to watch Netflix.

When the Super Soaker was first released in 1990, parents were freaked out that kids would fill the toy with harmful chemicals like bleach. But they never saw this coming – a squirt gun that blasts molten liquid metal.

For all of the terrible damage and dismemberment that robots will surely bring in the near future, they also have their uses. Imagine taking a robot with you on a heist and having it crack a combination safe for you.

Many fans fondly remember LEGO set #1682, the Space Shuttle Launch. It was released 27 years ago, and is a classic. Well, last month Adam Woodworth created a tiny drone version of LEGO’s shuttle that could fly indoors, which was cool enough, but now he has created a larger version that can fly like an RC plane.

Thermal cameras are pretty nifty devices. They let you see the heat signature of objects by capturing infrared light. There are off-the shelf thermal camera devices like the ones from FLIR, but they’re kind of pricey, and not particularly friendly to hacking into your own projects.

We thought that we had heard the last of Flappy Bird, but it is back in a not so big way – on a Dreamcast memory card. The long-dead console still has a massive fanbase, so it is no wonder that one hacker has ported the game to the Dreamcast’s interactive memory card.

If you have ever wanted to know what you can do with a 10 year-old Roomba, check out what Roland Saekow did. He turned his aging Roomba Discovery 4210 vacuum into a racing bot. Watch it take on an obstacle course at UC Berkeley’s annual student vehicle challenge.

If you aim to become your city’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, you are going to need a few thing – a costume and a web-shooter for instance. Well, here’s one way to make your own web-slinging gear, even if you don’t have a wealthy benefactor like Tony Stark.

Why toss paper airplanes by hand, when you can have a machine take care of the hard work for you? Now you can make a semi-automatic paper airplane launcher for yourself. This thing is a cool paper airplane gun/paper airplane aircraft carrier in one.

It figures that it would be a former NASA engineer who had a hand in building the world’s largest Super Soaker water gun. It is so giant that this Super Soaker managed to break a Guinness World Record for being the largest on Earth.

James from TheHackSmith has created what might be the ultimate sleep hack. His impressive project involves a Casper mattress, and a fancy and very expensive pod to house said mattress with the goal of letting the builder sleep less without being tired all the time.

Builder Vincent Buso uploaded this short video demo of the Keymu. It is basically the Game Boy Advance SP shrunk down to an ultra-portable keychain size. It is awesome. If you have fingers small enough to use it.

Fire trucks, by their very name, should start fires, not put them out. So tinkerer PeterSripol upgraded a toy fire truck with a functional flamethrower so that at least one these vehicles can live up to its name.