Hacks

Steve Mould shows off a neat trick you can do with a smooth plate, some water, and a dry-erase marker. Basically, anything you draw can be lifted off the surface and floats around once you add a bit of warm water.

It may not be the most sonically pleasing instrument, but the engineering behind Josh Sheldon’s build makes up for it. The organ uses 49 stepper motors which spin backwards against variably-sized disks, producing waves of electrical current which can be amplified.

One of the more entertaining robotic groups we’ve heard was built by FT Mechatronics, whose electronic band consists of a variety of stepper motors, solenoids, hard drives, oscilloscopes, a robot xylophone, nixie tubes, and a tesla coil. Here, it plays Hello by OMFG.

There’s something about the high-pitched sound of the scannner stepper motor that suits itself so well to Gorillaz Feel Good Inc., it now takes its place as our favorite cover track from Paweł Zadrożniak’s electromechanical orchestram, beating out The Final Flopdown.

We’re not sure if Louis Weisz’s creation is making fun of or simply perpetuating the whole fidget spinner epidemic, but what we do know is that if his goal was to make the most obnoxious fidget spinner that he could, he succeeded.

Instructables contributor Mikeasaurus shows off his ridiculously dangerous looking creation, a skateboard which leaves a fiery trail in its wake. It drips out a small amount of fuel triggered by a foot-controlled switch, and ignites it with an electric sparker. Full build log here.

Future Interfaces Group shows off Electrick, an intriguing way to convert virtually any sort of object into a touch-sensitive surface using conductive materials or sprays, and connecting an array of electrodes. It’s not as precise as a touchscreen, but it can sense X/Y positions.

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.

Backyard engineer Peter Sripol turned a NERF rifle into a souped-up airsoft gun with a fairly large barrel. Then he loaded the gun with all sorts of improvised projectiles, such as AA batteries, 6″ nails, and fireworks. This guy’s going to be just fine in the apocalypse.

WayOutWest Blowinblog decided that an off-the-shelf bandsaw was too expensive for cutting logs lying around his property, and instead ripped apart a car and welded together his own power tool from scratch. Watch it slice through a massive spruce log here.

Peter Sripol and his pals like to fly r/c airplanes, but he tried something a bit different for his latest flyer by building a plane that uses two spinning KFC buckets to get airborne, courtesy of the Magnus Effect. Flight KFC185 hits the skies around the 11-minute mark.

An awesome fan-made mod for the SEGA Genesis game Sonic the Hedgehog 2, adding one of Nintendo’s heroes. The hack lets you play as Yoshi, along with his abilities from Yoshi’s Island. If you’re willing to download random files from the internet, enjoy.

Oliver Wilshen and Niall Quinn aka Signal-to-Noise modded an old Roland DXY pen plotter, covering its bed with strips of magnetic tape, and replacing its pen with a playback head. The result – a strange device that can play back bits of audio based on x/y coordinates.

“Alexa, order me some Xanax.” That’s the first command we’d issue to this creepy nightmare fuel, Mike McGurrin’s Amazon Alexa build which speaks its words from an animatronic skull. Grab the full build plans on Hackster.

Vexal shows off a ridiculous mod he performed on his Porsche which he claims allows him not only to play the classic FPS DOOM on its screen, but to control the game using the car’s steering wheel, horn, gear shifter, and accelerator. Sure, it’s fake, but it’s still hilarious.

Instructables contributor MariaK64 shows us how to transform a IKEA PS 2014 pendant lamp into an exploding Death Star with nothing more than paint, masking tape, and some artistic skill. But instead of firing at the exhaust port, simply pull the cord to blow it to bits.

It took a lot of trial and error, but The Hacksmith eventually got his twin-turbine-powered snowboard to propel him along his snowy neighborhood’s streets without need for so much as a hill or a tow from a car. Skip to 8:45 to see it in action.

Using a pair of record players, a stick of wood, a binder clip, a fine point pen, and some tape, you can make a machine that traces the movements of one turntable’s arm, to make abstract art on the other’s platter. You can make something even cooler with a little extra effort.

We’ve got an Amazon Echo and it’s awesome except for when an Amazon commercial comes on and says “Alexa…” and it tries to answer the TV. Brian Kane posted this hilarious hack of what Amazon’s next Echo version should look like. Alexa, Take Me to the River.

Want to go beyond basic portraits and landscapes? Leo Rosas and The Cooperative of Photography present nine fun and easy ways to up your creative game. The backwards lens macro thing seems rather silly, but we love the wall of Bokeh and the fish tank trick.

A brilliantly simple way to create two-point perspective drawings by fixing a piece of elastic string to the two edges of your image, then pulling it up and down with a paper clip. It doesn’t provide a hard straight-edge, but it’s still a cool hack.

Maker Samm Sheperd created this insanely bright source of illumination that uses eight 100-watt LED chips which generate so much heat that he built a system with computer water cooling components to keep it from bursting into flames.

If ajw61185’s flying scale model of an A-10 Warthog fighter wasn’t awesome enough, it’s got a cool trick up its sleeve – there’s a modded NERF Rival Zeus blaster inside, which can launch a dozen foam balls on command. You can see it fire at 1:02.

The Xbox One S just came out, and modder Ed Zarick has already transformed the console into laptop form. The slimmer, lighter console makes for a more portable machine than ever. It’s got a 19″ display built in, and a 4K HDMI output. Enter on twitter for a chance to win one.

Musician Rob Scallon proves that just because a musical instrument is designed for one thing, there’s no reason it can’t be used for another. We wonder if Flea would ever consider giving up his bass for one of these. Probably not.