Hacks

Taking obvious inspiration from artist Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests and CARV’s earlier efforts, maker The Q fabricated himself a crazy bicycle which has no rear wheel, and instead can walk across the ground. This design appears much smoother than the one we previously saw, but by no means the fastest way to ride a bicycle.

There are lots of NERF blasters out there that can fire in rapid succession, but the majority can still only fire one dart at a time. James Bruton shows off an enormous custom NERF weapon he built that can fire 10 foam projectiles simultaneously. Each bank of darts is loaded into a magazine that rotates into place to be fired by rollers.

When it comes to guitars, the strings are one of the most critical elements. But James Bruton built this electronic guitar that’s played not by plucking strings, but by scanning barcodes. It has four necks and uses an Arduino MEGA board to map the scanned data into USB and MIDI signals to control a synthesizer.

If you’ve ever been in a NERF war, you know it can be a pain to pick up the ammo lying all over the ground. Out of Darts shows us how a tool designed for picking up acorns does the trick brilliantly – especially when it comes to those NERF Rival balls. And it handily beats NERF’s own picker-upper.

NERF modder Coop772 combined three Rival Nemesis blasters into a tripod-mountable turret that’s perfect for the old spray-and-pray tactic. Thanks to a custom hopper on top, the triple gun can rapidly load up to 1200 rounds with minimal user intervention.

Mad inventor Colin Furze was asked by game maker Blizzard to replicate the Rip-Tire, a spinning weapon featured in Overwatch. His first version was entertaining, but not nearly as deadly as the one in the game. So with the help of a 600cc motorcycle engine, he built another version that is far more dangerous.

Smart guys Mark Rober and James Bruton show us how to game the system with engineering know-how. They recently collaborated on a special bowling ball that can consistently bowl strikes by simply leaning in the direction you want it to go after you release it down the alley.

After a viewer provided a really bad idea of how to create a flaming version of Pokémon’s fiery little Charmander, maker Allen Pan of Sufficiently Advanced decided to hack together his own fire-breathing orange dragon from a talking plush, an air freshener machine, and birthday candle pilot light. He’s also got a taser Pikachu.

Turns off you don’t need to be the US Navy to build a railgun. YouTuber Ziggy Zee shows off his backyard railgun, which he mounted to an old RoboteX remote-controlled platform. This killer beast fires up to 35,000 joules of electricity, laying to waste anything in its path.

Do you have an old flat-screen TV or monitor with a broken LCD panel? DIY Perks shows us how you could use it to fake daylight in any room. By upcycling its fresnel light diffuser, and swapping out the LEDs, you can create a smooth and bright light source that can convincingly simulate a window or skylight.

Maker Ivan Miranda’s decided to see if he could modify a remote-controlled car so it can drive upside-down on the ceiling. He added a pair of powerful fans to create downforce (or is it upforce?) It took some trial and error, but he ultimately got it to work. Of course, he could have just bought one of these.

This bit of geeky fun comes courtesy of builder JohnO3, who created a machine which works like a giant dot-matrix printer. Except in this case, it deposits colorful and tangy Skittles to create its prints instead of droplets of ink. He provided the full build details on Instructables, should you want to build your own candy printer.

If you’re not too much a stickler for preserving your vinyl, there are lots of cheap turntable options. But if you REALLY don’t want to spend the money, and REALLY don’t care about your records, you could build one like the one Turnah81 made, using a cordless drill, a coffee cup, and a pushpin as a stylus.

Maker Ivan Miranda played around with a couple of NERF Rival Kronos blasters and decided that he could do it better. So he set about building a gigantic, vacuum-powered version that can fire of 10 rounds of ammo per second, at speeds over 62mph. We wish he made it fire actual NERF ammo though.

Device Orchestra previously amused audiences with music played on credit card terminals. Now, they’ve figured out a way to make electric toothbrushes into musical instruments. Sit back and enjoy a buzzy rendition of Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia Hymn, a popular composition in the nation the band calls home.

Despite its age, people are still obsessed with MineCraft, and experimenting to see what else they can do with the block-building game. SethBling spent innumerable hours creating a chest inside of the game, that when opened, contains an completely playable version of MineCraft inside of itself. Download here.

Grind Hard Plumbing Co. took a Barbie Power Wheels Mustang and hopped it with a Honda dirt bike engine up so its power and speed match its muscle car looks. Sure, it’s basically a go-kart with a plastic body now, but it’s still awesome and we want to take it for a ride.

Kiwami Japan takes a momentary break from crafting knives from unusual materials to make a pair of jumbo-size scissors. He started off with a couple of cheap $1 kitchen knives, but ended up with the sharpest kitchen shears we’ve ever seen.

A Bentley Continental GT is already quite the impressive vehicle, but it wasn’t enough for Kosik of AcademeG to leave well enough alone, and decided to upgrade his with tank treads. You can check out the full build log for this beast on their YouTube channel. Turn captions on.

Car hacker Master Milo decided to take an old Ford Ka and give it new life as a thrill ride. By slicing it up, adding a roll cage, and setting it into a set of round tracks, he transformed the subcompact car into a dizzying ride for two. Check out Milo’s original video here.

Photographer Kensuke Koike shows off a neat trick you can do with any image on heavy paper and a pasta maker. By shredding the picture into strips, the image can be duplicated into progressively lower resolution versions of itself.

Automotive madman Jimmy Built managed to cram the drive unit from a Tesla Model S and the battery pack from a Chevy Volt into an old Honda Accord. The result is a crazy lightweight car that can do 0-to-60 in about 2.7 sec, and sounds like a remote-controlled toy doing it.

Ukrainian band Brunettes Shoot Blondes found an old, broken down grand piano, and decided to partially gut it, filling its innards with a variety of analog instruments, mechanically connected to its keys. The resulting sound on their track Houston is remarkably rich and full.

After turning a bathtub into a drone, The Real Life Guys decided to see if they could cram a 15hp electric motor into a little kid’s car known as a BIG Bobbycar. The result is a ridiculously unsafe and unstable ride that zooms from 0 to 43 mph in about 3 seconds. Turn subtitles on.