LEGO MINDSTORMS AlphaRex controlled by a Wii balance board
LEGO MINDSTORMS hacker Akihiro Uehara built an interface between an AlphaRex and a Wii Balance Board.
Fun & Games
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
How-To: Make great big stuff
I’ve had this long-standing concept for a theme restaurant where everything–tables, chairs, utensils, food, condiment dispensers–is like 30% bigger than normal. The idea is to make you feel like a kid again. We’d call it “Tiny’s.” (And yes, we’re still seeking investors. Also waitstaff suffering from gigantism.) Look for one soon in a strip-mall near you. Believe me, you won’t be able to miss it.
In the meantime, if you just can’t wait for the experience, you could always start filling up your house with great big versions of the stuff you already have. Instructables has just posted a cool round-up of tutorials on how to do just that. Shown uppermost is user Tetranitrate’s giant match. And yes, as the middle photo shows, it does (or did) actually work. At bottom, last but in no sense least, there’s user indymogul’s giant sandwich, which I think was part of a Halloween costume or something. But who cares? Giant sandwich!
Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 giveaway
Build your dream, then make it move! Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 is the latest version of the robotic building set that launched First Lego League and inspired thousands of kids. People have used Mindstorms to make everything from robotic animals to Rubik’s cube solvers. Today, in association with The Lego Group, we’re giving away a […]
Indirect Collaboration talks to Lego Group rep
Indirect Collaboration is a website exploring the role of crowd-sourced input in the creative process, in anticipation of the upcoming South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, TX. MAKE contributor Tim Lillis, who does the “Tricks of the Trade: comics in MAKE, is one of the contributors to the site. Here, he talks with Cecilia Weckstrom […]
Virtual Nautilus
While the renders look a little dated, it’s hard not to appreciate the passion put into this recreation of Jules Verne’s iconic submarine. Even the boring rooms are mapped out and recreated in 3D! I began the effort to develop a complete set of detailed source files for the Nautilus in 2001, when I acquired […]
Pneumatic Lego robotic arm
Polish Lego builder Paul “Sarial” Kmiec built this fantastic robotic arm using Technic Power Functions elements combined with an external pneumatic compressor! Just another weekend build – this is basically a late realization of an idea I had back when I was a kid. The goal was to build a model of an entire human […]
Fiction science: Aliens, Predator, and Mega Shark infographics
The second graphic explains the physics behind what Boing-Boinger Jimmy Guterman has described as “the greatest scene ever in the greatest movie of all time,” viz. the destruction of a cruising jetliner by the eponymous “Mega Shark” from Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. You may be interested to know, for instance, that Mega Shark’s air attack requires that it break the surface of the water with a velocity of 710 km/hr, which is faster than a bullet train but not quite so fast as a Tomahawk missile.