Awesome Hacks

We already know that it’s possible to turn angle grinders into a drone. Now aviation enthusiast and maker Peter Sripol has proven it’s possible to fly an R/C airplane propelled by the fast-spinning power tool. That propeller could do some serious damage once it gets up to speed.

We already know it’s possible to build an entire bicycle out of wood. But how durable are wood wheels when pushed to their limits? Mountain biker Sam Pilgrim fitted his bike with some custom wood wheels and put them to the test on a forest trail, a pump track, and even a staircase. They held up way better than we expected.

There are a number of robotic lawnmowers on the market, but rctestflight wanted something more modern than spinning blades to cut his grass. So he set out to build a lawnmower robot with a 40-watt cutting laser in place of a blade. It works quite slowly though, and his drone motor lawnmower seems more effective.

The guys from Garage 54 are in the business of doing stupid things to cars. Recently, they chopped off the rear axle and one wheel from another old Lada then reconnected it directly to the drive shaft. It’s now a vomit-inducing donut machine – though it can never drive in a straight line again.

Remember that time Colin Furze built a ridiculously tall bicycle? Well, The Real Life Guys have outdone that by some measure. After being set loose in the Urban-Drivestyle bike factory, they fabricated a 16-foot-tall bicycle with seating for six. The video is in German, but insane builds are a universal language.

DIY Perks takes a break from building awesome computer and video game systems to focus on a photography project. At the core of his custom large-format camera is a lens from a vintage opaque projector. When used to capture images, it gulps in a huge amount of light, resulting in a dreamy depth-of-field bokeh effect.

The Q typically spends his time building things that aren’t particularly useful. But this time out, he came up with a design for a saw that can cut through tree limbs twice as fast as usual. The saw uses a pair of blades and a spring to clamp down against the wood to double cutting speed.

After showing us it was possible to ride a bike with its rear wheel split in half, Sergii from The Q came up with an even more radical build. Starting with the split rear wheel, he modified the front of a bicycle with an extension arm and split the wheel into thirds. He had to experiment with configurations to make it work, though.

This video from AHHAA Science answers the question: “Can you turn four angle grinders into a drone?” From the looks of things, the answer is “Yes.” But the reality is that real power tools would likely be too heavy to lift themselves, and it’s much more likely that they put drone motors on some fake Makita shells to make this work.

We recently saw how to create a very fast bicycle by dramatically increasing the size of its drive gear. YouTuber BigWR took a different approach by arranging multiple sets of gears to up this bike’s gear ratio. He was able to pedal up to speeds as high as 33 mph on flat ground.

There are a number of legitimate robot lawnmowers on the market today, but none are as quite as exciting as the one that I Did a Thing built for himself. Instead of navigating on its own, this robot features an FPV remote control setup, and it looks terrifying. We cringed every time we saw him walking near it without shoes on.

There are lots of cool NERF guns and NERF mods out there, but very few of them actually help with your aim. 3DprintedLife engineered this cutom build which can lock onto targets and track them automatically, reducing the chances of missed shots. The main blaster is based on a kit from CaptainSlug.

“Riding the rails” usually refers to someone who travels by train. But in the case of Cam Engineering, he’s able to ride the rails on his bike. He built a collapsible rig that lets him ride normally, then expands to balance the bike on abandoned railroad tracks. It’s stable enough to stay upright even without a rider.

If you want a loud noisemaker, you could always buy one of those compressed air horns, but if you prefer something that you can reuse over and over, check out HABU’s build – which uses a modded cordless power drill and a small compressor pump to blow air through a pair of horns.

If you split a wheel in half, you shouldn’t still be able to ride on it, right? Well, watch this video from The Q, in which he cut two bike wheels and tires down the middle, connected them with a long chain and positioned them so one half is always touching the ground. Miraculously, the bike rides just fine.

We always figured if you were going to upgrade the plastic case on a handheld game system, you’d want to go for aluminum or maybe carbon fiber. But Peter Knetter is a bit of a contrarian, so he downgraded his GameBoy Advance SP by building it a case, buttons, and D-pad out of cardboard.

The crank on a typical 10-speed bicycle measures about 5″ across. But what would happen if you supersize that? BigWR gives us a lesson in gear ratios by outfitting his bike’s crankset with an enormous gear to see how much faster it could go on pedal power alone. At least it’s not as bad of an idea as his double steering bike.

Despite its acceleration abilities, the Tesla Model S is a relativelt tame-looking car from the outside. But that all changed after The Real Life Guys got their hands on one. The German YouTubers took a Model S and converted it into a Model T by lifting it more than two feet and equipping it with tank tracks. Turn on subtitles.

Attending Zoom calls without pants is a common occurrence. It’s fine if you stay put, but you run the risk of exposure if you move around. Fletcher at Everything Is Hacked has the solution. He used OpenCV, MediaPipe, and pyvirtualcam to create a video filter that adds pants or blurs your naughty bits if you’re letting it all hang out.

Do you suck at first-person shooters? Kamal Carter might have the solution. He built a servo-controlled robotic rig that moves a mouse exactly where targets are by scanning the screen for specific colors. It cheats quite well in the FPS trainer AimLab, but it’ll need more work to be accurate in a real game.

The Language Master and similar devices used magnetic cards to help students learn to speak other languages. The vintage machines have become a favorite among musicians for making lo-fi sounds by adjusting their speed and direction, and even making loops. Hainbach shows off some of their beat-making abilities.

Typically, when you want to input text into a computer, you need a keyboard or dictation software. But Fletcher over at Everything Is Hacked wanted to type without using his hands or making a sound, so he got to coding an application that can interpret facial gestures and convert them into keypresses.

Inspired by LockPickingLawyers‘ videos showing how to use a gunpowder-loaded nail gun to break padlocks, The Backyard Scientist wanted to build something a bit more powerful. His goal? Build a weapon that can punch and smash through bricks. It’s also way better at breaking locks, and works as a demolition tool.