Instructables user [killbox] seems to have come across a process that actually makes magnetic silly putty “better”, depending on your specific needs. He had tons of fun making a batch of magnetic putty, but thought that the addition of iron oxide made it stiff and a bit slow moving for his tastes. He tried to [...]

Whether for fashion, emergency lighting, or just to make a statement, these lighted shoe clips make for a unique footwear accessory. [Becky Stern], who we’ve seen before hacking automatic knitting machines, tackles this quick lighted project. The electronics are simple, two LEDs connected in parallel to a button battery by some conductive thread. The circuit [...]

[Greg] launched a high altitude balloon last week that climbed to 90,000 feet above sea level somewhere over California. The play-by-play of the flight is one of the better stories we’ve seen on high altitude balloon builds. The balloon, christened VGER-1, carried a SPOT satellite GPS messanger to send telemetry back to the ground. We’ve seen a few home [...]

For decades a thunderous roar rose from the bowels of IBM keyboards like the animus of angry and forgotten gods. These keyboards have fallen silent of late, due only to incompatibility with newer hardware. Now, Model Ms have been given a reprieve from landfills or recycling centers because of the work of [wulax] of geekhack and his [...]

The Kinect has been hacked for many purposes, but this Android implementation tutorial is the first we’ve heard of it being used on a mobile phone platform. Although not a finished product at this point, [Raymond's] tutorial is a good starting point for those wanting to experiment with fusing these two technologies. The Kinect programming [...]

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 [...]

[Scott Harden] is drilling teeth by day and designing radios that send secret messages by night. He’s set his sights on the Hellschreiber protocol which was used by the Germans in World War II along with their Enigma encryption system. The protocol is a viable alternative for transmitting and receiving code in environments with too much [...]

Back in the 80’s, there used to be a kid’s toy that would allow you to replicate an image by tracing a pre-drawn picture in one panel, while a mechanical arm laid down ink in another. We’d be hard-pressed to remember what the thing was called, but this Electrographic Enlarging Sketchifier would be a wonderful [...]

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an AVR microcontroller with USB device support built in so you would not need a separate programmer or serial link? Well in fact there are quite a few of them, and this awesome tutorial (google translate) is a quick and easy crash course in using the ATMega 16/32U4 [...]

R.I.P sand-colored radio-controlled truck. Your life ended with a bang and in doing so, saved some lives. This little work-horse is a hack that [Ernie Fessenden] put together and sent to his brother [Sergeant Chris Fessenden] who is on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. [Chris'] team is trained to be on the lookout for roadside bombs, [...]

Whether you believe in it or not, the science behind brainwave entrainment is incredibly intriguing. [Rich Decibels] became interested in the subject, and after doing some research, decided to build an entrainment device of his own. If you are not familiar with the concept, brainwave entrainment theory suggests that low-frequency light and sound can be [...]

A few guys from Jobi Robotics came up with a really interesting RC plane called the Quadshot. With 4 motors, the plane is very similar to the quadcopter builds we’ve seen, but an added wing allows it to fly horizontally much faster than a pile of carbon fiber and electronics. The VTOL ability of the plane [...]

Everyones favorite site, Instructables.com, has announced a big move. They have joined Autodesk along with the same team that is doing Autodesk 123D, Autodesk is a great cultural fit for Instructables. They make tools for creative people: they’re the world leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software. Even if you don’t recognize the name [...]

“Wednesday, I was arrested and sent to jail,” is what your blog might say if you decide to try and duplicate this project.  You may, however, be fortunate to be still writing your blog, as ATTEMPTING TO BUILD YOUR OWN REACTOR can be quite dangerous. That’s what [Richard] did using household items such as clock [...]

[Alex Busman]‘s first foray in iOS programming looks like a pretty useful tool. He came up with Ohm Sense, an iPhone app that will take a picture of a resistor and calculate the value based on the color bands. It’s a great tool that we wish we had when we were starting out. At 99 [...]

One thing that really makes a project complete is the way in which you package your final product. Some people are fine with a piece of protoboard with wires sticking out in every direction, and truth be told, so are we – depending on the application. [Daniel] over at archive.org was seeking out enclosures to [...]

[Micha’s] washing machine is equipped with a rather inaccurate timer, so it is always difficult to estimate when the load will be finished. Since it is located in his basement, he hated having to check on the machine continually to know when his clothes were done. Instead of hauling up and down the stairs over [...]

[M. Eric Carr] came up with an interesting build for the 555 contest earlier this year, and we’re pretty sure that it would have kicked the winner of the complex category off the throne if it were completed. Although it’s a few months late, we’re happy to feature at least part of his 555-based computer [...]

[Chris] writes in to let us know about his latest animatronics tutorial, this time on robotic eyebrows! The tutorial takes us through the process of using a fairly simple PIC  circuit to display various facial expressions. Since a wide array of facial expressions have unique and well understood eyebrow positions this simple hack can make [...]

We have seen quite a few automated Etch-a-Sketch machines in our time, but when [Jason] wrote in to share his take on the subject, it came with a nice bribe attached. We are vain. It’s not something we are proud of, but when it comes to seeing the Hack a Day logo drawn out by a [...]

[Isaac] sent in his mashup build of a LED cube combined with a graphic EQ meter. The build is fairly simple and from the video we can tell that his build would be a great installation in a dubstep venue. While it’s not the 9x9x9 cube possible with some judicious coding we think it’s a [...]

[Itay] dropped a link in our inbox about creating a simple video game system using Arduino. Yes we all know where that is going … the TV out library for Arduino. However this tutorial should still be mentioned because it pretty much covers everything someone new would need to quickly and easily hook one of [...]

One thing that always amazes us is the ingenuity displayed by prison inmates, as demonstrated in the tools and weapons they create while under the watchful eye of the law. Unlike most people however, these individuals have nothing but time on their side, which lends to the wide range of implements they inevitably dream up. [...]

Instructables user [dustinandrews] just took the wraps off his latest creation, a DIY Arduino Pro Mini clone. Actually, to call it an clone is technically incorrect – while he aimed to produce a tiny Arduino-compatible board, his goal was not to replicate the Mini’s design. Instead, he developed a 1” x 1” board from scratch, [...]

To say that Commodore 64 aficionados are a dedicated group would be quite the understatement. There are still quite a few individuals that spend all sorts of time building and programming for the C64 in order to make using them enjoyable, and to keep up to date with current technologies. [Luigi] is one of these [...]

Hey everybody, [Nbitwonder] is building his own RepRap 3D printer. What’s special about that? Well, not much and and lot all at the same time. The art of building a self-replicating 3d printer still has a lot to do with luck and forum-crawling to make all of the decisions that go into this complicated project. [...]

Microsoft has thrown its hat into the open source hardware hobby market. Their offering is called the Gadgeteer. We’d love to tell you all about it, but the big M didn’t make it very easy to find out about the device and it’s addons. When we set out to find what processor is running on [...]

It seems that sous-vide cooking is becoming increasingly popular lately. [Meseta] caught the sous-vide bug and wanted to try his hand at it, though he did not have enough money for a premade sous-vide cooker. After seeing a good handful of lackluster DIY sous-vide rigs online, he decided that he would design and build a [...]

We all know that Eagle has its share of shortcomings. Instructables user [westfw] was particularly annoyed by the fact that while Eagle keeps copies of up to 10 revisions of your board, it cannot open those files without resorting to manually renaming each one. Even more frustrating to him is the fact that you can’t [...]

Yes, that’s an SMS text messaging device. [Mdziewie] decided that texting on a regular cellphone was too boring and decided to build himself an old-school SMS gateway. Here’s a translated link but the formatting of the forum post gets screwed up with the machine translation. The device he’s using is an ASR-33 Teletype machine, which [...]

Someone let [Tane] play around with welding equipment and bicycle parts and look what happened! He built a diminutive velocipede. Now that’s just a term for a human-powered land vehicle, but the term fits a bit better as this is missing most of the stuff you’d expect to see on a bicycle. He started with [...]

There’s a new 3d printer on the block, and hot damn is it fast! Hailing from the Netherlands, the Ultimaker 3D Printer has finally hit US shores, and aims to give the MakerBot a run for its money. The Ultimaker was designed by Utrecht Fab Lab manager [Siert Wijnia] along with two frequent lab patrons, [...]

Whenever we get a tip claiming a project is cheap and easy we raise a cynical eyebrow. But [Yonsje] isn’t telling us a story, his Amiblight clone really does boil down the complexity and slash the price. For the uninitiated, this is a clone of the Philips Amilight system that has been an option with [...]

[charliex] from Null Space Labs wrote in to share a project that he and the rest of the gang have been working on over the last few weeks. The team has been remixing and building clones of the Google ADK demo board we saw earlier this year, in hopes of getting a huge batch prepped [...]

Reader [Andre] sent in a link which tells us all about this “cool” Copper Oxide Thermoelectric Generator. All you need is a bit of solid copper wire and a gas torch. Burn the wire so it gets a nice coating of oxide. From there, it is a matter of making the 2 sections of burned [...]

If you had the pleasure of attending last year’s DEFCON conference, you are no doubt familiar with [Mike Tassey] and [Richard Perkins]. There, the pair showed off a work in progress DIY aerial drone named WASP. Short for Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, WASP was impressive when we brought it to your attention last year, but [...]

Indestructible earbuds We’re still waiting for our [Lt. Uhura] style earbuds. But until then, can we interest anyone in a set that will stand up to some abuse? Solder Pot Scavenger [Felicitus] says we should get a solder pot and use it to scavenge for parts. His method looks pretty easy and it’s cheaper than buying a [...]

[Frank] sent in a link to this fantastic wooden clock. The design was dreamed up by [Clayton Boyer] and he’s got full-sized templates for sale on his site. We’ve marveled at his creations in the past, having featured his useless machine that was made from wooden gears. This “Bird of Paradise” clock steps up the [...]

Nothing says Cold War like a map of the work with LEDs embedded in it. Throw in some analog dials for good measure and you’ve got a piece that would be comfortable mounted next the WOPR in everyone’s favorite ’80s-computers-run-amok movie. We think [Dima] really hit the mark when building this status panel for OpenDNS [...]

[Frank], like many people, has a soft spot in his heart for the Commodore 64. He prefers to play his C64 games on his computer nowadays, but likes using his old school Competition Pro rather than some modern controller with remapped buttons. The only problem with using the controller is that his new computer doesn’t [...]