Toy Hacks

952 Articles

Launch And Track Your Model Rockets Via Smartphone

July 27, 2022 by 14 Comments

Building and flying model rockets is great fun. Eventually, though, the thrill of the fire and smoke subsides, and you want to know more about what it’s doing in the air. With a thirst for knowledge, [archy587] started building a project to monitor the vital stats of rockets in flight. 

The project mounts an M0 Feather microcontroller board into the rocket, along with a 900 MHz LoRa transmitter and a GPS module. This allows the rocket’s journey to be measured and logged, and is particularly useful for when a craft floats off downrange during parachute recovery. There’s also a relay module onboard, which dumps power from a dedicated separate battery into the rocket motor igniter. This allows the rocket to be fired wirelessly.

On the ground, the setup uses an ESP32 fitted with another LoRa module to receive signals from the rocket. It’s designed to hook up to an Android smartphone over its USB-C port. This allows data received from the rocket to be displayed in an Android app, including the rocket’s GPS location overlaid on Google Maps.

Being able to remotely ignite your rockets and track their progress brings some high-tech cool to the launch pad. You’ll be upgrading your rockets with micro flight controllers and vectored thrust in no time. Just be sure whatever tech you’re using is compliant with the rules for model rocketry in your local area.

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Hacking A Jack-in-the-Box To Be Extra Surprising

July 20, 2022 by 13 Comments

A Jack-In-The-Box is scary enough the first time. However, if you’ve seen the clown pop out before, it fails to have the same impact. [Franklinstein] decided that swapping out the clown for an alternative payload would deliver the fright he was after.

Inside the toy, an Arduino Nano runs the show. It’s paired with an airhorn, installed in a special frame along with an RC servo. When the time is right, the RC servo presses up against the airhorn, firing off an almighty noise. There’s also a confetti blaster, built with a small chamber full of compressed air. When a solenoid is released, the compressed air rushes out through a funnel full of confetti, spraying it into the room.

When the crank on the toy is turned, the typical song plays. When the lid of the box opens, it releases a switch, and the Arduino fires off the confetti and airhorn. It’s shocking enough for [Franklinstein] himself, and even more surprising for those expecting the toy’s typical bouncing clown instead.

We’d love to see an even more obnoxious version that doesn’t turn the airhorn off for at least a full minute. We’ve seen them employed in some great Halloween hacks before, too. Video after the break.

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How To Become A Lego Submariner

July 18, 2022 by 7 Comments

A submarine is by necessity a complex and safety-critical machine, but the principle upon which it depends is quite simple. The buoyancy is variable by means of pumping water in and out of tanks, allowing the craft to control the depth at which it sits. The [Brick Experiment Channel] has a series of posts describing in detail the construction of a working submarine, with a hull made from a plastic tube and mechanics made from Lego.

In this submarine the buoyancy tank is a syringe operated by a Lego motor, and the propulsion comes courtesy of a pair of Lego motors driven through ingenious magnetic couplings to avoid a shaft seal. To monitor depth there is both a laser distance sensor and a pressure sensor, and there is a Raspberry Pi Zero to control the whole show.

In the video below the break you can see the craft in action as it zips around a swimming pool at different depths, before setting off on a longer journey with on-board footage along a shady creek. It’s an extremely practical submarine, and one we wish we could try.

This is version 4.0, and it shows.  We had a look at version 3.0 last year, and it’s by no means the first submarine we’ve featured, here’s one made from PVC pipe.

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It Turns Out You Can’t Just Fly A Drone Under Water

July 17, 2022 by 27 Comments

The differences between a drone and an underwater remote-operated vehicle (ROV) aren’t actually that large. Both have powerful motors that move large volumes of fluid (yes, air is a fluid), a camera, a remote, and an onboard battery. So when [RCLifeOn] got his hands on a cheap used drone, he reckoned that it could fly underwater just as well as it did in the air.

To his credit, the principle was sound, and the initial tests looked promising. However, we will spoil the ending and tell you it doesn’t work out as well as he hoped due to water leakage. He printed a case with a large panel for accessing electronics inside and an acrylic window for the camera. The panel pressed up against a gasket via the few dozen metric screws along the perimeter. Despite the design being quite whimsical, he quickly regrets the screws as getting inside is tiring on the wrists. He epoxies the hatch to the hull and drills holes to charge the battery to stop the seemingly never-ending water leaks. After its maiden journey, water got inside and fried some of the motor controllers. So for the second test run, he used what limited capabilities it had left.

Despite the project not working out how he expected, it’s a great example of how some reused parts and some 3d printing can make something entirely different. So perhaps next time, instead of throwing that broken drone away, see if it could be given just a bit of love. Possibly the propellers can be combined or make do with only three motors. Or just go the [RCLifeOn] route and make it into something new entirely.

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There’s A LEGO Suspension Dyno Now

June 16, 2022 by 1 Comment

When it comes to the development and testing of performance suspension, it’s helpful to have a test apparatus that lets you recreate certain conditions reliably. This LEGO suspension dyno does just that, and it’s clearly a big help for those doing R&D on minifig motorcycle suspension.

The build relies on four motors to overcome the resistance of turning a chunky conveyor belt, which acts as a rolling road. As the belt is built out of Technic beams, various LEGO blocks can be added to the conveyor to act as bumps or perturbations for testing suspension.

The video demonstrates the use of the dynamometer, showing how a simple LEGO motorbike design deals with bumps of various sizes. It’s easy to swap out forks and springs and change the geometry to tune the suspension, and the changes can be easily seen when running it through the same test conditions.

While we don’t imagine there are too many people working in this particular field, the lessons being taught here are valuable. This setup allows one to quickly visualize how changing vehicle parameters affects handling. It’s hard to imagine a better teaching tool for vehicle dynamics than something like this that lets you see directly what’s really going on!

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The blue LEGO brick described, with the OLED inside shining through the 3D-printed and subsequently cast brick body. The picture on the small OLED imitates the lines of text shown on the brick that this is an imitation of.

Computer-Shaped LEGO Brick Brought To Life

June 8, 2022 by 26 Comments

In childhood, many of us wondered — wouldn’t it be cool if our miniature toys had “real” functions? Say, that our toy cars actually were able to drive, or at least, that the headlights could light up. [James Brown] captures some of this childhood expectation of magic, recreating the 2×2 45°-sloped Lego bricks with computer screens and panels drawn on them by building a LEGO brick (thread, nitter) with an actual display inside of it.

This is possible thanks to an exceptionally small OLED display and a microcontroller board that’s not much larger. It’s designed to plug onto a LEGO platform that has an internal 9V battery, with power exposed on the brick’s studs. [James] has taken care building this — the brick was built with help of a tiny 3D-printed form, and then, further given shape by casting in what appears to be silicone or resin.

We’ve yet to hear more details like the microcontroller used — at least, the displays look similar to the ones used in a different project of [James]’, a keyboard where every keycap has a display in it (thread, nitter). Nevertheless, it is lovely to witness this feat of micro-engineering and fabrication. It reminds us of an another impressive build we covered recently — a 1/87 scale miniature Smart Car that’s as functional as you can get!

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Slow Races On A Pinewood Derby Track Built From Scratch

May 20, 2022 by 18 Comments

Pinewood derby racing is a popular pastime for scouting groups and many others besides. [Mr Coster] whipped up his own track with the assistance of some 3D printed parts, and used it to run a competition with a fun twist on the usual theme.

The track starts with a pair of MDF panels, on to which some strips are placed to act as guides for the racers. There’s also a release mechanism built with hinges and a pair of dowels that ensures both racers start the competition at exactly the same time. To give the track a nice transition from the downward slope to the horizontal, a series of curved transition pieces were designed in Fusion 360, 3D printed, and added to the course.

As for the competition, [Mr Coster] decided to eschew the usual focus on outright speed. Instead, students were charged with building the slowest possible car that could still complete the course. Just for the fun of it, though, the kids were then given one day to modify their slowest cars to compete in a more typical fastest-wins event. It gives the students a great lesson in optimizing for different performance parameters.

You might be old-school, though, and want to ruin the fun by taking it all way too seriously. Those competitors may wish to consider some of the advanced equipment we’ve featured before. Alternatively, you could run a no-holds-barred cheater’s version of the contest. Video after the break.

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