Hot Hacks, Mods & Circuitry Posts
How To: Add Inductive Charging Capabilities to a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Note 2, and Other Android Devices
Inductive charging is already a reality on popular smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S III and Google Nexus 4, and Apple has recently published a patent that would make inductive chargers a reality for the iPhone. There are also several phones that have the capability for wireless charging, such as the Samsung Galaxy Note II.
How To: Build a Solar-Powered Mini-Synthesizer Wristwatch
There's nothing worse than when you come up with a brilliant idea while you're busy with other things and then promptly forget it. Whether it's the perfect ending for your novel or a comeback you should've said during that argument with your roommate last week, it's always annoying.
News: This Simple LEGO and Popsicle Stick Robot Can Solve a Rubik's Cube in 100 Moves or Less
Robotic Rubik's Cube solvers are nothing new. We've seen ones that are run on Android, made of LEGO Mindstorms, and faster than the world record holder. The most recent Rubik's Cube robot making the news was made by high school student James Watson as a school project, but it's ended up getting a lot more attention than that.
How To: How Much Time Do You Spend Indoors and Outdoors? Find Out with This DIY Arduino Tracking Device!
How much time do you spend outside, as opposed to inside? Whether it's because you're working, studying or just have a bunch of errands to run, it may seem like the majority of your day is spent indoors. Ever wondered exactly how much time you spend indoors and outdoors? Now you can, thanks to this DIY Arduino-powered tracking device by Instructables user Gramsky.
News: This Adorable DIY 'Magpi Radio" Twitter Bird Reads Your Tweets Out Loud for You
You can use Twitter to print Instagram photos, track news and weather events, or even remotely shut down your computer, and if you're familiar with IFTTT, there's no shortage of ways your account can help automate your life.
How To: Turn Your Head into Narcissistic Cardboard Speakers
Do you know anyone that's infatuated with themselves and is currently in need for some good speakers? No? Well, just in case you do, here's a neat Christmas present idea for your narcissistic speaker-less friend. But, let's be realistic—why would you make these for anybody but yourself?
How To: Hide an Inductive Charging Station Inside Your Furniture
Inductive charging has been around since the days of Nikola Tesla, but it has yet to be integrated into a lot of popular devices. This is partially because it's slower and more expensive than methods that involve direct contact.
How To: Make a Totally Geeky LED Pocket Watch That Tells Time in Colors
The cell phone may have replaced the pocket watch, but thanks to some clever mods and hacks, "old-fashioned" time telling is making a comeback. Smart watches that connect to your mobile device cannot only tell you what time it is, but also change the song you're listening to and let you know how many Facebook notifications are waiting for you. Frank Zhao, an electrical engineering student at the University of Waterloo, decided to do something a little different with his LED pocket watch. It h...
How To: Turn Any Wall Portrait into Your Own Personal Scooby Dooish "Eye" Spy Surveillance System
Remember how the bad guys in Scooby Doo would always use cut-out portraits to spy on people through walls? Well, unless your landlord is super cool, you probably shouldn't start cutting holes in your wall just yet, but you can make a higher tech version, thanks to NASA employee Mark Rober. Mark used a cheap picture frame and a portrait with the eyes cut out to make the "Scoob Cam," which also doubles as a surveillance device. He used an iPhone and an iPad to start a FaceTime chat, then taped ...
How To: Make Trippy EL Wire Headphones That Dance to the Beat of Your Music
At one time or another, we've all enjoyed the visualizations that came stock in Windows Media Player. I remember spending hours listening to my favorite album, putting the graphic equalizer on full screen, and getting lost in the flurry of colors that would dance across the screen. Well, now thanks to the imaginative mind of Instructables user yardleydobon, you can now recreate this rainbow-colored music visualizer right on top of your freaking head—with these trippy EL wire headphones, which...
How To: Customize Your Wireless Doorbell to Play Any Sounds You Want
Doorbells are useful and all, but most of them are boring as hell. They use the same old generic sounds to let you know when guests have arrived, as demonstrated below.
How To: 5 Easy Ways to Use Your Touchscreen Devices in the Winter (While Keeping Your Fingers Warm)
Winter is coming... and if you don't get that Game of Thrones reference, it's okay, you're still cool in my book.
How To: Mod a Calculator into a Custom Name Badge for Your Desk
There isn't as much use for old-school four-function calculators anymore since we all have them on our cell phones now. If you've still got one lying around, you can hack it to play recorded sounds, use it to make a metal detector, or turn it into a custom name plate that says anything you want...
How To: Use Bluetooth to Control Your DSLR (Or Any Device with an Infrared Receiver)
You can add Bluetooth capability to an old stereo, a retro mouse, or even your car's cassette deck. If you can think of a device, someone has probably found a way to control it with Bluetooth.
How To: Hack a Cheap Floating Globe into a Levitating Imperial Death Star!
Have any Star Wars fanatics in your family? Well, here's a great Christmas gift idea for those Star Wars fans who think they have everything... a freaking LEVITATING DEATH STAR!
How To: This Arduino Hack Lets You Control a Table Lamp Using Your Voice
The Jetsons may not have gotten everything right about the future, but even though we may not have flying cars or live in the sky (yet), one thing they imagined correctly was our electronics eventually being able to understand us.
News: This Mini Indoor Weather Station Can Reproduce the Conditions Anywhere in the World
If you've spent most of your life in one geographic location, you're probably pretty familiar with the weather there (unless you're a hermit). If you live in a tropical climate (and haven't done much traveling), maybe you've never even seen snow.
How To: Hack a Pair of Cheap Active Shutter 3D Specs into Light-Detecting, Auto-Tinting Sunglasses
Wouldn't it be awesome if your glasses could detect when it's bright outside and automatically darken? Well, the technology has been around for a while, but it'll set you back a few hundred bucks.
How To: Buid a Mic Stand Camera Mount/Steadycam/Crane Shot Camera Boom
I took a telescope mount from a tripod and converted it so it could be mounted on a microphone stand. For a step-by-step guide please visit my project at Make: http://makeprojects.com/Project/Mic+Stand+Camera+Mount+-+Steadycam+-+Camera+Boom/2770/1
How To: Turn Your Android Device into a Customizable Thermostat for Your Home
A faulty or broken thermostat can be one of the most annoying things to ever happen to your house. It's always too hot or too cold, and you can end up wasting money on your electricity bill.
How To: Turn Your Old NES into an All-In-One Retro Gaming Console
While the PlayStation and Xbox models may rule the current world of gaming, there are still those who love to keep it old school. The grittiness, toughness and nostalgia that is laced throughout old gaming consoles appeals to many people. Every time I play Donkey Kong 64 (with the expansion pack of course!), I revert back to the days of Sunday morning cartoons and only worrying about homework.
How To: Hack Your Old Printer to Automatically Print Hashtag-Based Instagram Photos
It's hard to believe that a photo-sharing service could become as big as Instagram has. So big, in fact, that there are tons of websites, software, and products aimed at integrating it into our lives even more. Hell, you can even be Instagram for Halloween.
How To: Light Up Your iPhone's Apple Logo in Old School Rainbow Colors
As far as logos go, few are as iconic and instantly recognizable as Apple's old-school rainbow emblem. No matter how sleek their products get, people are still nostalgic for the old, colorful logo, and this mod from Adafruit basically proves it. If you have some pretty decent soldering skills, you can make the Apple on the back of your iPhone light up like the old rainbow logo. In the video below, Becky Stern from Adafruit uses a kit with a replacement glass back, tweezers, screwdrivers, and ...
How To: Hack Your Mini-Fridge into a Vending Machine to Take Care of Freeloading Friends at Your Next Party
It always sounds like a good idea to throw a party... until the party gets there. Next thing you know, you're running around hiding anything breakable, and once everyone leaves, you're stuck cleaning up the mess. But the worst part is footing the bill for everything, and if you don't charge at the door, your chances of getting anyone to chip in are slim to none once the party starts.
How To: Build a Programmable Robot with Snap Circuits
Want to learn how to build a robot out of Snap Circuits? I'll show you how to combine Snap Circuits parts from three different sets (the Snap Circuits rover, Snap Circuits Micro, and the Snap Circuits motion detector) to make a simple programmable motion activated robot. For a complete step-by-step build of the robot, visit my project at Instructables: http://www.instructables.com/id/Hack-the-Snap-Circuits-Rover/
How To: Build a Laser Tripwire and Alarm with Snap Circuits
Want to learn how to build a laser tripwire and alarm out of snap circuits? I'll show you how to build both circuits— the laser tripwire circuit and the alarm circuit.
How To: Build a Remote-Controlled Water Gun (Or Flamethrower!)
You can do a lot with water guns. Have trouble waking up? Make a water gun alarm clock that (almost) no one could sleep through. Prefer real ammo? Turn your water gun into an airsoft BB gun. And if you don't have one, you can even make your own.
How To: Turn a Super Cheap Mousetrap into a Powerful BB-Shooting Handgun
Here's a way you can turn a mousetrap into a fun little handgun that shoots up to 40 feet! This is a great project because it can be made with simple materials, very basic tools, and in just a few minutes!
How To: Light Up Your Whole House with This DIY 'Nuclear Explosion' Chandelier
If you're the kind of person who misses the bright, sunny days of summer during the colder months, Michail has the perfect addition to your home. He built this "Nuclear Explosion" Chandelier that's as bright as daylight, so you can recreate the feeling of summer, no matter what time of year it is. It puts out 99,400 lumen (a typical 60W light bulb only produces 800 lm), so it takes quite a bit of electricity to run. Michail used 7 metal-halide lamps, which are much brighter and more energy ef...
How To: Add an Extra USB Port to Your Wired Computer Mouse
Ever try plugging in two flash drives into your MacBook Pro before? The USB ports on MacBooks are not only directly side by side, they're insanely close to each other, so it can be extremely difficult to plug in a large USB device with another smaller USB device. Sometimes it can fit, but it's a strain on the USB port and the device itself. If one of the items in question is a USB mouse, then your worries are over...
How To: Make Your Own Halloween Masks by Modding Your Shop Vac into a Vacuum Forming Machine
You may have never heard of vacuum forming, but you use products made with the technique all the time. The lid on your coffee cup, the plastic bowls you used at last week's barbeque, and the blister packs your prescriptions come in are all made with a vacuum forming machine.
How To: Mod Your Old iPod 30-Pin Dock into a Bluetooth Speaker for Your iPhone 5
If you bought the new iPhone 5, you've probably been less than thrilled with the lack of cases and accessories that you can use it with. Docks are no exception—users were disappointed to learn that Apple has no plans to even make one for the newest addition to the Apple family.
How To: This DIY Illuminated Isomorphic Keyboard Changes Colors as You Play Music
An isomorphic (or self-transposing) keyboard is "a musical device where a grid of notes is displayed to the user and the interval change between notes in constant for any given direction." For those of you who didn't grow up playing the piano like I did, that basically means that it lets you move between keys easily without having to learn new patterns because the keys are laid out so that a chord is the same pattern in every musical key.
How To: This DIY Job Search Light Lets You Know When a Worthy Job Opportunity Arises
The mighty Arduino microcontroller can be used to show children how robots work, it can be used to hack into hotel rooms, or it can be used to let you know when you've got a new job opportunity!
How To: This DIY Xbox LIVE Traffic Light Tells You When Your Friends Are Gaming
Games are always more fun when you have someone to play them with, but if you're not always logged in to your Xbox LIVE account, how do you know when your friends are online? You can always log in and check, but where's the fun in that when you can hack together a traffic light to do it for you? Andrew F hooked up an Arduino with an Ethernet shield to check every five minutes to see how many of his Xbox LIVE friends are online. For each friend, it records either a zero or a one, depending on ...
How To: Use Your "Dead" Car Battery to Power Emergency Fans, Lighting, and More!
A common misconception is that all car batteries die. This, in fact, isn't true—the majority of "dead" car batteries just don't contain enough juice to power a car, but they can still provide enough watts to keep emergency fans and lighting running, which is great when a power outage occurs. So, instead of lugging the battery to the nearest drop-off center or just letting it collect dust in the garage, you can put that car battery to good use.
How To: Mod Your NES Duck Hunt Zapper into a Real-Life Laser Gun
Who doesn't love Duck Hunt? It's arguably one of the most popular games ever created for the original NES system, even in spite of the mocking dog that everyone hates. I'm sure a lot of people still have their old controllers in the attic somewhere, so unless you're lucky enough to have an NES that still works, why not put that childhood nostalgia to good use?
How To: Forget Chimes—Make Your Doorbell Send You Text Alerts Whenever Someone Rings It
Want to know when you have a visitor, even if you're not home? You could always set up a security system and live-stream it with your iPhone. But if you don't have a spare iPhone, or just don't want to go to the trouble, this simple hack will add text message alerts to your doorbell so that it lets you know when someone's there.
How To: Make a Dynamic Mic and Sound Recorder Stand from an Old Hard Drive
There was a dynamic mic in my junk box, but without any stand or connection cable. I needed a high-quality microphone to narrate my project videos, so I had to think of a way to build a stand for the mic. This is what I came up with.
How To: | 3 DIY Electronic Geek Chic Pieces for Him
Stand out from the high street fashion clones with stuff you’ve fashioned yourself. It’s easy to take old pieces of electronic junk and transform them into all sorts of fun ‘n’ funky geeky accessories. Like a totally useful tote bag, a what-on-earth-is-that wallet and a bedazzling belt. It’s terribly geeky but chicy too. Here’s how…