Toy Hacks

1013 Articles

Pressurized PVC Water Gun

June 11, 2010 by 34 Comments

Hackaday’s [Caleb Kraft] has branded today “kiddie d-day” after seeing this PVC water gun follow close on the heals of the LEGO sniper rifle. This is a great summer project if you don’t mind letting the kids use the quick connect on your air compressor. It’s really just a ‘T’ made of PVC with two valves for air and water management and a soda bottle on the third leg as a reservoir. In the short clip after the break you can see that you don’t get a lot of shooting time out of each charge compared to the DIY Super Soaker, but this build is also a lot less complicated.

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Seven-six-two Millimeter. Full Plastic Jacket.

June 11, 2010 by 31 Comments

Minifigs beware, something’s afoot. This LEGO sniper rifle is in talented hands to clean up those problem areas. [Jack Streat] put together this fascinating build as well as the delightful demo after the break. The bolt pulls a 1×4 block out of the eight-round magazine and loads it into the chamber. A pull of the trigger flings it with surprising accuracy. Want to be the coolest parent ever? Forgo the store-bought toys this year and put one of these together for your kid. Just don’t turn them into Private Pyle (NSFW).

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LEGO Printer Built Without NXT parts

June 2, 2010 by 28 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX09WnGU6ZY]

[Squirrelfantasy] built a printer using LEGO pieces. It’s not a Mindstorm project but instead depends on some type of development board and some auxiliary components on a protoboard. We couldn’t get a good enough look to tell exactly what makes up the electronics so start the debate in the comments. We feel this is a printer and not a plotter because the stylus moves on just one plane while the paper feeds past it but that’s open for debate as well.

Guess this answers the question of why aren’t we building our own printers? Some folks are.

[Thanks Haxorflex and many others, via DVICE]

RC Car Taunts Man’s Best Friend

June 2, 2010 by 18 Comments

[Arkos] gutted an RC car from his childhood and made it into a dog-taunting remote platform. An Arduino replaces the original circuitry with a Bluetooth module for connectivity. He uses an Xbox 360 controller and has added a small speaker to act as a siren. But for our money it’s the camera that makes this hack. It streams video back to a laptop and because it’s mounted on a couple of servos the left stick controls where the lens is looking. The next evolution should replace the Arduino for a standalone microcontroller but what he’s come up with as a first prototype is delightful. See Fido run in terror after the break.

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Hoverboard Comes To Life

May 29, 2010 by 57 Comments

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/11968215]

This installation by artist [Nils Goudagnin] is a recreation of the hoverboard from Back to the Future II. We would like to see inside that plinth. We’ve seen levitating magnets before, but this is particularly stable. He says he is using lasers and a control system of some kind to stabilize it. Just to guess, we’d say that the lasers determine the distance of the board and an array of electromagnets below is adjusted to keep it level. Then again, we might be over thinking this. Even though it can’t be ridden, we’d love to have one around the office just to look at.

BAMF2010: Spy TRAKR – No Lasers, $14,861 Cheaper

May 24, 2010 by 43 Comments

Maybe $15K for an elaborate balancing telepresence robot is a bit out of one’s league. In that case, another Bay Area Maker Faire exhibitor — Wild Planet — has you covered. Faire attendees got a hands-on sneak preview of the upcoming Spy Video TRAKR, a video-transmitting radio-controlled toy that’s programmable and extensively hackable.

The TRAKR has an impressive pedigree. It’s a collaborative effort between three successful and creative technology companies: Wild Planet, makers of the Spy Gear toy line; MOTO Development Group, designers of the Flip Video camera; and Making Things, software designers for the Make Controller.

So just how hackable are we talking? The Spy Video TRAKR is intended right out of the box to use downloadable apps, and allows development of new programs in C. The controller and vehicle each contain their own ARM9 processor, and the ’bot features 8 megs of RAM, an SD card slot and USB client and host (yes, host) ports. And that’s all with the cover still on. Pop the lid, and you’ll find links to online schematics and neatly-labeled breakout headers for deeper exploration.

The Spy Video TRAKR is expected to ship in October with a target price of $139 or less. Additional photos after the break.

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Composing Music With The Force Trainer

May 18, 2010 by 9 Comments

In the ongoing quest to make the Force Trainer useful [Hunter Scott] developed a music composition platform for your mind (channel Jack Black’s voice for the last half of that sentence). Using the Force Trainer’s serial port [Hunter] feeds the data stream into a computer via an FTDI cable and uses Processing to make the music. It’s good, and the demos on his site are worth the click, but we still can’t get enough of the shocking video from back in March. But we digress, let [Hunter] walk you through his setup in the video after the break. Continue reading “Composing Music With The Force Trainer” →