Rooms come alive as thousands of LEDs illuminate in perfect time over a large 50×50 panel. Chris Maher took on this task by converting regular light strips into that massive display without breaking the bank or requiring several controllers. His finished presentation plays well on a single 12-volt power supply and some pretty tiny gear, offering professional-looking animations, text, and patterns.
Photo credit: 2 Warps to Neptune
In 1974, Nintendo kicked off their coin-operated arcade era with Wild Gunman. This game required players to step up, pull a handgun from a holster, and face off against some unfriendly live-action gunslingers on a projection screen. Footage came from authentic film reels filmed on site in Japan, capturing the wild west-style shootouts in all their gritty grandeur. Timing was everything here. You could only draw and shoot after your eyes flashed and the word “FIRE” appeared on the screen. Get it right, and you’ll come out on top. If you mess up, draw too soon, or miss your shot, you will lose the duel.
Smartglasses seldom stay in style for this long, but the first Ray-Ban Meta model, priced at $247 (was $329), continues to draw those looking for the full experience without breaking the bank. Let’s start with how they look, because that’s the first thing that may turn some people off, but these frames fit just like old Ray-Bans, so if you put them on, no one will notice.
Smartphones have long promised a world of gaming on the go, but most of the time we’re still tapping away at our glass screens, with nothing to grip onto when things get hot. OnePlus took a close look at this and set out to solve the problem by designing the Ace 6 Ultra around a simple concept: give the phone an optional add-on with genuine buttons and a reasonable grip while keeping the screen open for touch controls. Surprisingly, it feels exactly like upgrading to a standard handheld console, and it works much better than you might expect.
Programmers have managed to cram the original Mac OS X onto a Nintendo Wii from 2006, a piece of hardware that is nearly 20 years old. Bryan Keller, the brains behind this, spent a year and a half developing tools to make it happen through a project called wiiMac. The result lets the Wii boot into Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah and handle basic tasks even if the experience moves slowly on such limited hardware.
Photo credit: Autoblog
Seres developed an in-car toilet design that allows the system to fit inside an electric vehicle without taking up additional room. Engineers put the entire assembly on a movable rail connecting to the seat frame. When it is not needed, the toilet simply disappears beneath the floor. All it takes is a simple nudge or a whispered order, and it appears like a drawer.
When a drone beginner picks up the DJI Flip, priced at $299 after clipping the on-page coupon (was $439), and begins to get acquainted with it, word spreads quickly. The Flip gets that reputation by doing all the clever things that serve to shorten the learning curve while still producing footage that anyone would be glad to share immediately. Size and weight make an impression the moment you pick it up, as the whole thing weighs less than 249 grams even with the battery charged, which makes a big difference when you need to get somewhere, and at roughly 136 by 62 by 165 millimeters in its folded state, it shrinks down enough to fit into a jacket pocket or a small bag without drawing attention.
Most gamers have a foggy memory of the weird X-shaped Xbox from the early 2000s. Microsoft cobbled it together as a one-off prototype made of machined aluminum, but the actual console followed a very different path. Tito Perez, of Macho Nacho Productions, wanted to change that. His current project includes step-by-step directions so that anyone with basic equipment and an original Xbox may build their own working version in a transparent container that looks exactly like the prototype.
Remmy Evans learned via a friend that a Tesla Model 3 was sitting in some guy’s driveway in Idaho. The owner had bought it cheaply with the intention of removing the drivetrain and installing it in an old car from the 1970s, but he abandoned the plan after realizing how much time the body work would take. Evans was able to negotiate a price of exactly $2k and walk away with a rolling chassis that was still capable of moving on its own.
