DIYs & Mods

Here’s a new take on the classic Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots toy everyone remembers from when they were young. Tamiya�s Robocraft boxing robots are very much like the classic game, except you build the bots yourself. Sure, they might not look like “Bolt Crusher Bob” and “Gear Grinder Greg” but they’re just as fun. Each robot operates on a ...

Talk about intricate craft! These steampunk goggles from Mike Brown are made with absolute precision, featuring leather bolted directly to the titanium eyepieces. 48 bolts are used to hold each lens in place. You can adjust the aperture in each eye to give you enhanced vision. Oh, and they’ll last for “500 years plus.” Quite possibly the finest work of ...

Two doctoral students, Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, have discovered a potential threat to security that declares keyboards “unsafe to transmit sensitive information”. By monitoring signals produced by keystrokes, the researchers were able to reproduce what had been typed on 11 different keyboards using a variety ...

There are few things scarier than a politician on Halloween, except for the red ring of death. Alan Penner of Goleta, California carved a ton of tech-inspired pumpkins for his front porch. A Ubuntu pumpkin and various emoticon carvings decorate his lawn, with the red ring of death being the most frightening of all. With all the new games coming ...

In the days of the Cold War, espionage was a big deal. This was back when spy bots didn’t exist and spies relied on obtaining information personally. If you weren’t a spy, you might as well have swallowed cyanide because during the Cold War everyone was a spy. That’s why Brian Dereu wants to cash in on spy-wannabes everywhere. He’s ...

The Duemilanove (meaning “2009” in Italian) is the latest addition to the Arduino line of microcontrollers. It looks like it’s predecessor, the Diecimila, and also shares similar specs with one main subtle difference: the Diecimila has a jumper which is used to select a power source (USB or external power) while the Duemilanove automatically selects the appropriate power supply , ...

Using an ATtiny13 microcontroller and some matrixed LEDs, hacker Randomskk designed a jar full of electronic fireflies. A bulb is picked at random and flashed on one to three times. 255 different patterns are available and the entire thing is powered by a watch battery. Seems like it’d be pretty easy to make your own. What do you think? Weekend ...

Wearing a tuxedo without these cuff links should be a crime. Artist Laura Swingle hand crafts these highly detailed clay Nintendo cartridges in to a variety of jewelery pieces. Laura’s Etsy shop offers a limitless supply of creativity as she is open to taking requests on turning any two games into these cuff links, so long as she can find ...

Found on Science Toy Maker, this water bottle launcher was made by a school teacher looking for some good, clean fun. Apparently it’s quite easy to do and launches 2 liter soda bottles into the air with ease, drenching everyone around with water. Head over to STM for the full build instructions. Link [via]

I have to admit, the last place I ever expected to see a tutorial detailing how to install OS X on a PC would be the Register. But hey, Brian Hurley has a fantastic tutorial for those of you too broke to afford Apple’s hardware. The process is very detailed and is more suited for a long weekend than an ...