Proud new papa Gjoci wanted to make sure he never had to worry about whether or not his baby girl was breathing, so he built this amazing breath-detecting baby monitor using a Wii remote, a printed circuit, and a laser. First, he opened up the Wiimote and took out the camera, then used an Atmel Atmega88 microcontroller to make a printed circuit. Low-power infrared lasers shine on the baby's clothing and the Wii camera detects the motion of the baby's breath, activating an alarm if the motion ...
There's been a lot in the news lately about tracking devices, and it's been pretty much all bad. They can be useful if your car gets stolen, but if you weren't the person who installed it, chances are you don't want it there. Just type "GPS tracking device" into Google and on any given day you'll find an article about someone who got busted by one of these things. Even if you don't have to worry about getting into trouble, you still don't want people following you. Here's how to make sure you...
Using a LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit, a pair of awesome engineers put together this fully functional replica of the Curiosity Mars rover. Not only is it built completely out of LEGOs, it's motorized, programmable, and ready to explore the far reaches of your living room. The rover was built for the Build the Future in Space event at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Four of the six wheels are powered, allowing it to make 360 degree turns, and the arm and mast are both fully controllable. The entire con...
There are a number of different techniques for building underwater in Minecraft. The easiest is to fill a room with wood or leaves, then set them on fire. It'll burn down, leaving a pocket of air for you.
Food is a huge part of Minecraft, specifically the delicious melons and pumpkins that are growable in the game. Take a look at this video guide to learn how to maximize your melon and pumpkin farming techniques in Minecraft 1.8.
In this Champion Spotlight from Riot Games, Phreak builds Singed as an AP caster with a rod of ages, sunfire cape, and other tank and caster items. If you want to know how to play Singed, the Mad Chemist as your champion in League of Legends, take a look at this guide!
Create a beautiful house or building and cover it in long vines or plants after watching this guide on how to attah and grow hanging vines off of blocks in Minecraft 1.8. Soon your Minecraft world will have that beautiful garden you've always wanted.
Riven is quite a fighter with her giant shattered sword. If you're trying to figure out how to build Riven's runes, masteries, or items, take a look at this Champion spotlight by Riot Games.
Motorola's Droid Bionic has several Android apps built into the device that allow you to speed up your workflow. For example, with the MotoPrint app you can print from the Verizon Wireless smartphone to a printer. With it, you can print everything from photos, PDF's, documents, or emails directly from your Bionic.
The Lesser Evils side quest is accessible immediately after completing the factory hostage mission at the start of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This Giant Bomb tutorial will take you through the mission, which involves breaking into an apartment building complex and hacking into a computer to uncover the location of a video.
If you want to watch all the different movies and TV episodes available to you through a Netflix subscription on the go, try installing the Netflix app for Nintendo's 3DS handheld. Even cooler, Netflix is releasing 3D movies and the device's built in capabilities will allow you to watch these 3D movies on your Nintendo 3DS! You'll need to have upgraded your 3DS software so that you can access the eShop before you can install the Netflix app.
The Xperia Play is a Sony Ericsson smartphone on Verizon built for gaming on the go. The mobile phone features a slide-out gamepad that you can use to navigate the web and play different gaming apps preloaded on the phone or downloadable from the Android market.
League of Legends most fearsome assassin is Talon--the Shadow's Blade. If you want to learn how to build Talon, what runes and masteries to take on him, or how to lane with him correctly, look no further than this champion spotlight from Riot Games.
Hack a pair of sunglasses to secretly record audio and video and spend less than $40 in the process with this how-to video. To replicate this hack for yourself, you will need a spy camera and black solar shield sunglasses. For detailed, step-by-step instructions on building your own spy recorder sunglasses, watch this hacking how-to from Kip Kay of Make Magazine.
Trying to act out a fight scene with real weapons can be dangerous, so this foam rubber crowbar is the perfect prop for theatre or film. This Backyard FX segment by Indy Mogul will guide you through making your foam weapon. So grab some rubber latex, foam, and a few other tools and start constructing your crowbar.
One of the many significant changes in Minecraft Beta 1.3 is the way half-blocks or slabs work. Before you could make stone slabs out of three pieces of stone and use them to builds stairs, but it took a lot of material and was limiting as far as choices. Now you can make slabs out of wood, cobblestone, sandstone, or normal stone, and this video will show you how it works.
THe RRoD (Red Ring of Death) was a nightmare for many early XBox 360 console owners, and became symbolic of Microsoft's unprecedented crappy console build quality. Bulletstorm acknowledges this in the XBox 360 version with this awesome easter egg near the beginning of the game. Looks like doors can overheat too!
Bulletstorm is all about creative destruction, and the Enforcer achievement / trophy emphasizes that by requiring you to earn 15,000 points in one Echoes level for 20G. This video will show you how to get the points easily in the level from the demo, Collapsed Building.
An amplifier is something that amplified the voltage on a circuit. The most basic kind is an operational amplifier, and this video will show you how these work and how to use them in your electronics. As an example you'll learn how to make a microphone circuit for spying on people or listening to your heartbeat.
If you've already made a game using Unity3D and want to wrap it up with a nice GUI (or graphical user interface) (or menus) watch this video for a guide to making basic GUI elements using the built in ones in Unity3D.
Minecraft agriculture has become the premier way to acquire massive amounts of resources from animals and enemies, and making really effective ones usually requires water trenches and canals. This video will teach you how to build perfect working trenches and canals for whatever task you need.
Are you tired of monsters or unwanted other players coming down your tunnels full of precious Minecraft ore? Why not build a classic hidden arrow trap for them? This video will show you how to do so, and demonstrate it's brutal effectiveness.
If you're just getting started playing Yu-Gi-Oh! or are looking for some general tips to improve your deck construction skills, check out this video. It was made by a tourney-winning player, and will give you a lot of great tips on building good decks.
This bloke has very strong opinions about the different types of Elemental Hero (e-hero) decks in Yu-Gi-Oh! the card game. In this video he breaks down why his e-hero deck and e-hero philosophy in general are superior to others and why Elemental Recharge is a crappy card.
Elder Dragon Highlander is one of the more imaginative and fun Magic: The Gathering variations, played with 100-card decks in which no card can be repeated and free Legend creatures for all players. This video will teach you how to play it, but not how to build a deck. You need to check out it's companion video for that.
If you've haven't tried Elder Dragon Highlander, check it out. It's an awesome variation of Magic: The Gathering. This video will teach you how to make a powerful deck for it based around the Reaper King card and an army of scarecrows.
If you can play bar chords, there's no reason you can't play a two-five-one jazz progression! This clear and helpful video shows you how to build on skills you already have, adds in some theory and has you ready to get jazzy!
If you want to engage in macro photography and can't afford a close-up lens, you may be in luck. By using a "G" lens (that is, a lens that does not have a built-in aperture ring) it is possible to reverse the lens and take close-up shots with your camera, without having to buy any additional equipment.
Come on baby light my fire! If you're going to be a survivalist, the first thing you'll need to know is how to start a fire. This simply video shows how to use a piece of quartz and a piece of steel to build yourself a fire and stay alive! In addition, the video shows how to pack it all together in a nifty little Altoids tin.
This half-hour episode of Hak5 covers several topics: Using a DSLR camera to create HD footage, building your own Google TV, unlocking & copying locked files with Lock Hunter, using PicPick for screen capture, using WinDirStat for analyzing & cleaning your hard drive, setting up a secure FTP server with Ubuntu Server, and secretly copying data from USB drives with USB Dumper.
When you think of robots, you probably think of things that have more than three parts. Not this robot! If you want a robotics project to try that doesn't require an MIT degree, watch this video for instructions on how to build a 'Dizzy Robot' out of only some thin tin, a pager motor, a button cell battery, and this template.
Lasers are one of the coolest things that you can build yourself from a pure sci-fi fantasy standpoint. They're not easy though, but this video will help you somewhat by describing different types of laser diodes and how to connect them to a power supply.
If you've ever seen It Might Get Loud, you probably remember the part where Jack White makes a one-string guitar out of household scraps. This type of guitar is called a Diddley Bow, after Bo Diddley, and is about the simplest and easiest electric guitar you can make. Watch this video to learn how.
Analog robots might seem a little backwards conceptually, but they are still really fun to make if you're into robotics and electronics. This video will teach you how to make a simple self-balancing analog robot. It's basically a small, robotic, analog Segway.
The lightsaber is one of the coolest weapons in the history of cinema, and the original props came from a junkyard. Funny how that works right? If you want a lightsaber for your own film, costume, or just because they're awesome, watch this video for a guide to making three types of lightsabers: a cheap one, a medium one, and very expensive professional-quality one.
Far Cry 2 set the bar for video game graphics when it came out, and it's grenade launcher is one of the best-looking in games. This video will teach you how to bring the grenade launcher into reality by making a replica out of cardboard and clay, perfect for a film or costume.
The shrink ray as always been one of the oddest and least-useful sci-fi guns, but alien invaders seem to love them and so we'll keep seeing them. If you want to use a shrink ray in a film you're working on, watch this video. It will teach you how to first make a generic ray / laser gun, and then how to make an object shrink in After Effects.
Master Chief, the star of the Halo franchise before it's most recent iterations, is one of the most recognizable and beloved protagonists in gaming history, and that's without players ever actually seeing his body through his inconic and intimidating armor. If you want to dress up as Master Chief for a Halloween costume, film, or other purpose, watch this video to learn how to make your own DIY Master Chief armor for cheap.
Organic LEDs (OLED) are even more efficient than their standard LED cousins, but does that mean they're harder to make? Perhaps somewhat, but no excessively. Watch this video to learn how to make a DIY OLED at home, allowing you to make really cool light-up displays.
The seals in your car had best all be functioning properly if you expect your car to work right. To test the ones in your engine cylinders you'll need an automotive cylinder lead down tester, and if you don't want to buy one, you're in luck because this video contains easy-to-follow instructions on how to make one in your garage.
