One of the creepiest musical instruments ever is undoubtedly the theremin, a device originating from the early 20s that emits eerie sounds with a just a wave of the hand. If you've seen the original movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, you know what I mean—freakishly creepy. Playing the theremin can be off-putting for some, since it's a relatively pricy gizmo, but a new geek gadget called the EaTheremin aims to make all of us professional, dinnertime theremists.
Bikes are a great form of transportation. They use human energy more efficiently than any other machine. You can keep it in your closet or hallway. You can even take it on the train in a pinch. However, this portability is also the bike's biggest draw back. If you own a bike in the city, chances are it will be stolen. Locks barely deter thieves armed with bolt cutters and crowbars. Throw the bike thieves for a loop and make a tilt-sensitive alarm. It will hopefully startle your bike's assaila...
There are many impressive accomplishments in Minecraft, too many to name in fact. Sprawling builds, complex machines, and massive servers are the hallmark of Minecraft and things keep getting bigger and better. No one doubts the epic scale Minecraft has reached, but every once in a while something grand comes along that sets a new benchmark in awesomeness. By far the most recent step in this long line of big ideas was an innovation pushed forward by YouTube user Kimundi2. The premise of this ...
This is the cheapest device to gather interviews as a small, easy-to-carry recorder. I started to use it for preproduction and film documentation after I bought it in a Polish discount shop for about 100 Euro. The only problem was very poor sound quality.
Smartphones are crazy awesome. You can do your banking, track your children, find directions, and even pretend to have a mustache. The only thing that these personal supercomputers are missing is physical interaction with the environment.
I think it's fair to say that every maker yearns for a 3D printer. You can replace circuit board connectors, fix your glasses, create ski grips, and make whole machines out of printed plastic parts—even a 3D printer. But without a 3D printer on hand, you can always resort to Sugru.
Spring has sprung, which means it's time to plant all those delicious vegetables and lucrative cash crops. If you are like me, every year you meticulously plan every aspect of your garden before dutifully neglecting it all summer. I decided enough was enough and built this simple automatic watering system.
Hi everyone! I love the ideas what you showed us and the how to make does electric stuffs, but I had some ideas:
Encryped traffic and tunneling is a must when away from home to keep you and your information safe. SSH tunnels can be slow, and are heavily encrypted. VPNs are an all port solution, and proxies are just not what we need in most cases. Then, there is Tor.
Watch this video from This Old House to learn how to install a stand-by generator. Steps:
Since the invention of the mechanical clock, enclosure of the commons, and proletarianization of labor, the alarm clock has been the bane of our existence. While not actually evil, it does represent the constant and uncompromising glare of our owners shaking a patronizing finger at us, telling us to get to work so they can use our labor to grant themselves bonuses.
Super Mario Brothers! No, wait... Super Meat Boy! Yep, that's right. Meat. As in "cube" steak. As in a square piece of beef with eyes and a shitty grin, who just happens to be in love with a band-aid. I have no idea why. And no matter how shocked you are to see your dinner on your screen, it doesn't change the fact that this platform game is AWESOME!
Computer viruses are terrifying. They are undetectable, dangerous, and operate constantly right under your nose. For the average computer user, there are only a few repair options. You could buy expensive antivirus software that causes more problems than it fixes, you can wipe your hard drive clean and lose all of your important data, or if all else fails—just switch to Linux.
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. Oh, the power of redstone! But, what good is any technology if it can't be harnessed for killing? Here's a redstone build for the mad scientist in each of us.
Take $1.35 of thrift store bric-à-brac, toss in a few spare parts from your electronics drawer and mix it all up with an earnest desire to alienate your loved ones forevermore and what do you get? A booby-trapped Magic 8-Ball, that's what! Hacker arfink explains, "My idea was to make a Magic 8-Ball which would blind an unsuspecting victim with the camera flash. I had an old Honeywell thermostat at home which had a mercury tilt switch inside, and after cutting open the 8 ball and removing the ...
I know we have our fair share of FarmVille junkies here at WonderHowTo, but none insane enough to shake a baby to death for interrupting their game (um, I hope). Grisly story:
Instructables member mark-mark creates a beautiful effect with just a tin can lantern and an LED. It's as simple as it sounds: punch a decorative pattern into a tin can and insert your LED rig. Catch the impressive result here.
This panhandling robot isn't too proud to beg. In fact, it's custom-built for it. And who could refuse? Get a load of that puppy-dog eye.
If you have a fear of needles, you may want to sit this one out. Billed as an "analog answer for the digitalized DJ," this five-arm turntable plays an ode to the lock groove. What's a lock groove? Glad you asked. Whereas normal grooves lead the stylus in toward the label of the record, lock or "locked" grooves form a perfect circuit, looping around on themselves forever and ever. Throw in a few extra tone arms as London-based artist Yuri Suzuki has done and you've got yourself a full-featured...
Did you ever, as a know-nothing kid, push against your closed eyelids for the pleasure of the resultant light show? LCD bending takes the low-tech fun of physical retinal stimulation and updates it for the 21st century. And, as the title suggests, the end result looks very much like a sort of angelic, fractal-based fingerpainting.
I already had a mishap shooting my Canon 5d MII tethered....I broke my circuit board because of the stress that a USB cable causes the camera. I wish Canon went with their 1ds route and made a positive locking device, but alas they have not. So the best alternative I could find was a left-angle cable that will reduce the stress and make it quite easy to gaffers tape to my vertical grip for some added safety. Check them all out here, I just purchased the "15' Left Angle" will let you know how ...
Hacked Gadgets recently featured Csaba Bleuer's LED wave display, a device that projects LED messages midair. Bleuer had also previously created a similar device that spins on a fan motor.
Tim Fishlock’s piece entitled What Watt? showcases 1,243 suspended retired light bulbs, the center illuminated by one low-energy fluorescent bulb. Beautiful eco-friendly design.
Ever wondered how a digital combination lock works? Instructables member Nino123 is kind enough to demonstrate the inner workings, with a step-by-step HowTo on building your own.
Be your own billboard! Color your quadrant portrait just like Warhol. Screenprinting is a staple of DIY culture as are our videos producers Bre Pettis and Etsy.com's Matt Stinchcomb.
[community/members/babblin5/ Babblin5] is a tenacious tinkerer. Here he shows us HowTo get a dead battery running again. How?
One of the many reasons Circuit City should go out of business is their sale of ridiculously expensive cables, wire and cords. The secret to the industry of Monster Cables is that it is unnecessary and ineffective. Gold-plated or otherwise, Monster's $100 cables are not intrinsically better than the cheaper versions they're stocked next to. Don't believe us?
Whenever we make a homemade circuit, we use what are called through-hole components. Any components with long metal leads is a through-hole component. They are great for soldering to, but it's tough to fit enough through-hole resistors and capacitors into a smartphone. To get those last microns, we have surface-mount components for SMDs (surface-mount devices). These are all of those teeny, tiny things you see when you crack open your digital camera or laptop case.
It's no secret that water and electronics don't mix well, but somehow, people always manage to combine the two. I've had my fair share of water-damaged electronics, everything from cheap headphones to a desktop computer. My devices are getting dunked in water so much, it's like doughnuts in coffee. And I know I'm not the only one. That jam session with your favorite song will end really quick when your iTouch is chilling in the toilet bowl.
Portal is game design milestone. Originally only available bundled in with larger cousins Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 in The Orange Box, its creators, Valve Software, changed what first person gameplay could be. It's been a stand alone product for much of the four years since its release, but never an expensive one, usually available for $5 on Steam (also created by Valve). If that barrier to entry was too high for you, or you just never got around to trying it, there are no more excuses....
Got a knack for speeding? Like running red lights? Believe or not, the police have better things to be doing than pulling you over, like catching real criminals. That's why more and more cameras are popping up at known speeding zones and on street corners—so the cops can clean up the streets, compared to just ticketing them.
We've all been there before: We're in a hurry to get somewhere (often in bad weather), so we get in the car, turn the key in the ignition and.....WHUH! WHUH! WHUH! The darned battery is dead! After a stream of choice expletives (that is, if you're anything like me....;o)), we open the trunk and take out the jumper cables - but what if we don't know how to use them? Even if we do, we can often forget such things in crisis situations when we're pressed for time.
Ever wonder how all of those tiny chips and components can fit inside your laptop or smartphone? If you tried to squeeze them in there yourself, your laptop would quickly become too heavy for your lap, and your mobile phone would need wheels to stay mobile.
WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most popular communities. Users can join and participate in any World they're interested in, as well as start their own community.
Even if you live in a big city, chances are you have some wild raccoons or foxes that cannot abide a vertical trash barrel. While apparently omnipresent, these phantasmic critters usually vanish in the night leaving only a shameless trail of refuse you never wanted to see ever again. While I haven't found a way to stop them, I can help you snap some photos of the dastardly creatures.
Dreams are like an internal human holodeck. Inside your mind, anything is possible, from your grandest wishes to your worst nightmares. This is all well and good, but what if you could control your dreams and become the omniscient god of a handpicked reality whenever you go to sleep? Inception took this idea to the logical extreme by invading other people's dreams.
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server.
If you're a musician in need of some lessons, there's no better way to learn than with MusicRadar's so-called "Tuition" instructions. Although the title tuition is misleading, this video class is anything but costly, because it's free, right here. Whether you're looking for help with your voice, bass, electric guitar, drums, guitar effects, piano, Logic Pro or production techniques, Music Radar is here to show you the way.
If you're a musician in need of some lessons, there's no better way to learn than with MusicRadar's so-called "Tuition" instructions. Although the title tuition is misleading, this video class is anything but costly, because it's free, right here. Whether you're looking for help with your voice, bass, electric guitar, drums, guitar effects, piano, Logic Pro or production techniques, Music Radar is here to show you the way.
Can you guess which household liquids sink and which ones float? Play along with the A-TV science team in this video lesson!
