Les Cookson drew on memories of after-school arcade visits with friends when he set out to create something his family could enjoy together. He knew many homes lack room for a bulky machine that sits idle most of the time. So he designed Swap Arcade, a unit that starts as ordinary storage furniture and opens into a complete two-player arcade cabinet within seconds.
Makers will always be chasing a dream, a wild concept, and few of those ideas come close to producing results as this one. The YapStopper 3000 is a device that can detect what someone is saying from across the room, add a tiny bit of delay, then fire that precise audio back at them, to the point that their brain can’t seem to put two meaningful sentences together.
Strange Inventions set out to create a clock that would stand out from the crowd. Water becomes the focal point of the show, with the numerals formed by little bottles filled to various levels. The display consists of four grids arranged side by side. Each grid contains 15 tiny bottles placed neatly in a 3×5 design. Some bottles contain blue-dyed water, while others are empty. The arrangement of full and empty bottles produces a clear image of the current hour and minute.
Digital claw machines let you grab virtual prizes with a few clicks, yet real garages still demand ladders, stretching, and sore backs every time something sits on a high shelf. Alex of Hobby Built decided to change that equation in his basement workshop. He designed and built a three-axis gantry robot that retrieves and returns any one of 24 heavy storage totes with nothing more than a tap on a screen.
Lock Noob got his hands on the NPX-002 from Works by Design and wanted to put its security claims to the test to see how well they held up. The lock’s designers created this travelling key system, in which the key’s bow spins some internal gears and the actual key blade moves into place deep inside the cylinder. The key only fits perfectly in the exact position, at which point the keyway seals off, leaving no place for your standard picks or tension tools to reach the pins. To prevent the normal impressioning techniques, the brass ones had a plastic pin inserted.
Summer heat hits us like a ton of bricks, and before you know it, everyone is looking for something cold to drink. The Ninja SLUSHi, priced at $259 (was $350), fulfills that call by transforming liquids into the perfect frozen delight in the comfort of your own home without the mess.
Govee’s Outdoor Solar String Lights have just launched, and they’re already making waves across social media. The string itself is 34 feet long and has eight extremely flexible bulbs that may be hung over a fence, a tree branch, or the border of your patio. A secondary 6 watt solar panel clamps on and may be tilted to maximize sun exposure while the lights are in place.
People often talk about finding value when a product simply works for you and does not involve a significant trade-off in performance or cost. The Anker Solix C2000 Gen 2 portable power station, priced at $799.99 (was $1,499), has a capacity of 2,048 watt-hours and is powered by lithium iron phosphate cells that can withstand thousands of charge cycles without trouble. With so much energy saved, you can power a conventional dual-door fridge for up to 32 hours on a full charge.
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.
Home security gets a quiet boost when the details are clear regardless of time of day or lighting conditions. The newest Ring Indoor Cam Plus, priced at $35 (was $60), delivers on that promise with its Retinal 2K resolution, allowing you to see a misplaced key on the kitchen counter or a sleeping pet in the corner without having to squint at blurry corners.