If you’ve ever fired a potato cannon, you’ll know that they are a raucous good time, but are somewhat clumsy to reload after each shot. Seeing an opportunity to improve on the design an…

Since the 1940s when the first transistor was created, transistors have evolved from ornery blocks of germanium wrangled into basic amplifiers into thousands and thousands of different devices made of...

If you have been off trick-or-treating and returned home with an embarassment of candy, what on earth can you do to mange the problem and sort it by brand? Yes, it’s an issue that so many of …

[Hari Waguna] wanted to build a computerized Sudoku game. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be a big deal. You can buy one, of course, but what fun is that? There's plenty of apps for phones, but again, not m...

Our hats off to [SpeedyCop] and his [Gang of Outlaws] for turning a junked former Vietnam War helicopter into both an amphibious vehicle and a road race car. Yes, that's right. It's both driven on wat...

LED matrix projects are all over the place, but this one is interesting for its simplicity: it's an LED matrix that is driven straight from an ESP8266 board. [Ray] put it together as a quick project f...

It's hard to make an audio mixer with any less technology than FingerRing (YouTube video, embedded below). We're pretty sure that [Sergey Kasich] isn't going to get a patent on this one. But what he d...

Whether it’s trying to make contacts across the planet with a transmitter that would have a hard time lighting an LED, or blasting signals into space and bouncing them off the moon, amateur r…

What’s the quickest way to turn one game into 2,400? Cram a Raspberry Pi Zero running RetroPie into an NES cartridge and call it Pi Cart. This elegant little build requires no soldering &#821…

With so many systems depending on Linux, the secure shell SSH has become a staple for many developers. If you are connected to your Raspberry Pi via a cable or a wireless router a few feet away, SS…

Researchers have built a prototype lithium-sulphur battery that -- when perfected -- could have up to five times the energy density of current lithium-ion devices. Researchers in the UK and China dre...

What to do with your broken gaming consoles? Gut it and turn it into a different gaming console! Sudomod forum user [banjokazooie] has concocted his own RetroPie console from the husk of a WiiU con…

While it may or may not be true that if everybody had an ocean they'd be surfing like California, it is true that with a water pump, some copper tape, and a few scraps you can make a surfing simulator...

Parabolic reflectors for solar applications are nice stuff, and making your own is a great project in itself. One of the easiest ways we have seen is that of [GREENPOWERSCIENCE], who uses nothing m…

[Gal Pavlin] admits to enjoying the occasional dance music show. For those who have never been to one, LED one-upmanship at these shows is a real and terrible thing, so much so that an entire marke…

The 1970s called and they want their rotary dial cell phone back. Looking for all the world like something assembled from the Radio Shack parts department – remember when Radio Shack sold par…

We know what it's like to wait for newly released electronic parts. Clicking refresh every day at your favorite online retailers, reading reviews published by the press who got preview units, and mayb...

Most inexpensive 3D printers use a type of lead screw to move some part of the printer in the vertical direction. A motor turns a threaded rod and that causes a nut to go up or down. The printer pa…

When you want a person to do something, you train them. When you want a computer to do something, you program it. However, there are ways to make computers learn, at least in some situations. One t…

If you look around the street furniture of your city, you may notice some ingenious attempts to disguise cell towers. There are fake trees, lamp posts with bulges, and plenty you won't even be aware o...

We're not sure if [Stefan Gotteswinter] ever makes anything but tools to make more tools in his shop. This nice set of toolmaker's magnets are no exception to the trend.

We can gather that [Stefan]...