Name This Six-Legged Walker Toy
This video has been making the viral rounds today. It’s a sneak preview and a draft promo video for a six-legged robotic toy in development at Wow! Stuff. And the toy is definitely a wow.
Toys and Games
How-To: Compressed Air Foam Systems
MAKE regular Mike Pantrey, aka Mrsuperpants, returns with this cool page about building on-the-cheap DIY versions of the commercial systems used to make foam and/or “snow” for video, photo, and event special effects. He describes three iterations of his homemade CAFS and a method for making colored foam. [Thanks, Mike!]
OK Go Plays a Thousand Instruments with a Car
OK Go’s new video for the song Needing/Getting has the band playing a thousand instruments… with a car. Yep, they rigged up a Chevy Sonic hatchback with retractable pneumatic arms, then drove a course with specially tuned instruments at specific intervals while extending the arms to hit each in time with the song. This allowed them to capture both the video itself along with audio elements, which they mixed into the the final track. Elements of which were aired during the Superbowl as an ad.
Smartphone-Controlled Ball Launcher
Andrew and his brother built this great ping-pong ball launcher out of salvaged and repurposed parts. I especially like the 13-ball hopper made from two paper towel tubes taped together, and the clever K’Nex-controlled release mechanism. The launcher is controlled with an Arduino connected to a computer and activated via a remote desktop app from […]
Worlds Largest Game Controller
According to Guinness Book of World Records Gamer’s Edition 2012 the team of engineering students Benjamin Allen, Stephen van’t Hof, and Michel Verhulst from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have created the Worlds Largest Game Controller. Weighing in at 265 pounds, measuring 12ft X 5ft 3 in X 1ft 8 in, costing […]
Make: Talk 002 – Bob Knetzger, Toy Inventor
Our maker this week is Bob Knetzger, MAKE’s Toy Inventor’s Notebook columnist.
Tiny Trebuchet Launches Virtual Bananas
ITP students Will Jennings and Lia Martinez built a small catapult (not a trebuchet in the strictest sense) that, when pulled back and released, announces “Banana” and triggers a video projection of said fruit flying into the wall. From Lia’s site: