The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
Spiffy face lift for an old toy… Luis Fernando Espinal Ceballos of Colombia wanted to give his cousin’s son the slot track racing set he loved as a child. But the toy seemed unbearably old-fashioned. So Luis jazzed it up with a new electronic control system. He dumped the old battery box and replaced it […]
Recently I have been taking apart and rewiring some remote control cars that I picked up at the town dump or local yard sales. Some of my students have also been in on the fun, and we are aiming to make them into programmable robotic cars. Take a look at the photos and see what […]
Dhananjay Gadre has created another great project! We recently built a LED spinning top with message display. Its an improved version of a similar top published by Elektor in their December 2008 issue. The Elektor top can be spun only in one direction. The synchronization required to print message on the LEDs arranged along the […]
MAKE Projects Editor, Paul Spinrad, sent me a link to this project and the following message: Some CS / Game Development students hacked a Lord Of The Rings pinball machine, taking full control of its sensors, actuators, and display, and reprogrammed it to play Pinhorse — like the basketball game, but you try to match […]
Asteronimo writes about SliceModeler for Sketchup: Based on TIG‘s Slicer script I wrote a plugin that slices a solid 3d model along 2 axes, f.i. an X- and a Z-axis. You can enter separate parameters for each axis. After the slices have been created it calculates the slots for each intersection which allow the cross […]
Awesome slow-mo footage of a butterfly ornithopter from the Shimoyama-Matsumoto Laboratory, University of Tokyo, Japan. [via BotJunkie and Smart Machines] Artificial butterfly wing on a butterfly-type ornithopter
Introducing Cyclecide, an inventive band of Bay Area performance artists who make creations out of materials from the junkyard. These Makers create everything from amusement park rides to outrageous bicycle contraptions to found-object sculpture. Plus, we take a historical spin through the origins of the modern bicycle. Check out Cyclecide’s website at cyclecide.com. Get the […]
