Radio hacker and swing dancer Greg Charvot is at it again with his latest restoration, the Retro Boom Box. His local swing group was in need of a portable radio to use for impromptu Lindy Hopping, so he outfitted a 1940’s radio with modern batteries that they could use while on the run.
This playful killer whale (orca) is actually a robot. One of a series of over 100 different creatures, it was built by Masamichi Hayashi to teach children about marine biology.
This improbable-looking gyro-powered monorail appears to have been built by MORI Hiroshi. The monorail car balances on the track using a gyroscope flywheel, with a control system that can change its alignment to keep the car upright.
Dave writes in to share his friend Andrei’s project, a homemade hourglass. Andrei made this using two wine glasses, hardwood, brass screws and a keen attention to detail.
Jon Stanley writes in to share his latest project, the entirely analog Round Pong. Built to be played in a vintage Heathkit oscilloscope with a circular screen, he developed some tricky circuitry to generate the classic game using a circle generator.
Though it’s likely a viral vid from a hardware manufacturer, the “superhuman tape measure skills” seen above do seem plausible – and fun! Update: As the perceptive comments below point out, these ‘tricks’ seem to be a combination of CG renders and string. Still, I’m guessing something similar could be pulled off by a seasoned […]
Here’s a cool project by Ivan Poupyrev, an interactive 3D surface called Lumen. Unlike a regular 3D display, which uses optical tricks to make the image appear to extend out from the screen, in this display the pixels actually move.
