Awesome Hacks

Dyson’s Supersonic hair dryer pushes more air and dries hair faster than most. Integza figured out a way to use its tiny and powerful motor to create a handheld jet engine. First, he had to use an industrial 3D printer to produce a metal case for his project. Then he injected fuel into its combustion chamber and ignited it.

A while back, Fletcher from Everything Is Hacked came up with a way to control a computer with his face with your face. Now he’s created an input method to get his cardiovascular system going. He used a computer vision algorithm to detect the positions of his arms and legs to type letters and numbers using semaphore.

The Nintendo Gamecube hasn’t been produced since 2007, but it still can play some pretty great games. Maker and modder Peter Knetter took it upon himself to design and build a LEGO Gamecube. After sifting through a sea of blue building blocks, he filled the case with the console’s guts and built a matching LEGO controller.

Inspired by that commercial where the guy plays drums on his Pringles cans, Eric and Tony G from EMCproductions made their own set of drums out of potato crisp (and Gatorade) cans. They replaced the plastic lids with balloons as drum heads and used their metal bottoms as “cymbals.”

Cody from WhistlinDiesel has made a name for himself by pushing cars and trucks to their limits. Recently, he got his hands on a Tesla Model 3 and subjected it to various punishments, from summoning it through a garage door to outfitting it with massive wagon wheels and driving it upside-down.

Guitar strings are usually made from nylon or metal wire. Musician Bernth wanted to hear what an acoustic guitar might sound like when its strings are replaced with rubber bands. The low-frequencies sound more like a bass than a guitar, but they worked well enough that he recorded a song called Elasticity with them.

You can find all sorts of great household items and furniture at IKEA. But if you ignore the assembly instructions and make up your own, it’s possible to hack together stuff that’s not in their catalog. Tchiks guitars shows us how he used wood from various things from IKEA and turned them into a great-sounding electric guitar.

Using a Dremel rotary tool to power an R/C helicopter seems like a really stupid idea. But Peter Sripol is the guy who built an airplane out of an angle grinder, and a gas-powered NERF blaster, so if anyone can pull it off, it’s him. But there’s much more to engineering a helicopter than just slapping a rotor onto the Dremel.

Maker and tinkerer Peter Sripol noticed a similarity between the reciprocating motion of a Sawzall and the drivetrain of a steam-powered locomotive. Perhaps jealous of William Osman’s power tool races, he got to work rigging up a reciprocating saw to drive a G Scale locomotive. It works surprisingly well.

On a normal bicycle, the drivetrain only engages when you pedal forward. Move your feet backward, and the rear axle freewheels. But BigWR likes to build unusual bike mods, and created a unique gear and chain configuration that moves the bike forward whether pedaling forward or backward.

We’ve had the pleasure of driving a customized Nissan Altima with snow tracks. This build from Garage 54 is the low-budget equivalent of that, using a janky old Lada and fitting it with dual rear tires wrapped in metal tracks. It’s definitely not the most agile vehicle in the snow, but it is able to drive on some sloppy powder.

Because of their size and weight, chainsaws typically require both hands for safe operation. Make It Extreme shows how it’s possible to engineer and construct a compact chainsaw small enough to be held with one hand, yet capable of sawing through thick branches and making very rough cuts of lumber.

Scotty Cranmer and his pals hacked together this ridiculous bicycle with an oversize hoop that surrounds its rider. The design lets the bike and its rider perform rolling flips when going down staircases or on flat surfaces with enough momentum.

Sometimes we forget to put our trash cans out until the garbage truck is already outside. What we need is Max Maker’s Trash Train running on a schedule. Max built this automated railway for his cans when he had to start storing them on the other side of his house. Engineering and fabricating it was more complicated than it looks.

Paddling a kayak can take a lot of strength and isn’t very fast. In the interest of decreasing effort and increasing speed, inventor Colin Furze made a custom kayak paddle with a powerful motor and propellers to give things an extra boost. But is Colin’s idea a breakthrough or a bust?

The guys from Garage 54 have done all kinds of stupid things to Lada cars. For this experiment, they wanted to see if they could turn one of the old Russian jalopies into an improvised helicopter by connecting its drivetrain to a propeller on its roof. Place your bets now on whether this thing will ever get off the ground.

Freestyle mountain bike rider Sam Pilgrim got his hands on a beat-up side-by-side tandem bicycle and thought it could use an upgrade. So he and his pal Louie outfitted it with a powerful 80cc paramotor fan. The resulting vehicle is insanely loud and squirrely as hell. We’re impressed they didn’t roll it.

This bike without handlebars is neither a bicycle nor a unicycle. It should officially be called a tricycle because it’s got two tiny skate wheels in front and a single large bike wheel in the back. Whatever you call it, BigWR’s custom ride sure is unique, and it balances surprisingly well.

It’s not difficult to make your own pinhole camera. But we would have never thought to make one inside of an orange. While you could use any enclosed container, the idea of snapping pictures with citrus fruit is a novelty. We’re going to get to work on a canteloupe camera next.

Backup cameras have been a great addition to modern cars, improving rear visibility and reducing fender benders. But they don’t all do a good job telling you how far you are from objects. This guy came up with a clever hack to ensure he always parks just the right distance from the wall in his garage.

A Roomba has a top speed of about 1.1 mph. Electrosync knew he could do better. After cleaning out the dirt and dust from a Roomba’s vacuuming duties, gutted the robotic vacuum and installed two high-performance RC car motors. The two-wheeler can spin incredibly quickly, but how fast is it in a straight line?

Washing machines can hold dozens of gallons of water without leaking, so it seems only natural that they’d be a good starting point for a fish tank. Aquarium Info shows us how transforming the home appliance into a habitable environment for fish is more involved than you might think.

YouTuber I Did a Thing has made more than his share of dumb and dangerous things. For this video, he took on a couple of his viewers’ bad ideas and attempted to build them. First up is a bidet powered by a pressure washer, followed by a ceiling fan with machete blades, a jackhammer pogo stick, and solar panel sunglasses.