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Spinning poi is an entertaining pastime, and LEDs can make a great addition to the experience. [MilanDer] built some LED poi of their very own, using a few maker staples along the way.

A 3D printed enclosure is first created, using “clear” PLA that in practice produces translucent white parts. This acts as a great diffuser for the APA102 LEDs inside. The LEDs are driven by an Arduino Pro Mini, which is fitted inside the enclosure along with a buck-boost converter, lithium battery and charge board. Finally, a strap is added to allow the poi to be spun easily by the user.

The visual effect is great, and through the use of an infrared receiver, the poi can be remotely controlled to deliver different RGB animations at the touch of a button. We’d love to see a group of spinners with synchronized colored poi thanks to a master controller, and this hardware would be more than capable of the task.

We’ve seen some advanced networked Poi before, too. If you’ve got a great LED build, be sure to let us know.

Tags:  toy hacks  

Within normal rules of collectible card game Magic: The Gathering a player may find themselves constrained to only a single legal course of action forward. It’s a situation players could craft to frustrate their opponents, though the victims usually break free after a few moves. But under a carefully crafted scenario, players would have no choice but to become the execution engine for a Turing-complete programming language written with Magic cards via techniques detailed in this paper.

One of the authors of this paper, [Alex Churchill], started working on this challenge in 2010. We covered an earlier iteration of his work here, and his own criticism that it was dependent on player cooperation. At various points, the game rules state a player “may” take certain actions and the construct falls apart if our player chooses the wrong thing. It would be as if a computer was built out of transistors that “may” switch as commanded or not, which would not be a very reliable method of computation.

To improve reliability of this particular Turing machine execution engine, the team combed through rules and cards to devise an encoding where the player is only ever presented with a single legal course forward. This ensures deterministic execution of the instruction stream, and now with proof of Turing-completeness in hand, we congratulate [Alex] on a successful conclusion to his decade-long quest.

We have a primer available for anyone who wants a refresher on Turing machines. They are utterly impractical but fun for hackers to build, and they are typically constructed of electronics and LEDs instead of ink on cardboard.

Via Ars Technica, who have presented their own analysis of this machine.

Main image: Unspecified set of Magic: The Gathering cards by [Robert] CC BY 2.0

Tags:  toy hacks  

We’ll all be familiar with Tic-Tac-Toe, or Noughts and Crosses, a childhood pencil-and-paper diversion which has formed the basis of many a coding exercise. It’s an easy enough task to implement in software, but how many of us have seen it done in hardware alone? That’s just what [Warren Toomey] has done using TTL chips, and his method makes for a surprisingly simple circuit.

At its heart is an 8 kB ROM that contains precomputed move sequences that are selected via an address composed of the game states for both player and machine. A series of flip-flops control and buttons to make the board, and a 555 provides a clock.

The technique of using a ROM to replace complex logic is a very powerful one that is facilitated by the low price of relatively large devices that would once have been unaffordable. We’ve seen the technique used elsewhere, including as an ALU in a TTL CPU, and even for an entire CPU in its own right.

You can see the result in operation in the video below the break, and should you wish to have a go for yourself all the relevant information can be found in a GitHub repository.

Tags:  toy hacks  

A Lamborghini Aventador Is beyond the budget of all but the most well-heeled fathers, but [CodeMakesItGo] came pretty close with a gift for his young son. It was a Lamborghini Aventador all right, but only the 6V Power Wheels ride-on version. As such it was laclustre even for a youngster in its performance, so he decided to give it a 12V upgrade. This proved to have enough grunt to cause wheelspin on those hard plastic wheels, so a further upgrade was a traction control system featuring a NodeMCU. No other child has such a conveyance!

Veterans of the Power Racing Series or Hacky Racers might have expected to see a Chinese motor controller in the mix, but instead he’s used a set of relays for simple on-off control. The traction control has a pair of 3D-printed sensor wheels that operate upon a corresponding  pair of optocouplers to provide feedback to the NodeMCU. A set of different drive options were tried, with finally an H-bridge board being found to be most reliable.

The video below the break shows the hardware, and goes into some detail on the software. The NodeMCU’s WiFi is used to provide some tweakability to the system on the go. The traction control turns out to lower the standing start speed a little, but makes the machine more controllable by its driver. he certainly seems happy with his toy!

Long-time readers will know this isn’t the first Power Wheels upgrade we’ve shown you.

Tags:  toy hacks  

If you were a British kid at any time from the 1950s to the 1980s, the chances are that your toy shop had a train set in it. Not just any train set, but a full model railway layout in a glass case roughly the size of a pool table, with a button that when pressed started a timer and set a little tank engine off on a circuit with a pair of coaches. Magical for a generation raised on black-and-white TV, but probably not something that would cut it with today’s youth. A modern take on the glass-case layout comes from [Jack Flynn], who has created a coffee table with an automated and computerised N-gauge railway layout inside it. And this is definitely a railway rather than a railroad, the main locomotive is a Brush Type 4, a British Rail Class 47 diesel.

The modelling is a work of art, with a slightly idealised British street scene in an oval of double track against a backdrop of a rocky hillside. In the hill is an unexpected surprise which you can see on the video we’ve  placed below the break, and beneath it lie the electronics. A Teensy handles the track switching and all the various LED lights around the board, a Sprog DCC controller takes care of the trains, and overseeing everything is a Raspberry Pi running some custom software in Python with a web interface for control. We probably wouldn’t be able to resist a bit of remote-control railway action if our coffee table had a layout like this one!

Tags:  toy hacks  

It is fun to make a toy vehicle with Lego, but it is even more fun to make one that actually works. [PeterSripol] made two Lego submarines, and you can see them in the video below. There isn’t a lot of build information, but watching the subs fire missiles and then getting destroyed by depth charges is worth something.

One of the subs is larger and uses a rudder to steer. It was apparently harder to control than the other smaller sub which used two motors thrusting opposite one another to steer. Looks like fun.

[Peter] found that he had to use lower frequency RC controllers to penetrate the water. The smaller one seems to be trailing a wire, so we think it may not have even used radio control. There were a number of custom 3D printed parts that help motors and other electromechanical devices.

There were a few things we were wondering about, though. The electronics used are pretty conventional, and soaking them in water is probably not great for their lifespan. It wasn’t clear to us also, whether the submarines had any buoyancy control. We think air trapped inside just kept them sort-of floating until the air escaped.

Our favorite model sub is also our favorite starship. If you want an example of buoyancy control, look at this past Hackaday prize entry.

Tags:  toy hacks  

Did you have anything planned for the next hour or so? No? That’s good because if you’re anything like us, watching even one of the restorations performed on [Marty’s Matchbox Makeovers] is likely to send you down a deep dark rabbit hole that you never knew existed. Even if you …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

If you had to guess the age of a person hailing from a country in which Lego is commonly available, you might very well do it by asking them about the Lego trains available in their youth. Blue rails or grey rails, 4.5, 9, or 12 volt power, and even somewhat unexpectedly, one rail or two. If that last question surprises you we have to admit that we were also taken aback to discover that for a few years in the 1980s everybody’s favourite Danish plastic construction toy company produced a monorail system.

[Mike Rigsby] had a rather ambitious Christmas …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

[CutTransformGlue] recently posted a build video for “Making Rey’s Star Wars Blaster“, embedded after the break. The construction uses layered MDF sheets to build up the blaster, and it’s a treat to see it taking shape, ending with an amazing paint job. It’s a good way to learn about the techniques used to bring such props to life and help you hone your skills. But digging deeper led us down an awesome rabbit hole.

[CutTransformGlue] got plans for Rey’s Blaster from the Punished Props Academy – a prop and costume making team from Seattle committed to “transforming passionate fans into …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

[Ben Gravy] isn’t your average pro surfer. For one thing, he lives in New Jersey instead of someplace like Hawaii or Australia, and for another he became famous not for riding the largest waves but rather for riding the weirdest ones. He’s a novelty wave hunter, but some days even the obscure surf spots aren’t breaking. For that, he decided to build a surfboard that doesn’t need waves.

The surfboard that [Ben] used for this project isn’t typical either. It’s made out of foam without any fiberglass, which makes the board less expensive than a traditional surfboard. The propulsion was …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Dave Jones is something of a celebrity in the hacker and maker communities, bringing his considerable knowledge and experience to bear on a wide variety of electronic and engineering topics. His unique voice and candor have endeared him to many, and he’s one of the more quotable YouTubers currently on the scene. With that in mind, [Andrei Aldea] decided to build a Speak ‘n’ Say in his honor.

The build was inspired by an earlier effort by [Ben Heck]. [Andrei] started by disassembling the Speak ‘n’ Say, and determined that there was a simple button matrix that would allow the …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Tamiya’s Mini 4WD toy line primarily consists of small 1:32 scale toy cars powered by AA batteries, which have no remote control and are guided around a plastic track by horizontally oriented drive guide wheels. Tuning and racing these cars is popular in many parts of the world, but this build is a little different.

After initial experiments with a modified Tamiya chassis are unsuccessful, a fresh build using a bespoke aluminium chassis is begun. A sturdy boiler is created, feeding into a piston which is used to drive all four wheels through a series of driveshafts.

It’s interesting to …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Sometimes a beautiful project is worth writing on that merit alone, but when it functions as designed,someone takes the time to create a thorough and beautiful landing page for their project, we get weak in the knees. We feel the need to grab the internet and point our finger for everyone to see. This is one of those projects that checks all our boxes. [Nathan Petersen] made a POV toy top called Razzler, jumping through every prototyping hoop along the way. The documentation he kept is what captured our hearts.

The project is a spinning top with an integrated persistence-of-vision …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

We’re no stranger to Power Wheels modifications, from relatively simple restorations to complete rebuilds which retain little more than the original plastic body. These plastic vehicles have the benefit of nostalgia to keep the adults interested, and naturally kids will never get tired of their own little car or truck to tear around the neighborhood in. Many toys come and go, but we don’t expect Power Wheel projects to disappear from our tip line anytime soon.

Today’s project starts with a straightforward Power Wheels restoration story: [myromes] picked up a well-worn Jeep and decided that it needed a fresh coat …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Nerf blasters have been around for decades now, exciting children and concerning parents alike. Most are powered by springs or compressed air, and are the ideal holiday toy for putting delicate family heirlooms at risk. Not content to settle for the usual foam-flinging sidearm, [Peter Sripol] decided to take things up a notch.

The build starts with a MEGA CYCLONESHOCK blaster, which uses the larger red NERF darts as ammunition. Water tanks are rigged to the outside, fitted with stainless steel electrodes. The original spring & plunger firing  assembly is then removed, to make room for a firing chamber made …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Radio controlled models are great fun. Most of us have had a few RC cars as children and maybe dabbled with the occasional helicopter or drone. It’s a rare breed of modeler, however, that gets to drive a radio-controlled bridge laying tank.

The model is a replica of the British Centurion Bridgelayer – a modified tank designed to allow mechanized units to readily cross rivers and similar obstacles in European battlefields. While the genuine article relied on hydraulics, the RC version takes a different tack. [hawkeye3guns] built custom linear actuators out of motors, gears, and brass to deploy the bridge. …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

[Jan] is one of those people who’s always playing around with synthesizers, and in this day and age, that means a lot of USB cables supplying power. If you want to make a synth setup portable, your best option is looking at USB powerbanks with their fancy lithium cells. These will work just fine, but remember: you can buy D cells just about anywhere, and they actually hold a ridiculous amount of energy. They’re cheap albeit one-use and disposable, so why not build a USB power bank out of a massive pair of batteries?

The build started off, naturally, with …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Using LEGO Technic gears and rods seems like a great way of bringing animation to your regular LEGO creation. Using gears and crank shafts you can animate models from your favorite TV show or movie like LEGO kinetic sculpture maker, [Josh DaVid] has done when he created a spinning TARDIS.  Crank the handle and the sculpture spins through space and time.

The large gear stays in place. The hidden gears, turned by the crank, rotate a shaft from below that goes through the large gear making the TARDIS rotate around the main axis. Connected to the TARDIS model is a …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

If you were a youth in the 90s, odds are good that you were a part of the virtual pet fad and had your very own beeping Tamagotchi to take care of, much to the chagrin of your parents. Without the appropriate amout of attention each day, the pets could become sick or die, and the only way to prevent this was to sneak the toy into class and hope it didn’t make too much noise. A more responsible solution to this problem would have been to build something to take care of your virtual pet for you.

An art …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

For most of us, a good part of our childhood involved running around someone’s backyard (or inside the house) trying to score hits with a toy NERF gun. The fun level was high and the risk of personal injury was low. Now that we’re all mostly adults, it’s probably time to take our NERF game to the next level with some risk of serious personal harm.

In an effort to help his brother get back at him for being somewhat of a bully in their youth, [Allen Pan] gifted him with an upgraded NERF gun. Specifically, one with darts that …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Introduced in 1960 for the princely sum of $2.99 ($25.00 today), Etch A Sketch was to become a standard issue item for the Baby Boomers’ toy box. As enchanting as the toy seems, it’s hard to see why it had staying power: it was hard for young fingers to twirl the knobs, diagonal lines and smooth curves required a concert pianist’s fine motor control, and whatever drawings we managed to make were erased at the slightest jostle of the tablet.

Intent on righting these wrongs, [Sunny Balasubramanian] not only motorized an Etch A Sketch, but he’s also given it a …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Did you know that chocolate candy production and sorting LEGO bricks have something in common? They both use the same techniques for turning clumps of chocolates or bricks into individual ones moving down a conveyor belt. At least that’s what [Paco Garcia] found out when making his LEGO Sorter.

However, he didn’t find that out right away. He first experimented with his own techniques, learning that if he fed bricks to his conveyor belt by dropping a batch of them in a line perpendicular to the direction of belt travel then no subsequent separation attempt of his worked. He then …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

A few months ago, YouTube user [Maladroit Modeller] uploaded a video of his model TARDIS from Doctor Who which shows an inside that’s bigger than the outside. Recently, [Maladroit Modeller] posted some pictures and has now uploaded a video showing how it’s done.

The TARDIS model itself is a 3:75 scale “Spin & Fly” model. The case to show everything off is built from foam core and the interior is built from foam core, silver paper, cardboard, styrene and other bits and pieces. There looks like there’s some EL wire being used, too, along with a lot of LEDs.

The …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

What do you get when you combine a cheap RC boat from Walmart, foam board, a couple powerful motors, and some aluminum cans? Most people would just end up with a pile of garbage, but we’ve already established [Peter Sripol] is fairly far from “most people”. In his hands, this collection of scraps turns into an almost unbelievably nimble seaplane, despite looking like something out of a TailSpin and Mad Max crossover episode.

In his latest YouTube video, [Peter] takes viewers through the process of turning one of these rather lame RC boats into an impressive flying machine. His took …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

[Fmilburn] was having fun with his grandkids, playing around with a small Radio Shack solar panel, some supercapacitors and a Zener diode when the kids eventually moved on to blowing bubbles with their grandmother. To regain their interest he got an inexpensive battery powered, soap Bubble Blaster and converted it to run on the solar panel and supercapacitors instead.

His write-up is a pretty fun read, walking through his process, including an oscilloscope measurement showing how the capacitors’ voltage drops from 5.26 V to 3.5 V when the trigger is pressed, and interestingly, slowly recovers until it’s released a second …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

[Jacob Christ] writes in with a hack that’s going to be this summer’s fidget spinner. Why? The favourite toy of his youngster’s generation is a Glimmie. And while fidget spinners were useful for, well, spinning, the small animal-like Glimmie seems to have an unexpected property, they can function as logic gates.

They form an optical inverter, in their head is a phototransistor and in their belly an LED which goes on when the head is in the dark. He’s found through experimentation that they can be combined to form an AND gate, and thus a NAND gate with the addition …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

The last chapter of the fourth book of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy mentions two hacks that made life pleasant enough to prevent a war: a super-fly that could fly out of the open half of a half-open window, and an off-switch for children. This is one of those types of hacks. Plus, it’s just an awesome idea, fun to watch, and possibly adaptable for the workshop.

After the kids have gone to bed and LEGO bricks are scattered all over the floor, furniture, stairs (ouch), and everywhere else, wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply vacuum …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

We like to think that all these new voice-controlled gadgets like our cell phones, Google Home, Amazon Echo, and all that is the pinnacle of new technology. Enabled by the latest deep learning algorithms, voice-controlled hardware was the stuff of science fiction back in the 1961s, right? Not really. Turns out in around 1960, Ideal sold Robot Commando, a kid’s toy robot that featured voice control.

Well, sort of. If you look at the ad in the video below, you’ll see that a kid is causing the robot to move and fire missiles by issuing commands into a microphone. How …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Persistance of Vision, or POV, displays are ever popular around these parts. Spin a few LEDs and you can make images appear in almost-thin air – just don’t stick your finger in the way. [FriskP] found a great application for this hardware – creating an anime-styled spellcasting gun.

The basic gun is built around a Nerf blaster, which is common in a lot of this type of steampunk and anime build. A Phantom3D POV display is then bolted on to the front along with some 3D printed components for style. The ensemble is then painted in a suitably awesome fashion. …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Youtuber and rubber band enthusiast [JoergSprave] is a big fan of Star Wars, and he loved the look of the blaster that Han Solo gave to Rey. He’d seen a few replicas of Rey NN-14 gun, but hadn’t seen any that actually fired anything, so he set out to make one that did.

The build itself is from plywood, with a paint job to make it look like an old blaster. What makes the build really cool is the bullets used: glow sticks! [Joerg] created space in the magazine for three glow sticks, so you’ve got a couple of shots …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

There are no shortage of Nerf gun mods out there. From simply upgrading springs to removing air restrictors, the temptation of one-upping your opponents in a Nerf war speaks to many!

Not content with such lowly modifications [Peter Sripol] decided that his blaster needed to see some propane action.

[Peter] completely stripped out the existing firing mechanism before creating a new combustion chamber from some soldered copper pipe. He added a propane tank and valve on some 3D-printed mounts, and replaced the barrel to produce some intense firepower.

To ignite the fuel inside the combustion chamber, some taser circuitry creates …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

Many of us in the United States frequently browse the shelves of Toys R Us for things to hack on. Sadly that era will soon end with the chain’s closing. In the meantime, the entire store becomes the clearance shelf as they start liquidating inventory. Depending on store, the process may begin as soon as Thursday, March 22. (Warning: video ads on page.)

While not as close to hacker hearts as the dearly departed Radio Shack or Maplin, Toys R Us has provided the hacker community with a rich source of toys we’ve repurposed for our imagination. These toys served …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

We’ve all heard the complaints from oldsters: “Cars used to be so simple that all you needed to fix them was a couple of wrenches and a rag. Now, you need a computer science degree to even pop the hood!” It’s true to some extent, but such complexity is the cost of progress in the name of safety and efficiency. And now it seems this complexity is coming way down-market, with this traction control system for a Power Wheels Lamborghini.

While not exactly an entry-level model from the Power Wheels line of toddler transportation, the pint-sized Lamborghini Aventador [Jason] bought …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

What’s more fun, driving RC cars around on rugged terrain, or having a paintball battle? How about doing both at the same time by making an RC controlled, paintball firing tank? [Nate] from the King of Random YouTube channel did just that by mounting a modified paintball gun to a stripped-down RC car, adding an RC trigger to remotely fire the gun, and covering it all in EVA foam armor in the shape of a tank. And then he did it again so that he’d have someone to battle against.

He walks through the full build in the first video …read more

Tags:  toy hacks  

This Van de Graaf generator was built using mostly parts on hand. The only thing that was purchased for the project was the Christmas ornament shaped M&M candy tin that serves as the collecting sphere. We didn’t include the in-action shot in the banner because it’s so dark. But sure enough, this will generate the [...]

Tags:  generator graaf hand van-de-graaff van-de-graaf-generator van-de-graaff-generator van-de-graaf toy hacks  

Inspired by souvenir penny presses, [Robert] built the Olin College penny press. This machine stamps out coins with the school’s name and a variety of other patterns. He built it as part of a mechanical structures course, with the goal of designing something that used large forces. Crushing a penny takes about five tons of force. To [...]

Tags:  college penny olin robert penny-press mechanical-structures olin-college toy hacks  

We think you’ll turn a few heads in Central Park if you’re driving a water melon around when everyone else is piloting sailboats. This watermelon is both sea worthy and radio controlled thanks to the work which [Starting Electronics] put into it. We used this image because it shows you what’s inside of the hull, [...]

Tags:  boat air watermelon central-park water-melon air-boat toy hacks  

This could be the dawning of a new hackerspace sport. [Antoni Kaniowski] and [Rohit Sharma] came up with a delightful game of desktop golf. But the control scheme has a decidedly geeky flair. They’re using salvaged parts from an audio device and a hard drive to control the swing of the mechanical golfer just out of [...]

Tags:  table hackerspace golf rohit-sharma delightful-game control-scheme toy hacks  

[Jim] used a logic analyzer to do some in depth analysis of the Syma 107G helicopter’s IR protocol. We’ve seen work to reverse engineer this protocol in the past, but [Jim] has improved upon it. Instead of reading the IR output of the controller, [Jim] connected a Saleae Logic directly to the controller’s circuitry. This allowed him [...]

Tags:  syma protocol logic jim ir-protocol logic-analyzer reverse-engineering toy hacks  

[Jack Crossfire] took one of those inexpensive indoor helicopters and made it autonomous. He didn’t replace the hardware used for the helicopter, but augmented it and patched into the remote control to make a base station. The position feedback is provided in much the same way that the Wii remote is used as a pointing [...]

Tags:  autonomous-helicopter wii-remote position-feedback toy hacks  

Our days by the pool are behind us for the year. But playing pirate ship with a 2-year-old does sound like quite a bit of fun. That’s why [The Stone Donkey] built this pirate cannon prop complete with firing sounds. The simplicity of the design is pretty brilliant. Three segments of PVC and five fittings make [...]

Tags:  cannon pirate fun pirate-ship bit-of-fun toy hacks  

Building a MIDI device is always a great microcontroller project, and nearly everyone has an old toy keyboard lying around in the back of a closet or in the basement. [JenShen] decided to take one of these toy keyboards and build a MIDI keyboard. The keyboard [JenShen] used was a simple Casio keyboard with built-in [...]

Tags:  midi toy keyboard microcontroller-project midi-keyboard midi-keyboards musical hacks  

This truck is not simply a drive train and a radio module. Great care was taken to fabricate every part to work like a full-sized vehicle. NSFW WARNING: The forum on which the details have been posted is Russian and may have sidebar ads you don’t want on your screen at work. That being said, here’s the [...]

Tags:  drive truck wheel radio-module working-windows drive-train toy hacks  

This office has a Foosball league that automatically tallies and posts the standings for each employee. This is thanks to all of the extra electronics that were added to the Foosball table in the break room. The system is connected to the internet via WiFi. This allows it to store the final results of each [...]

Tags:  foosball electronically office foosball-table break-room tallies toy hacks  

We hope [Kabir's] driving skills are top-notch because the camera stuck to the front of this toy is a high-ticket item. It’s ironic, since the donor toy for this hacked RC car only cost about five bucks. It had been gathering dust in the dark reaches of his bedroom until he sat down and gave [...]

Tags:  toy ride car top-notch gathering-dust five-bucks arduino hacks  

Here’s one for the ladies (and men, we guess) out there. [Beth] recently bought a LELO Lyla vibrator for herself, but found operating this wireless vibrator to be an exercise in mood-killing awkwardness. Wanting a more natural interface, she decided to reverse engineer a remote control vibrator. Here’s a cache; [Beth]‘s blog has been up and down all [...]

Tags:  engineering vibrator reverse beth wireless-vibrator natural-interface awkwardness toy hacks  

You may be familiar with the Hexbug Spider, a small electronic robot toy sold at Target and Walmart for $20. While they’re able to be commanded to move forward, backward, and spin around on a dime, there aren’t any external sensors to make it really exciting. [Eric] sought to remedy this and came up with [...]

Tags:  robot spider hexbug eric line-following-robot electronic-robot external-sensors toy hacks  

  My kids have a plastic farm toy. It moos, it oinks, it neighs, it baas, and frankly, it grates. But since I tricked it out with an attiny2313, at least it can play “Simon Says”. This is what [Tom] said in his email to us. We love that when the toy annoyed [Tom], he [...]

Tags:  toy hacked farm tom simon-says farm-toy email attiny2313 hacks  

Whatever candidate (if any) you’re in favor of, we could bet that you’re probably tired of seeing advertisements and political signs everywhere. [Mark] wrote in with a hack that allows you to actually use these signs for something fun, making a RC airplane! [Mark] gives a full bill of materials in his article, but the [...]

Tags:  airplane candidate favor mark political-signs bill-of-materials something-fun toy hacks  

For reasons we can’t comprehend, model train layouts are  incredibly popular in Germany. [Gerhard] is one of those model train aficionados that has moved far beyond a layout with a transformer controlling the speed of the train; he sent in a tip for a very tiny Rocrail server he built to control the locomotives moving across his [...]

Tags:  server train model gerhard germany model-train-layouts model-trains locomotives toy hacks  

[Valentin] wrote in to tell us about his automatic Airsoft turret. What it lacks in accuracy, it more than makes up for with sheer volume of fire. The pellet container is able to hold 500 6mm bbs, so make sure to get out of the way after this device is armed. The device itself is [...]

Tags:  device airsoft turret valentin sheer-volume 6mm toy hacks  

So you’ve got a broken gear for you model helicopter, and don’t have a 3d printer handy. If you need your little helo flying right away, [James] wrote in to tell us about his solution. As you may have guessed from the title, he made a tiny mould and produced a copy of the gear [...]

Tags:  helicopter moulding gear james micro-helicopter model-helicopter 3d-printer toy hacks  

When [Nisker]‘s son got a very, very loud and annoying toy, he did what any good maker parent would do: instead of removing the batteries, he sought a way to lower the volume instead. This, of course, meant cracking open the toy and going at the circuit board with a soldering iron. Not having a [...]

Tags:  lab toy nisker electronics-lab soldering-iron mobile-electronics tool hacks  

We think this hand cranked robot design is nothing short of absolute brilliance. The toy is remote-controlled through a short section of wire. It can drive forward and turn, but not at the same time. Still that’s impressive considering it uses no battery or power supply and, of the two servo motors, only one is [...]

Tags:  power hand toy robot-design electric-toy brilliance hacks  

Check out this Rubik’s Cube for the blind. The idea didn’t start off as an accessibility hack, but instead as a way for [Brian Doom] to figure out where the face of each cube goes when manipulating the puzzle. It gave him tactile feedback and his ability to use it in dim lighting was when it [...]

Tags:  rubik cube idea brian-doom rubik-s-cube dim-lighting tactile-feedback toy hacks  

You’re certainly not going to sneak up on anyone if using this LEGO motorized wheelchair. The high-pitched whine of all those tiny motors sounds like an army of robotic mosquitoes out for blood. Six of the LEGO Mindstorm bricks are used to drive the motors, with a seventh acting as the master. It’s not pictured [...]

Tags:  lego wheelchair motorized lego-mindstorm lego-pieces pitched-whine toy hacks  

Looking at this 17-stage Great Ball Contraption makes us think that [Skiyuky] should be working in industrial automation. The build, which has been assembled from an untold volume of LEGO parts, moves a reservoir of round plastic balls around a circuit. Each module exhibits a different mechanical way of handling the parts. It’s certainly not the first [...]

Tags:  stage great ball lego-pieces plastic-balls industrial-automation toy hacks  

Retroball is, as its Kickstarter campaign says, “Retro Fun for up to Four Players.” What you might not know, is that it’s ancestor was featured here earlier last year. With a year and a half of development underway, the build looks spectacular, and the people in their promo video look like they’re having lots of [...]

Tags:  super retroball year pong-table video-look ancestor toy hacks  

[Eric Steenstra], from the Netherlands, decided to build a GoKart entirely from LEGO Mindstorm parts. Tested at being able to carry just over 100Kg in weight, a 16 stone man(224 lbs). This GoKart can easily carry a child and propel him along. Eric used 48 stock Mindstorm motors, geared down,  and 16 battery packs to provide a balance [...]

Tags:  lego gokart mindstorm ericsteenstra eric the-netherlands lego-mindstorm stone-man toy hacks  

Every year, [ilektronx] and a few other guys get together and compete in a ‘no holds barred’ pinewood derby for kids of all ages. Of course this results in an immense amount of engineering to push a wooden block with wheels down a track, and [ilektronx]‘s car is no exception. He won the competition with [...]

Tags:  derby ilektronx pinewood wheels toy hacks  

[Fred Murphy] went ahead and revised his method of making custom records for a Fisher Price toy record player. He’s now able to 3D print the discs. The toy works much like a music box, with a comb in the “cartridge” of the record player and notches in the record that pluck the fingers of [...]

Tags:  fisher player record fred-murphy 3d-printer fisher-price toy hacks  

In the US, summer is marked by two holidays. In late May, Memorial day traditionally marks the the beginning of summer, the opening of public pools, and the day shopping malls are invaded by scores of petulant teenagers. In early September, Labor day marks the traditional end of summer, a great weekend to fire up [...]

Tags:  labor day summer public-pools labor-day-weekend shopping-malls toy hacks  

Inspired by the many autonomous rovers such as Curiosity and the self-driving Google car, [Rohit] decided to build his own by taking an off-the-shelf remote control car and adding his own electronics. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find the datasheet for the chip used to receive radio signals and drive the motors, so he ended up building his [...]

Tags:  curiosity control car rohit remote-control-car radio-signals google toy hacks  

[Niklas Roy] is at it again. He’s applying wind power to his projects by using umbrellas. He was inspired by the shape of an anemometer, and umbrellas turned out to be a great choice because they’re cheap and easy to find. Anemometers measure wind speed by capturing it with egg-shaped sails (in fact, we’ve seen them [...]

Tags:  umbrella-based power wind niklas-roy measure-wind-speed anemometer wind-power toy hacks  

Half the fun of buying toys for your kids is getting your hands on them when they no longer play with them. [Kerry Wong] seems to be in this boat. He bought a Syma S107G helicopter for his son. The flying toy is IR controlled and he reverse engineered the protocol it uses. This isn’t [...]

Tags:  syma toy helicopter kerry toy-helicopter buying-toys half-the-fun hacks  

The folks at the Louisville hackerspace LVL1 created the handiest and the dandiest kitchen tool you’ve ever seen. It’s not a slicer, it’s not a dicer, or a chopper or a hopper; it’s… a Star Wars Force Trainer that blows up watermelons. The project is called Mind Over Melon and was created by [Chris] and [...]

Tags:  mind becoming gallagher chris louisville dicer kitchen-tool slicer toy hacks  

This fantastic work by [Native18] shows a quad copter reproduction of the Heli carrier used by the Avengers. Following this thread (translated), you can follow along his thought process as well as his build process as he proceeds. The construction is mainly paper and lightweight foam, but it still manages to float and even take [...]

Tags:  carrier life process s.h.i.e.l.d.-heli lightweight-foam thought-process avengers toy hacks  

We’ve seen lots of budget tri-copters, but $100 seems like a heck of a deal to us! Watching this video, you can see this home made tri-copter is incredibly agile and seems to handle quite well. Whats amazing is that [hallstudio] claims that it cost roughly $100. That price is really good compared to even [...]

Tags:  deal heck budget copters toy hacks  

We don’t really know what to say. This Skeeball cabinet is built entirely from Knex. It works exactly how you’d expect Skeeball to work. You plug in quarter and it dispenses balls and keeps score. [Shadowman39] worked on the build for more than a year. Everything that went into it is a Knex part with [...]

Tags:  skeeball knex mechanical balls toy hacks  

Swing sets and jungle gyms are good enough for your average back yard. But if you want to go extreme you need to build your own backyard roller coaster. This impressive offering uses PVC pipe for the rails. At its tallest it stands 12 feet, using pressure treated 4×4 lumber as the supports. Pressure treated spacers span [...]

Tags:  manpowered pvc pressure jungle-gyms pvc-pipe swing-sets toy hacks  

As [Brad] over at the LVL1 hackerspace watched his friend build a Laser tag/tazer mashup for Makerfaire Detroit 2012, he noticed these new laser tag guns were really cool. These Light Strike guns have an impressive array of electronics for a $30 toy, but there was still much to be desired. [Brad] decided to reverse engineer [...]

Tags:  laser hacking tag brad detroit tag-guns custom-guns impressive-array toy hacks  

The Mars Science Laboratory hasn’t had her wheels down for a day and already the Curiosity-inspired builds are rolling in. [Will] and [Doug] built a LEGO model of the Curiosity rover for the Build the Future in Space event at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Everything on this scaled-down version of Curiosity is completely made out of LEGO, including the four powered wheels, motorized [...]

Tags:  space lego curiosity doug kennedy-space-center lego-version lego-model toy hacks  

Last weekend at the Detroit Maker Faire, the folks at the Lansing Makers Network brought a large-scale version of the classic electronic board game Operation. MegOperation, as the Lansing hackerspace calls their build, is a gigantic printout of the chronically ill guy from Operation plastered onto a sheet of plywood. Wire loops surround each incision to detect when [...]

Tags:  version isn operation lansing detroit wire-loops electronic-board board-game toy hacks  

Perennial Hackaday favorite [Dino] has an article in this months Make magazine. It’s an automated ball launcher that allows you to play fetch with your dog without wearing your arm out. The powerhouse inside [Dino]‘s ball launcher is a windshield wiper motor powered by an 18 Volt cordless drill battery pack. When a ball in dropped into the [...]

Tags:  ball launcher fetch dino windshield-wiper-motor battery-pack toy hacks  

For just a few bucks you can add a payload to your flying toys. In this case it’s a Cessna RC plane which now has an added surprise. The first thing to be dropped was a parachute with a weight on it (for testing purposes). But there are hints of future projects that will use [...]

Tags:  cessna case payload added-surprise flying-toys rc-plane toy hacks  

The Stylophone – a musical toy from the 60s – is a surprisingly simple piece of engineering. With a simple metallic keyboard played with a stylus and just a handful of transistors, the Stylophone was able to produce a few marvelous for their time sounds, and is the equivalent of a pre-[Stradivarius] violin for the [...]

Tags:  stylophone piece toy stradivarius-violin musical-toy musical hacks  

Since we put out a call for model and amateur rocketry hacks, we’ve been getting a lot of submissions on our tip line. Here’s two that found their way to us yesterday: Upgrading an original Back in the early 70s, Estes released a rocket with an 8mm movie camera attached to the nose of the [...]

Tags:  video launching recording 8mm-movie-camera launching-rockets tip-line toy hacks  

Sure, you could pretend to be the Doctor with a simple plastic sonic screwdriver. It might even have a LED on the tip, and if you’re really splurging a tiny speaker for sound effects. Yep, you could make due with an inelegant version of the Doctor’s Gallifreyan army knife, or you could get this amazingly detailed [...]

Tags:  doctor sonic screwdriver sonic-screwdriver tiny-speaker army-knife toy hacks  

A few weeks ago we caught wind of [Mick] breaking out his screwdrivers and soldering iron to get a serial console on his son’s VTech InnoTab. [Mick] was able to get the touchscreen working and successfully ported SCUMMVM to the device, but there was still a long road ahead to get  the source for this [...]

Tags:  innotab turning linux mick soldering-iron scummvm screwdrivers toy hacks  

If you’ve been playing with electronics for long enough, eventually you’ll need a nice remote control transmitter to control your RC car, airplane, or any other robotics project you have lying around. With these robotics projects comes the problem remote control, and the XBee Handheld Controller may be just the ticket to remotely control any project [...]

Tags:  xbee remote control robotics-projects robotics-project toy hacks  

[Dave] and [Martin], otherwise known as Ballistic Locomotive, sent in their entry for the Redbull creation contest. It’s a roller coaster simulator that can emulate the twists, turns, and drops of a roller coaster in your living room. The simulator is built around a plywood roller coaster car mounted on a 2 DOF table. With [...]

Tags:  roller coaster simulator dave martin roller-coaster-car twists-turns dof toy hacks  

Sure, as a very powerful and influential LEGO dictator you’re more than able to make the trains run on time, but how do you make your LEGO citizens realize the benefits of living under your regime? With an OLED LEGO train schedule, of course! [Dan] over at Adafruit put together a great guide to interfacing a [...]

Tags:  lego dictator oled dan lego-train train-schedule toy hacks  

[Blair] sent in a project he’s been working on for a while. It’s called the Crayolascope, and it allows for the creation of an extremely low-fi volumetric display using a Crayola Glow book. The Crayola Glow Book is a pretty neat toy composed of four clear plastic panels. Each of these four panels are illuminated from the [...]

Tags:  glow crayolascope crayola blair flat-displays neat-toy low-fi toy hacks  

What do you do if you’re given a gigantic ancient printer? If you’re [IronJungle], you throw that printer on your workbench and salvage all the parts you can. After coming across a few stepper motors in an old Oki printer, [IronJungle] decided to automate an Etch-a-Sketch with the help of a PIC microcontroller and H-bridge chip [...]

Tags:  ironjungle printer sketch etch-a-sketch pic-microcontroller oki-printer toy hacks  

I have heard the joke several times that a light saber would make a great bug zapper. However, when [Ricky Sumbody] requested it on Facebook, I thought “why not?”. [Ricky] made a common mistake, he thought the bulb was the part that actually zaps the bugs. A quick google search revealed that many people had [...]

Tags:  lightsaber joke saber ricky ricky-sumbody google-search light-saber google toy hacks  

The North Carolina Maker Fare was last weekend, and over the course of the festivities  [Dave] was asked for the documentation for the arcade game he built. It’s a neat build, so we’re very glad he chose to share it with us. Anyone who has been to an arcade in the last 15 years has [...]

Tags:  arcade-game festivities north-carolina toy hacks  

Last Christmas, [bonafide] received a WiFi enabled remote control helicopter from his employer. The heli is an interesting bit of kit, able to be controlled with an Android or iDevice. Being the good tinkerer he is, [bonafide] took a screwdriver to his Wi-Fli Bladerunner Helicopter and reengineered the toy to use an off-the-shelf wireless router. [...]

Tags:  bonafide router helicopter remote-control-helicopter remote-controlled-helicopter wireless-router toy hacks  

[Rick] sent in an awesome project he and his uncle [Charlie] have been working on for this summer. It’s a completely automatic wakeboarding system that tows [Charlie] and company from one end of his backyard pond and back again. The entire system is supported by two towers at either end of the pond. Strung between these [...]

Tags:  end pond system rick charlie backyard-pond uncle-charlie wakeboarding toy hacks  

[Nick] was somewhat disappointed when the Wi-Fly helicopter he bought his son broke in less than 10 minutes. The main gear that turns the rotor split in half, rendering the copter WiFi enabled trash. [Nick] however decided that he didn’t want to waste an opportunity and harvested the receiver parts.  To test them out, he [...]

Tags:  fli harvest copter nick fly-helicopter wifi toy hacks  

A few years ago, the EasyStar RC plane took the remote control community by storm, launching dozens of clone ready to fly planes that found their way onto many fields, rooftops, and trees. [hammydude] wanted to take his EasyStar with him while also playing around with his jetski, so he did the reasonable thing: he [...]

Tags:  easystar plane waterproofing rc-plane jetski rooftops toy hacks  

As a final project in their 3rd year of the University of Technology Sydney, [James] and a few classmates put together this interesting game. Called BrainTap, it is described as a game targeted at the baby boomers focusing on fine motor skills and memory. The game plays similar to the common game “simon”. The box [...]

Tags:  university-of-technology-sydney baby-boomers classmates toy hacks  

Like most people out there, we’re fascinated by these little buzzing and hovering quadrotors. We’ve really enjoyed the recent trend of miniaturizing them and using PCBs as the frame itself. As [scolton] points out in his instructible, his isn’t the first, the smallest, or the lightest, but he does have some great information and a [...]

Tags:  pcbs toy hacks  

His goal of one post a week for a year has past, but [Dino] keeps bringing his skills to bear on new projects. This time around he’s adding a wireless camera to an RC helicopter. These radio controlled fliers (there are cheap ones that use IR control which is much less reliable) can be found for [...]

Tags:  eye building sky dino rc-helicopter eye-in-the-sky own-eye toy hacks  

A while back, [Stefan] bought a pedal-powered tractor for his son. It was a fun toy, but what it really needed was an electric motor. After a fair bit of tinkering, [Stefan] turned a pedal-powered tractor into a battery-powered Power Wheels. Before turning his son’s pedal tractor into a battery-powered ride, [Stefan] ordered a 250 [...]

Tags:  tractor wheels power stefan power-wheels toy hacks  

A huge collection of pinball machines in your basement is one of the crowing achievements of a geek, but what if you could have a huge library of physical pinball machines at you fingertips? [veriix] shared an imgur gallery in a reddit post documenting his wee little pinball machine he built from scratch. Inside the pinball cabinet, [...]

Tags:  machine mini pinball mame-machine pinball-machines pinball-machine toy hacks  

The Vtech InnoTab is a child-sized tablet computer built for kids. Apart from being the ideal solution to keeping the grubby, sticky hands of nieces and nephews away from proper ‘adult sized’ tablets, it can also serve as a Linux tablet perfect for a few homebrew apps. [Mick] picked up an InnoTab for his son, but after [...]

Tags:  vtech innotab linux mick nieces-and-nephews sticky-hands tablet-computer toy hacks  

Unfortunately, none of our writers are located in California this year. This means that we weren’t able to go to the Bay Area MakerFaire and see the cool stuff for ourselves. We have been following along on the web though and a few projects have caught our eye. The rig you see above is a physical [...]

Tags:  light none life bay-area california cool-stuff rig makerfaire toy hacks  

[Jim's] pretty serious about his Etch a Sketch. He’s gone to the trouble of building a rig that will automatically render a photograph as Etch a Sketch art. Do you recognize the US political figure being plotted in this image? He actually cracks these open and removes all of the internals to preserve the artwork [...]

Tags:  etch sketch mug jim etch-a-sketch sketch-art internals toy hacks  

[sjm4306] had a small Magic 8-Ball key chain as a kid. The fluid in this key chain eventually dried up, and if [sjm] is anything like us the 20-sided die is now lost to the sands of time or at the very least hidden in a box in the basement. After remembering the old Magic [...]

Tags:  magic-8-ball digital-magic old-magic toy hacks  

When my children got these interesting and very obnoxious toy dinosaurs last year, I could barely contain my excitement. I knew that one day, they would be on my work bench giving up their secrets. Cruncher is a fairly recent addition to the robotic animal trend that we’ve been seeing the past few years. Imbued [...]

Tags:  dinosaur toy cruncher toy-dinosaurs work-bench robotic-toy HackIt  

Check out this giant pink hexacopter.  We see tons of quad copters here, but their bigger brothers/sisters the hexacopters don’t visit very often. When they do though, they get all dressed up as you can see in the picture above. This prototype frame is meant to protect both the props, and the innocent bystanders as [...]

Tags:  rest giant hexacopter innocent-bystanders copters props toy hacks  

What do you have to do to win best of show at an R/C event in Toledo? Build a 7 foot long fire breathing radio controlled dragon of course! [Rick Hamel] stuffed his electronics, a turbine engine, a kerosene tank, and a stun gun into a home built body shaped like a dragon. You can [...]

Tags:  flying-dragon turbine-engine fire-breathing toy hacks  

No, it’s not just another MAME cabinet build. [Le Chuck] over on the arcadecontrols.com forum built a fully functioning 1/6 scale replica of the classic 1983 Atari arcade game Star Wars. The hardware is a CAANOO Linux-based portable media player running an emulation of the classing 1983 Star Wars video game. When [Le Chuck] turns his cabinet on, MAME4All [...]

Tags:  game-star-wars atari-arcade star-wars-arcade toy hacks  

If you’ve ever wondered how a helicopter is able to fly, or would just like to see some awesome RC piloting, the four videos after the break should be just the thing! Although the basic physics of how one works is explained in the last three, one would still be hard pressed to explain how [...]

Tags:  helicopter model physics model-helicopter awesome-rc toy hacks  

If you like marble machines, or if you simply like alliteration, prepare to be amazed. [Denha] apparently has had a lot of time to spare over the years, as the marble machine collection he’s amassed is quite incredible. Dating back to 2009, the collection includes relatively simple machines, like the one pictured at the beginning, [...]

Tags:  collection marble machine marble-machine marble-machines simple-machines toy hacks  

We’ve seen Portal gun builds, a few cute turret replicas, and even a miniaturized version of GLaDOS, but [John]‘s Portal radio replica is the first physical version of this oft-forgotten Portal item. Interestingly, the entire radio is made from scrap. The spheroid body shell is made from the foam insulation from a commercial freezer, carefully sculpted, Bondoed, [...]

Tags:  commercial-freezer portal-radio foam-insulation toy hacks  

Crazyflie, the itty bitty quadcopter that uses a PCB for its frame is at the cusp of being able to fly without a PC. We were enamored with it when we first spotted it, and the Crazyflie has only gotten better. As you can see, a new PCB gives it a slightly more stylized look, [...]

Tags:  pcb quadcopter tiny pc.-we pc crazyflie cusp itty-bitty toy hacks  

This Lego watercraft uses drinking bottles as pontoons arranged in a pattern that make it look very much like a Water Strider, the insects that dance on the surface of a lake. After the break you can see a video of the rig gracefully navigating a local pond, along with a raft of ducks. It’s [...]

Tags:  lego water strider water-strider-robot pontoons watercraft toy hacks  

[Dablio] sent in an awesome console mod he made. It may just be the smallest Atari 2600 ever (Portuguese, here’s the Google translation). The build began with a Dynacom MegaBoy, from the same company that put out many less-than-legal 2600 clones. The MegaBoy PCB is an exercise in parsimony consisting of only a single IC, a crystal, and [...]

Tags:  megaboy teensiest atari google-translation atari-2600 google toy hacks  

Correspondence chess, or playing a game of chess via email or snail mail, is well-known in the chess community. [FunGowRightNow] thought he could bring correspondence chess into the 21st century, so he built two robotic chess boards that communicate over the Internet. The end result makes for an awesome senior project for school. Instead of [...]

Tags:  board chess correspondence correspondence-chess snail-mail chess-community toy hacks  

Being a dedicated father, soccer coach, general tinkerer, and electrical engineer, [Dave] decided to build a soccer simulator video game for his son’s 6th birthday party. The concept behind the game is to put a soccer ball on a tee and have an eager line of six-year-olds kick the ball into the goal. A video of a [...]

Tags:  soccer simulator birthday dave soccer-simulator soccer-coach electrical-engineer toy hacks  

[Mike Field] got his hands on this Syma S107 helicopter with the intention of hacking it. After playing around with it for a while he set out to build his own infrared controller for the toy. It seems there is some protocol information about it published in various forum posts, but he decided it would be [...]

Tags:  decoding toy helicopter mike-field infrared-controller forum-posts hacks  

We were all children at one time, and surely some of us remember the pain of trying to make one type of building block work with another type of block. The folks at the Free Art and Technology Lab have an answer for your inner child: adapters that connect any type of building block to any [...]

Tags:  type block building universal-construction toy-blocks technology-lab toy hacks  

CircuitLab is an electronics simulator which you can run in a browser. Above you can see one of the example circuits provided to help show the power of the application. You can build your schematic (perhaps you want to try [Jeri's] psu shut-off timer?) in the editor mode, then switch over to the simulator to [...]

Tags:  browser-based circuit simulator editor-mode psu timer toy hacks  

[Kevin] undertook a robot build partly for his own enjoyment, but also to include his kids in the action. He acquired a cheap toy and packed it full of programmable goodness. The starting point was a $15 toy called Rad 2.0. It’s a great starting point as it already included some motorized parts, and takes [...]

Tags:  robot starting toy kevin programmable-robot great-starting-point cheap-toy robots hacks  

You know you’ve got a good hardware platform if you can easily repurpose it with a code rewrite. And that’s what [Eric] continues to do with these little Hexbugs. This time around he’s bent the IR emitter and receiver downward to use as a reflectance sensor. This gives it the ability to follow a dark [...]

Tags:  code Hardware hexbug eric line-follower ir-emitter hardware-platform toy hacks  

Children of the 80s may remember the Big Trak, a six-wheeled programmable toy designed to explore distant planets on the other side of the living room and the vast expanse of a two-car garage. The Big Trak was re-released a few years ago and [Nathan] took quite a shine to this improved version. He was [...]

Tags:  trak big turning nathan vast-expanse distant-planets big-trak toy hacks  

The Syma S107 IR is a popular little remote controlled helicopter. When a friend of [Michael]‘s started flying one around the office he decided to try and jam the signal, creating a no fly zone. Luckily some people on the internet have already decoded the IR signals used by the flying menace. From there, a [...]

Tags:  jam syma helicopter michael remote-controlled-helicopter fly-zone s107 toy hacks  

How many of you have started playing Jenga, and thought, “If only I had a pistol that would punch the blocks out violently for me, that would be much more fun?” Your presumed request has been answered with the [Jenga Pistol 2]! There is also the [Jenga Pistol 1], which would be impressive if the [...]

Tags:  jenga pistol play awesome-way toy hacks  

[Johan] really got himself out of a bind with this one. After his son started playing AppMates, he desperately wanted the requisite figures to complete the experience. AppMates is an iPad game where a child drives a small plastic car around a virtual environment displayed on the touchscreen. Unfortunately for [Johan]‘s son, the officially licensed Cars characters would take at least three [...]

Tags:  appmates son augmented johan plastic-car pez-dispensers virtual-environment toy hacks  

[Will] from RevoltLab wrote in to share part one of a cool project he is working on right now, a remote-controlled mobile rocket launcher. Before you run off and call the Department of Homeland Security, he says that the launcher will be used for personal hobby rockets, which are typically considered mostly harmless. The first [...]

Tags:  wheels power launcher hobby-rockets rocket-launcher department-of-homeland-security toy hacks  

After taking the Stanford Machine Learning class offered over the Internet last year, [David Singleton] thought he could build something really cool. We have to admit that he nailed it with his neural network controlled car. There’s not much to the build; it’s just an Android phone, an Arduino and a toy car. The machine [...]

Tags:  toy neural car david-singleton stanford-machine arduino robots hacks  

With winter upon us, and all the windows shut, [Garfield] and [Socks] can get a little restless. But [Dino] is determined to keep his furry friends entertained through the cold dark months. He hit the junk box, and used some interesting fabrication techniques to build the Chase-a-Mouse motorized cat toy. The toy is popular with [...]

Tags:  pep toy cat socks dino garfield junk-box house-cat cat-toy home hacks  

[Maximilien] sent in a networking protocol built out of a LEGO train set. Unlike IP over Avian Carrier this system won’t be killed by plate-glass windows or birds of prey, but we’d hate to step on [Max]‘s work in bare feet. The system uses a USB flash drive to carry data around to different nodes. At each node, [...]

Tags:  lego carrier train max maximilien plate-glass-windows lego-train usb-flash-drive toy hacks  

[Ch00f] spent some serious time figuring out how the Icebreaker POV toy works. This is a pretty cool device about the size of a toothbrush holder. It’s in a clear plastic case, which lets the row of 32 surface mount LEDs shine through. But making light isn’t their only function. You can use the device [...]

Tags:  device toy icebreaker pov mount-leds toothbrush-holder cool-device toy-works hacks  

So you’re really looking for that [Norman Rockwell] Christmas and want to set up your train to encircle the Christmas tree this year. The problem is that all you’ve got is an old LEGO train set and not enough track for it. You can’t just buy some more, because the technology has changed; or can [...]

Tags:  lego christmas train norman-rockwell lego-train-set norman-rockwell-christmas retrofitting toy hacks  

Tis the season for hacking, and [Nick McClanahan] at the GadgetGangster is certainly showing off his Christmas spirit with his most recent creation. He had an animatronic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer toy sitting around and thought it would be fun to convert him into an email reading machine. He tore open the toy, removing [...]

Tags:  tis email toy nick-mcclanahan rudolph christmas-spirit incoming-email reading-machine misc hacks  

Aw, isn’t he cute? Looks are deceiving, because if you get him started, this duck says some vulgar things. [Gigavolt] found the little guy abandoned at the Goodwill store and decided it might have some hacking potential. Boy was he right. The stock toy can already sing a tune while flapping its beak and wings. [...]

Tags:  end naughty duck goodwill-store secret-santa beak toy hacks  

[Lvl_joe] has been having a little fun with fire and an animatronic pony. The skeletal horse seen above is a child’s toy denuded of its original plush shell. That’s a good thing, because those synthetic fibers don’t play very nicely with flames. The toy originally retailed for around $300 bucks, but if you’re lucky, like [...]

Tags:  fire toy pony synthetic-fibers little-fire animatronic-pony hacks  

Here’s a really tiny r/c blimp that doesn’t need several cubic feet of Helium to get off the ground. Instructables user [masynmachien] has been building r/c blimps for over a decade now, and this latest build is meant to have the same specs as this nanoblimp. The build is based on an 11-inch party balloon [...]

Tags:  balloon party blimp party-balloon cubic-feet toy hacks  

On his blog, [Kenneth Finnegan] recently showed off a replica of a fun toy he used to play with as a kid, a telephone intercom system. The setup is pretty simple, requiring little more than a pair of analog phones, a battery, and a resistor. The phones are connected to one another using a standard [...]

Tags:  intercom toy system kenneth-finnegan telephone-intercom-system tin-cans analog-phones classic hacks  

[Johnny Halfmoon] wanted to help out his three-year-old who was fascinated by the Bopit electronic game. In its stock condition it’s a bit too fast for the young one, so he cracked it opened and added the option to slow things down. Above you can see the Bopit Extreme with the top half of the [...]

Tags:  game stock bopit johnny-halfmoon bopit-extreme stock-condition electronic-game toy hacks  

While this year’s Christmas lists are dominated by electronic gadgets and other mass-produced toys, it wasn’t always like that. We’re not trying to sound like the old man yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn, but many of today’s gifts lack the personal touch found in old, hand-made toys. [henlij’s] son is [...]

Tags:  children toy gift electronic-gadgets neighborhood-kids personal-touch hacks  

Trade shows are all about attracting attention and getting people to learn about your product, so what could be better than a custom-built RC blimp? Sure, you could just buy one, but what’s the fun in that? After several design iterations, [Tretton37] came up with a blimp known as the [LeetZeppelin] controlled by an Arduino, [...]

Tags:  blimp show trade trade-show-booth design-iterations arduino toy hacks  

[qDot] recently got his hands on a MyKeepon toy and after messing with it a bit, decided to tear it down to see what was inside. He had hopes of easily modding the toy, but like most adventures in hacking, things might take a while longer than he first imagined. In his teardown you can [...]

Tags:  engineering mykeepon toy qdot teardown reverse-engineering news  

[Nathan], a member of the DangerousPrototypes forums, was looking for a project he could use to enter the 7400 logic competition they are holding. His kids had a small ride on police car, but the light bar on top contained no lights, and the car made no sounds when his children were in pursuit of [...]

Tags:  delight toy car nathan toy-car police-car sirens contests  

[Dominik’s] daughter had an old toy piano that she loved, but when the batteries started to die down, it played awful tones and sounded generally out of tune. While this is likely something our circuit bending friends might be interested in, [Dominik] preferred when things sounded more cheery. He considered simply replacing the batteries, but [...]

Tags:  daughter powering hand dominik old-toy toy-piano kids-toys toy hacks  

[Oskar] has been making puzzles for some time now. In 2000, he made a small electromechanical 4-bit maze that’s really fun to play. Lately though, he’s been working on an improved version that could be the beginnings of a commercial product. The earlier electromechanical maze (you can play it in an applet on that page) [...]

Tags:  maze tactile bit oskar electromechanical toy hacks  

[Jaroslav] was racing slot cars with his son not too long ago, but like many of us discovered in our youth, driving cars around a small oval track can get dull after awhile. Rather than buy more track sections, he decided to fiddle with their cars a bit to make racing them a little more exciting. [...]

Tags:  slot son track jaroslav driving-cars track-sections slot-cars toy hacks  

[Eric Gregori] picked up this little yellow robot as a kit build. It has a single PCB inside that has a pair of IR emitters and detectors pointed downward at the front of the robot. It is able to follow a dark line on a light surface based on how the infrared beam reflects back [...]

Tags:  kit robot toy eric-gregori yellow-robot ir-emitters programmable-robot robots hacks  

Instructable user [cubeberg’s] daughter saw Tron:Legacy earlier this year and decided right then and there that she wanted to dress up as Quorra for Halloween. Being the awesome dad he is, he decided to make her costume himself, and hit the stores in search of an Identity Disc to complete the look. The toy was [...]

Tags:  tron toy halloween awesome-dad halloween-costume legacy led hacks  

[Nathan]‘s son really loves numbers and counting, and one of his favorite things to do is add 1 to a calculator over and over again. Being the awesome dad that he is, [Nathan] built his son a counting box that has a 10-digit rotary switch and two arcade buttons to add and subtract. One goal [...]

Tags:  calculator son box nathan awesome-dad rotary-switch favorite-things toy hacks  

There’s a proverb that says ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’. Now that stick can come in a high-voltage form factor. The device above, which reminds us of a side-handled baton with a coke can stuck on the end, is a portable Van de Graaff generator. Although debated in the comments, the creator of [...]

Tags:  high voltage stick van-de-graaff van-de-graaff-generator high-voltage proverb toy hacks  

Dippy birds are the toys that teeter-totter back and forth as the beak of  bird-shaped body dips into a container of water. The felt covering the beak and head picks up water and, through evaporation, cools that end of the glass tubing. The temperature changes cause the dichloromethane to either boil off, or condense, shifting the [...]

Tags:  dippy-bird glass-tubing dichloromethane toy hacks  

Along with hobby electronics, flying RC planes is one of [Diederich’s] favorite hobbies. When out in the field, he prefers to use an Aurora 9 radio controller, and while the remote is great, he was a bit disappointed in Hitec’s telemetry sensor lineup. He says that the sensors are pretty decent, though limited, and he [...]

Tags:  board diy sensor diederich aurora rc-planes radio-controller sensor-board toy hacks  

As a student of MIT, [Jed Storey] has access to a ton of machine tools, so he decided to build an electric longboard with hub motors by hand.  He wound up re-doing a lot of his project, so we can commiserate with him on the trials of R&D. Inspired by the BWD scooter, [Jed]‘s longboard uses [...]

Tags:  electric hub longboard jed-storey jed d.-inspired machine-tools toy hacks  

Every once in awhile a project comes along that makes us say, “this is why we want a 3D printer!” [Skimbal] is pretty well known in 3D printing circles for the incredibly detailed designs he has put out in the past. This time around, his focus is on motoring, Mario Kart style. His Turtle Shell [...]

Tags:  turtle shell racers mario-kart turtle-shell 3d-printer toy hacks  

YouTube user [onefivefour] posted a video of his hacked up toy robot hand. These cheap robot hands usually only use one wire to move all five fingers. [onefivefour] improved upon the design and added five servos to allow independent control of each digit. The servos are controlled by a PICAXE microcontroller, and [onefivefour] is willing [...]

Tags:  toy robot onefivefour robot-hand robot-hands picaxe-microcontroller robots hacks  

For this week’s hack, [Dino] was working on a mechanical cat toy, but the project fell apart towards the end for some reason or another. With time running out, he had to come up with something on pretty short notice, using whatever he happened to have on hand. Luckily he picks up some seriously weird [...]

Tags:  week toy cat c-hexababy dino mechanical-cat cat-toy nightmares robots hacks  

Kids love games of exclusion. This usually manifests itself in games of ‘keep away,’ having someone ‘catch cooties,’ or the ever-popular ‘No Brian club.’ [Rob] wrote in to tell us about the digital cootie detector he built. The cootie detector operates on galvanic skin response. It’s actually very similar to an E-Meter, although instead of Thetans this [...]

Tags:  digital detector cootie rob brian galvanic-skin-response games toy hacks  

[DJ Sures] got his hands on a plastic Wall-E toy and decided to build a robot that includes a camera, voice recognition, and object tracking. The result is adorable so we’re putting this video before the break: Wall-E is built around an EZ-B Bluetooth Robot controller. All the software functions are handled with the complementary [...]

Tags:  sures robot toy modded-wall robot-controller real-robot break-wall robots hacks  

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…. A flying RC super hero? No, you’re not imagining things. Maker [Greg Tanous] loves both RC airplanes and super heroes, so he thought it would be awesome to combine his two loves into one spectacular toy. The RCSuperhero comes in two flavors, measuring 75″ and 57″ tall. The [...]

Tags:  superhero plane bird greg-tanous rc-airplanes flavors two-loves toy hacks  

For his first project using the TI Launchpad [VOJT4] built a lap timer and counter for slot cars. For us it’s always hardest to come up with the idea of what to build and we think he found a great one here. Each time a car passes the finish line of the track it trips [...]

Tags:  lap slot car slot-car-lap lap-timer finish-line toy hacks  

I’m sure most of us remember playing with blocks when we were kids, well now this age old children’s toy has been crammed full of electrical goodness by a team of Electrical Engineers from the University of Texas. The Blox, which are about the size of a standard Rubiks Cube each contain 16 IR sensors, [...]

Tags:  blox age play ir-sensors rubiks-cube electrical-engineers toy hacks  

Many of you may have seen these fun little toys in museums or possibly even in school. Instructibles user [brazilero2008] takes us through the process of constructing one on our own. Most of this toy are constructed from fairly household materials like foil, paper, straws etc. The fun part comes when you find the power [...]

Tags:  fun school electro-static paper-straws household-materials foil-paper toy hacks  

This video has been floating around the web recently and we thought that some of you might enjoy it. After a quick google search, we found out that this is [Julie Watai], a singer/model who also enjoys hardware modification. In this video, she’s doing a tutorial on how to circuit bend furbies. No, we have [...]

Tags:  video maid furby julie-watai google-search watai hardware-modification toy hacks  

[Chris] thinks that using your brain to control your trigger finger is a passé way of operating a toy firearm. Instead, he’s using his mind to fire foam bullets at whatever he thinks needs to pretend-die. To read his will, he’s chosen the Neurosky MindWave, a device that we just looked at for servo control. [...]

Tags:  nerf brain mind chris neurosky servo-control trigger-finger toy hacks  

Smart people don’t put their toys away, they build machines to do it for them. Case and point: this NXT project which can sort LEGO pieces. Just dump a bucket of random blocks in a hopper on one end of the machine. One slice at a time, these plastic pieces will be lifted onto a conveyor [...]

Tags:  lego machine nxt lego-pieces lego-blocks plastic-pieces toy hacks  

[Vik Olliver] adds a bit more power to what has traditionally been a store-bought toy by designing this printable dart gun. His design prints the follower in the track where it belongs, which means it’s not going to come loose unless the material itself fails. After printing you’ll need to clean up that track just a [...]

Tags:  nerf gun track vik-olliver dart-gun gun-fires olliver toy hacks  

Although spring keeps trying to break through the winter doldrums you might be looking for just one more weekend activity before the outdoor season begins. Grab the kids and give this paper gyroscope a try. It’s not an electronic sensor made of paper, but the modern equivalent of a spinning top. The frame remains stationary [...]

Tags:  gyroscope papercraft paper winter-doldrums electronic-sensor spinning-top toy hacks  

The Pinewood Derby is a classic Cub Scout competition where dads and sons come together to build a small-scale race car. You start with a kit that includes a block of wood for the body, as well as four plastic wheels and four nails to act as axles. Most innovations in the ‘sport’ center around reducing [...]

Tags:  pinewood-derby-car dads-and-sons four-nails toy hacks  

Instructables user [tanbata] recently got his hands on a Google Anroid figurine and thought that while it looked great, it served no real purpose. He decided to change that, and converted this once-useless hunk of plastic into a miniature robot that moves and responds to sound. He pried of the head of the figure and [...]

Tags:  sound-sensitive android figure morse miniature-robot morse-code google toy hacks  

[jcopro] is pretty fond of Glade automatic air fresheners. Using a pair of them, he built a simple remote-controlled toy which he shared with us over the weekend. You may remember that he built a remote shutter release system for his camera using these air fresheners, which we featured a few weeks ago. Instead of throwing [...]

Tags:  air remote-controlled toy robot-toy shutter-release remote-controlled-toy hacks  

We were sent [Dr. Offset’s] most recent project, a kid’s toy that is half sculpture/half noisemaker, but 100% cool. The device uses several 555 Timers and is his entry into the 555 Design Contest, which wraps up in just a few days. To really enjoy his creation, you need to suspend disbelief for a moment, [...]

Tags:  alien toy life dr.-offset 555-timers noisemaker alien-life contests  

[Todd] recently completed completed his biggest LEGO project, and its pretty wild. The Mystery Box is an 8 compartment LEGO brick puzzle box, covered in a psychedelic pattern of interconnecting question marks. The question mark pattern was inspired by a few things, the book called “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” contained [...]

Tags:  lego mystery box todd lego-brick lego-project mystery-box toy hacks  

[Onefivefour] was surprised that his E-flite Blade MCX radio controlled helicopter came with a charger that used AA batteries to recharge the lithium batteries in the flying unit. Yeah, that’s a bit crazy. He set out to modify the base unit to work with AC power. There are four batteries inside this base unit, one [...]

Tags:  base unit helicopter lithium-batteries radio-controlled-helicopter aa-batteries toy hacks  

[DJ Sures] got his hands on a broken Teddy Ruxpin doll and decided to give it a new robotic life. You may want to ask the children to leave the room before viewing the video after the break. It starts right off with little Teddy having his throat slashed in order to get at the [...]

Tags:  sures hacking doll teddy teddy-ruxpin teddy-ruxpin-doll robotic-life little-teddy toy hacks  

This toy has some upgraded internals that turn it into an Enigma machine. We absolutely love the idea, as it takes a toy that your child may have grown out of, and uses it to provide teachable moments dealing with both history and mathematics. But who are we kidding? We want to make one just [...]

Tags:  wwii toy child enigma-machine teachable-moments internals arduino hacks  

Instructables user [sketchsk3tch] was looking to make a fun toy for his kids using things he had around the house and came up with the Ping Organ. The organ is played by standing in front of the Parallax Ping range sensor, and moving around any which way you please. He interfaced the range sensor with [...]

Tags:  ping toy range range-sensor musical-toy range-finder arduino hacks  

This collection of model vehicle hacks adds obstacle avoidance in an attempt to make them autonomous. At the front end you’ll find two PCBs which use IR approximation to monitor the road ahead. We’re not familiar with this particular use of these IR receivers (TSOP1738) which we’re used to seeing in remote control receiver applications [...]

Tags:  knight model car obstacle-avoidance knight-rider-theme control-receiver toy hacks  

People in search of something profane to adorn their coffee table need look no further. [Wizgirl's] magic 8-ball hack lets you change the messages inside, and her messages all include the most powerful of four-letter-words. To do so she completely replaced the message cube inside with one she built from a sheet of plastic, plastic [...]

Tags:  drop plastic ball magic-8-ball coffee-table bombs toy hacks  

This kinetic sculpture is a ball bearing’s paradise. Not only do they get a cushy ride around two lift wheels but there’s a variety of enjoyable obstacles they can go down. The first is a vortex made from a wooden flower pot which sends the balls randomly down one of two possible exits. From there [...]

Tags:  bearing ball playground flower-pot kinetic-sculpture wooden-flower toy hacks  

Want your very own Chucky doll to scare the crap out of the roommates? [Gzip] shows you how to make this happen by adding servo-based animatronics to old dolls. In the video after the break you can see the doll throw up her arms and turn her head thanks to a motor in each shoulder [...]

Tags:  doll creepy army chucky chucky-doll head-thanks old-dolls toy hacks  

Most of the dice related hacks we run into have to do with pseudo random number generation, but today we saw something different. This sleek looking jumbo die is actually a prize holding box opened by a secret sequence of rotations. Using an accelerometer and an ATmega 328 with a sub-micro servo to control the [...]

Tags:  psuedo icey roll random-number-generation secret-sequence atmega toy hacks  

We’re going to let you decide which of these two projects is a delight, and which is amusing. The project on the left is a desktop kinetic sculpture. We like it because of its size and simplicity. A single AA battery drives the gear head motor that provides the lift for the metal balls. There [...]

Tags:  kinetic duo project kinetic-sculpture metal-balls aa-battery toy hacks  

[Kevin Sandom] built this boat using a radio controlled toy car. The two pontoons are recycled from Styrofoam packaging material using some thick wire to connect them and provide a framework for the propulsion and control circuitry. The motor itself is a hobby outboard, which really only required [Kevin] to develop a method for steering. [...]

Tags:  pontoon toy car kevin kevin-sandom styrofoam-packaging control-circuitry thick-wire hacks  

[Bradley W. Lewis] continues to amaze us with this Return of the Jedi Lightsaber build. You’ll remember his fine work from his previous Episode IV replica. He’s taken the parts that turned out well for him and expanded upon them. In the demonstration after the break you’ll see the new version has a removable blade [...]

Tags:  lightsaber crystal blade bradley-w.-lewis crystal-chamber return-of-the-jedi episode-iv toy hacks  

The blurry image above is a snap of toy cars as they zoom around a multi-lane, multi-level, maniacal-maze called Metropolis II. We originally took a look at the video after the break (do it now!) but found more information on [Chris Burden's] kenetic sculpture in this NYT article. He and eight studio artists began work [...]

Tags:  kinetic page sculpture chris-burden kenetic-sculpture nyt-article kinetic-sculpture toy hacks  

This hack’s old as dirt to be sure, but new to us and a great accomplishment. The plane above, which is meant to fly without an operator, has been given RC control thanks to parts from that little car. The transmitter and receiver pair are the obvious transplant, but how do you add steering to [...]

Tags:  dirt plane car receiver-pair control-thanks little-car toy hacks  

[Thomas Cannon] created his own hacking game by adding some circuitry to this toy vault. The original toy uses the keypad to control a solenoid keeping the door shut. He kept the mechanical setup, but replaced the original circuit board with his own ATmega328 based internals. He also added a USB port to the front. [...]

Tags:  hacker vault toy thomas-cannon toy-vault mechanical-setup hacking-game hacks  

We’ve seen these little toys called “sugar cubes” by GirlTech around for a while now. They are a toy block, with an LCD on the front and they respond to movement, button presses and they interact with each other if you stack them up. We’re just as curious as anyone else about their internals, but [...]

Tags:  lcd girltech sugar sugar-cubes little-toys button-presses toy hacks  

When [Dave] installed hardwood flooring in his house, he needed a solution to help automate the monotonous task of routine sweeping. Rather than go out and buy one of the many existing automated sweep robots out there, he decided to use his passion for LEGO Robotics to design and build a NXT based Swifferbot he [...]

Tags:  lego pulito roomba dave lego-robotics hardwood-flooring toy hacks  

Playing store just got really, really fun because you can now build your own LEGO barcode scanner. As you can see after the break, it works well and it’s fast like a real barcode scanner. Unfortunately it doesn’t scan real barcodes. Or at least not traditional ones. As we learned in the Barcode Challenge, standard barcodes [...]

Tags:  lego scanner barcode barcode-scanner barcodes toy hacks  

With 2400 LEGO bricks and a lot of patience, [Will Gorman] built a LEGO 3D printer. It’s similar to a RepRap or a Makerbot, but instead of extruding plastic, it uses pre-extruded building blocks (aka LEGO bricks).  The grey wall extending far above the unit itself is a feed magazine which holds the raw material. [...]

Tags:  lego printing lot lego-bricks grey-wall 3d-printer toy hacks  

To userp the Green Lantern oath is a sacrilege. But calm your rage as you take in this Green Lantern battery and ring project. [Jon] built the power battery portion out of LEGO, but inside you’ll find an added bonus. An Arduino uses a set of LEDs and an RFID reader to bring the object [...]

Tags:  lantern arduino green jon green-lantern-oath lantern-battery power-battery toy hacks  

[AviatorBJP] is building some impressive automatic transmissions using LEGO parts. Your best bet is to check out his YouTube channel as he’s got a slew of videos related to topic. We’ve embedded test footage of first and second generation vehicles as well as the most recent flywheel design after the break. But we’re getting ahead [...]

Tags:  aviatorbjp lego bet flywheel-design automatic-transmissions generation-vehicles toy hacks  

[Fred Keller] and [Judy Foster], both retired, are proving that age is just a number. What you see above is a nostalgia inducing full size driveable Radio Flyer red wagon. The base of which is a 1976 Mazda pickup truck, while the wagon portion is a mishmash of wood, fiberglass and bondo, detergent bottles, and [...]

Tags:  radio flyer wagon judy-foster fred-keller radio-flyer-red-wagon detergent-bottles mazda-pickup toy hacks  

Sometimes all it takes is one idea. The shape of a cutting board found at a thrift store prompted [Paul] to build a Millenium Falcon doll house. In addition to the strangely shaped cutting board, a ring from a CD spindle and some wood slats divide the internals while PVC fittings complete the cockpit assembly. [...]

Tags:  house doll falcon paul millenium-falcon wood-slats millennium-falcon toy hacks  

[Greasetattoo] shares the process of building his wooden quadcopter body that won 2nd place in the Minnesota state fair.  His plans were purchased as a kit back in 1999, but he never got around to actually building them. The original plans called for a foam board body, but he felt that a wooden piece of [...]

Tags:  quadcopter wooden body minnesota minnesota-state-fair foam-board toy hacks  

[ESylin] built an autonomous rover that roams the vacant halls of his school. On the hood of the vehicle he’s mounted two Maxbotix sonar sensors that do a great job of keeping the vehicle centered in the hallway. It will follow a wall around a corner (favoring its left side because of the left-facing sensor) [...]

Tags:  vehicle rover autonomous autonomous-rover sonar-sensors hallway toy hacks  

[Deadbird] decided to use a LEGO 8880 Super Car as a host for all of his electronic tinkering. Throughout his blog (translated) you’ll find the vehicle with an Arduino MEGA interfacing various prototyping bits. It starts with the motors for locomotion, closely followed by a servo for steering. From there we see the addition of [...]

Tags:  lego deadbird host lego-8880 prototyping-projects servo toy hacks  

Life-sized Star Wars replica props, it’s one way to keep the ladies away. But if you’re going to make them, you should do it right. [Bradley W. Lewis] spent some serious time getting this [Obi-Wan Kenobi] lightsaber right. The seven-page build log provides plenty of eye-candy. We especially enjoyed the machine and coloring of he [...]

Tags:  devote lightsaber life bradley-w.-lewis obi-wan-kenobi replica-props sized-star toy hacks  

Who could forget the stereoscopic goodness of a View-Master? [Tuttle] put a modern flair on the classic optical device by adding two 1.5″ LCD screens. The screens replace the film disk of the original, showing slightly different images to produce a 3D effect. No word on a camera rig used to take the original images, [...]

Tags:  digital master goodness camera-rig lcd-screens optical-device toy hacks  

After seeing Toy Story [Will Gorman's] son wanted to play the Crane Game. Rather than hanging out in the lobby of the pizza parlor, [Will] built one at home using Lego. The skill crane as he calls it has a large gantry to travel over the top of the treasure box. The claw can move [...]

Tags:  claw game home skill-crane crane-game pizza-parlor toy hacks  

School will be starting again in a few weeks but it’s not too late to enjoy a little time with your kids. This water rocket launcher lets you do just that. Built using the frame from an old grill, a soda bottle takes its place on the upturned PVC pipe. There’s a connection for your garden hose [...]

Tags:  rocket launchpad water water-rocket-launcher pvc-pipe garden-hose toy hacks  

With exams behind him [Adam Greig] had time to make a Nerf sentry gun. It’s actually quite easy to pull everything together. He’s got a netbook running Motion, an open source motion sensing program for use with a webcam. When movement is detected an Arduino, connected via a USB cable, actuates a servo to pull [...]

Tags:  nerf sentry motion adam-greig sentry-gun arduino netbook toy hacks  

The idea of the Great Ball Contraption is to take modules from many builders and combine them into one large machine. The modules need to find some way of moving LEGO soccer balls and basketballs from an input point to an exit are that passes them onto the next module. Some of them sort the balls, but [...]

Tags:  contraption idea ball input-point basketballs toy hacks  

Over 100,000 Lego pieces, 4 people a year to create, and a 12 foot by 12 foot chess board make this the largest most awesome Lego hack we’ve ever seen. Take that Lego Printer. For a mere $30,000 you too can have such a setup. Not a lot of information is out yet, but we [...]

Tags:  lego chess foot lego-pieces chess-board toy hacks  

Hackaday’s [Caleb Kraft] has branded today “kiddie d-day” after seeing this PVC water gun follow close on the heals of the LEGO sniper rifle. This is a great summer project if you don’t mind letting the kids use the quick connect on your air compressor. It’s really just a ‘T’ made of PVC with two [...]

Tags:  gun pvc water caleb-kraft sniper-rifle water-gun d-day toy hacks  

Minifigs beware, something’s afoot. This LEGO sniper rifle is in talented hands to clean up those problem areas. [Jack Streat] put together this fascinating build as well as the delightful demo after the break. The bolt pulls a 1×4 block out of the eight-round magazine and loads it into the chamber. A pull of the [...]

Tags:  seven-six-two full millimeter jack-streat sniper-rifle talented-hands streat toy hacks  

[Arkos] gutted an RC car from his childhood and made it into a dog-taunting remote platform. An Arduino replaces the original circuitry with a Bluetooth module for connectivity. He uses an Xbox 360 controller and has added a small speaker to act as a siren. But for our money it’s the camera that makes this [...]

Tags:  friend man car bluetooth-module arduino arkos toy hacks  

This installation by artist [Nils Goudagnin] is a recreation of the hoverboard from Back to the Future II. We would like to see inside that plinth. We’ve seen levitating magnets before, but this is particularly stable. He says he is using lasers and a control system of some kind to stabilize it. Just to guess, [...]

Tags:  hoverboard life installation nils-goudagnin plinth back-to-the-future lasers toy hacks  

[John Park] is documenting his build of a Nerf Sentry gun. So far, he’s rigged the trigger and set up the motorized base. He’s documenting the process in fantastic detail with great photos along the way. If you want to see what it will be like when it is finished, check out these other Nerf [...]

Tags:  gun nerf sentry john-park sentry-gun photos toy hacks  

While browsing through flicker this morning, we spotted this interesting image. Two radio controlled cars hooked to Arduinos. What was going on? What is [knolleary] doing with them? We couldn’t find any information so we clicked through to his personal site. What we found was a quite interesting story about how he set up a [...]

Tags:  rovio drive taxi radio-controlled-cars interesting-story flicker toy hacks  

[Dan Fruzzetti's] daughter was delighted to get a motorized vehicle from her Grandparents, but [Dan] was unimpressed with the stock features. The lead-acid battery supplied remarkable life between charges, but the vehicle only had one feature: a go button that routed juice to the bipolar motor. After the break we’ll look at his improvements to [...]

Tags:  daughter vehicle toy dan-fruzzetti dan lead-acid-battery remarkable-life bipolar hacks  

The Warthog from Halo is one of the most beloved video game vehicles. [Tim Higgins] brings the fun to life with his laser tag Warthog game. It uses Barbie Power Wheels toys as a base and adds laser tag weaponry. Xbox 360 controllers are used but just like in Halo, you can’t control the gun [...]

Tags:  laser warthog tag tim-higgins power-wheels laser-tag toy hacks  

Reader [Eric] sent us a powerfully informative, yet super simple hack for the MindFlex toy. Don’t worry, it’s not another worthless shock ‘game’, And it’s using an actual interface instead of the built-in LEDs. With two wires for the serial protocol, and an Arduino, you’ll be able to view “signal strength, attention, meditation, delta, theta, low [...]

Tags:  hacking reader mindflex don eric serial-protocol delta-theta arduino toy hacks  

We know LEGO is a very versatile medium to build with but this is beyond what we considered possible. Seven speeds and a reverse gear were built into the gearbox for this LEGO vehicle. It’s not completely an original design, but adds to the five-speed design found in a ten-year-old LEGO set. See it demonstrated [...]

Tags:  lego design gearbox versatile-medium speed-design five-speed toy hacks  

With summer just around the corner you should try out a build like this constant pressure water gun that [JLspacemarine] put together. Similar to the commercially available Super Soaker toys, this isn’t just a squirt gun but includes a water reservoir as well as a pressurized air chamber. Pumping up the air chamber allows for [...]

Tags:  super soaker water squirt-gun water-reservoir pressure-water toy hacks  

This steam-powered tank is really something of a steam-electric hybrid. Steam provides the locomotion, but an electrical system provides the remote control and steering. A full boiler will provide 10-15 minutes of operation which you can see in the video after the break. Before you leave a nasty comment: Yes, we realize this project is [...]

Tags:  tank something steam electrical-system locomotion boiler toy hacks  

We feel like trumpets should be sounding. Someone took the overused project of connecting RGB LEDs to a microcontroller and produced something useful. [Paul] created Dr. Boardman’s Color Conundrum which works much like a simple mechanical coin-op game you might find at a carnival. When switched on, a random color is displayed by the ping-pong [...]

Tags:  color conundrum someone dr.-boardman paul ping-pong random-color toy hacks  

We love to see eloquent hacks but this isn’t one of them. [Aaron] and his fellow sadists are using a Mindflex game with an electric shocker. If your brain is idle you’ll be fine, but too much activity inside the noggin and you’re in for nasty shock to the arm. Take a look at the [...]

Tags:  isn heck mindflex aaron nasty-shock sadists noggin toy hacks  

Everyone’s familiar with the quarter gobbling crane games. More often than not there’s a child nearby begging a parent for more quarters so they can try their hand at the toy-snatching claw. [Marc.Cryan] put his quarters to a better use by building a home version of the crane game. [Marc] installed a gantry in an archway [...]

Tags:  game crane home marc crane-games crane-game cryan toy hacks  

This no model, but a fully functioning RC jet. The Sukhoi Su-27 was the Soviet Union’s counterpart of the F15 and this 1/6.5 scaled version measures eleven feet long and is fully controllable. As if the 80-page build log wasn’t enough, the flight video after the break is nothing short of jaw-dropping. The test flights [...]

Tags:  jet model sukhoi sukhoi-su-27 test-flights scaled-version toy hacks  

We love arcade games. Who doesn’t? We feel that the “arcade” feeling just can’t be replicated in any other form factor than an arcade cabinet. [Moslevin] must feel the same way too. He has built, what could possibly be the worlds smallest arcade cabinet. Aside from a coin mechanism, it is fully functional. It is [...]

Tags:  arcade mini cabinet arcade-cabinet coin-mechanism arcade-games toy hacks  

[Brandon Meyer] spared no expense in modding the Catch Phrase game to use custom word lists. The altered version of the game, normal sold for around $25, now comes in at a whopping $230! That’s because the internals were gutted and replaced with an Arduino, 20×2 LCD display, and some other interesting bits. The device [...]

Tags:  phrase game catch brandon-meyer catch-phrase-game custom-word internals toy hacks  

[TomTheGeek] built a LEGO tank with a PicAxe controller. Locomotion is supplied by a Lego Power Function motor controller. He cut an LPF extension wire in half so that he could patch into the PWM signals without altering the motors themselves. You can make out the control circuitry and a small breadboard in the tank’s [...]

Tags:  lego tank picaxe pwm-signals control-circuitry toy hacks  

[Simon Inns] designed a circuit board to retrofit an original Simon electronic game. This hack is immediately a win because he made sure that his design required no modification of the original case. The new PCB has many improvements. It moves the device from using 2 D-cells over to a 9 volt battery, the incandescent [...]

Tags:  board circuit ultimatesimon simon simon-inns volt-battery electronic-game pcb toy hacks  

We’re sometimes shocked at the electronics included in ‘disposable’ items. For some reason (our tech inclinations?) we’ve been getting those audio greeting cards from relatives and it kind of kills us to see the PCB, batteries, and speaker in what would have otherwise been a fully recyclable card. Now we’ve got several sets of those [...]

Tags:  meal reason toy audio-greeting meal-toy happy-meal hacks  

Here we have a toy car modified to use a drill as the powertrain. [Hans] has thrown a 12v 4.5 amp battery in to power the motor and it tops out around 9 miles per hour. This is similar in concept to the trash-based go cart from last week but this time there’s video. He’s [...]

Tags:  cart drill-powered toy hans amp-battery toy-car miles-per-hour transportation hacks  

[Flyboy258] shows us that hobby R/C airplanes can be built from trash relatively easily. A bit of old tarp and a simple frame work as the body.  The rudder is made from old foam packaging.  It seems to fly pretty well considering the lack of official design, or aerodynamic features. [via Makezine] [...]

Tags:  trashplane hobby flyboy aerodynamic-features foam-packaging frame-work toy hacks  

[Will] enjoys giving hacked items as Secret Santa gifts and this year he decided to augment a Billy Bass. These gag items have become a popular hack to use as a prop or to read your Twitter updates to you. Right of the bat he scrapped the original PCB and sent it to the gift’s [...]

Tags:  year santa secret billy-bass secret-santa-gifts pcb toy hacks  

Here’s a double-dose of Lego NXT goodness; a robotic tank and an automatic aquarium heater. The image to the left is a robotic tank powered by the popular Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. The brains rest inside of a tube, including the controller brick, ultrasonic range finder, a gyroscope, and a compass. Two sets of treads surround [...]

Tags:  lego tank nxt lego-mindstorms-nxt ultrasonic-range-finder robotic-tank toy hacks  

Here’s a collection of little LEGO oddities. Some of them exhibit a purpose, such as this interesting take on a line-following robot. Others, like the four seen above, are just automatons built to bring a smile to your face through their motion. There are dozens to choose from, with several pictures and a video of [...]

Tags:  exhibit lego collection line-following-robot oddities toy hacks