diy

Ex-Cop Builds His Own Johnny Five Robot From Hacked Appliances

How do you plan to spend your retirement? travelling the world? Endless gardening? After two decades serving as a Baltimore police officer, Mark Haywood retired and now spends his free time turning old appliances like radios, DVD players, fans, and power tools into impressive humanoid robots.


The Othermill Will Let You Cut Custom Circuit Boards And More

If you’ve got DIY in your soul and love the beeps, bloops and lights of circuit boards, the Othermill is a computer-controlled mill that’ll let you print your own circuit boards right at home. Even more, the mill can cut metal, wood, wax and plastic so you can make jewelry, molds and more. It’s a milling machine for your desk.


All It Takes Is A LEGO Jukebox To Make Your CDs Almost Useful Again

Be honest, when was the last time you actually listened to a CD? Granted, it’s not exactly hard to throw one into the drive; it’s just that streaming is soooo much easier. Well with just a little bit of help from LEGO, a tinkerer named Ralph gave his CD collection a second chance at usefulness.


A Guy Made The Fire Breathing Piranha Plant From Super Mario Bros

If you ever thought real life should be more like the video games we play, you’re not alone. At the very least, you definitely have an awesome friend in Caleb Kraft, senior editor at Hack a Day. He made a real homemade version of the fire-breathing piranha plant from Super Mario Bros. It’s incredible.


How To Stop Time With A Ceiling Fan, Two Torches And A Camera

Remember the now ubiquitous bullet time effect in the Matrix? That technique requires dozens of cameras and other expensive gear, but JPL engineer, inventor and Gizmodo friend Mark Rober, figured out how to do it for just a few dollars.


How Jack Conte Made A Completely Crazy DIY Music Video From Scratch

Jack Conte’s “Pedals” music video is nuts. Holy crap, electronic music robot madness. But this is one of those situations where you have trouble deciding what’s crazier: the music video or the behind-the-scenes video describing how the music video was made. Be the judge for yourself.


DIY Cleaning Products? All You Need Is This Bottle

There’s so much brain-melting, fish-mutating crap in the products we use every day to clean things. Natural products tend to be pretty expensive, but not if you make them yourself with this clever cleaning bottle.


10 DIY Iron Man Suits That Give Tony Stark A Run For His Money

Iron Man has finally returned to cinemas, inevitably leaving a lot of us lusting for our own set of red and gold armour. But it turns out that billions of dollars, a genius IQ, and the magic of Hollywood aren’t required to realise that dream. At least not for these brilliant amateur creations.


Perform Pachelbel On A Pint-Sized Playable Pop-Up Paper Piano

Taking those electronic music playing greeting cards to a whole new level, Antonella Nonnis created a playable paper piano that she eventually hopes to turn into one of the awesomest pop-up books you’ve ever seen. The paper keys are all lined with a strip of copper foil that’s wired to a series of megaohm resistors and an Arduino.


This Dead Space Plasma Cutter Blinds And Burns With Lasers Instead

Apparently, today’s theme is dangerous DIY props, because, as a follow-up to the frightening 80,000-volt Thor hammer, we now have an equally terrifying replica of the Dead Space Plasma Cutter. As far as prop design and attention to detail go it’s beautiful, but the use of a pair of 1500-milliwatt burning blue lasers has us cautious about recommending this as a DIY.


World of Servers