DIY

Michael Rosenblatt, design lead behind the first iPod touch, has a point to make about toys. Not all toys. Just the best kind: the ones that enable children (and grown-ups, let's be honest) to create things, be it from LEGO, K-NEX, crayons, paints or Play-Doh. The thing is, they're generally a little on the inert side. With ATOMS from ATOMS Express Toys, Rosenblatt is hoping to redress the balance with a series of modules that can be fitted to other toys (including LEGO) to effectively turn them into moving and sensing robots.  Read More

For the past few years, entrepreneur Drew Beaumier has been creating life-size Transformers-inspired costumes known as Drive Suits. Thanks to the wearer’s motorized “drive boots,” they can actually trundle along the ground when in “vehicle” mode. It may be a bit late for Halloween, but you can now buy one of your own.  Read More

Founded by Japanese designer Kenya Hara, Architecture for Dogs is an unusual project that showcases various structural designs that have been specifically created for dogs. Following the popular trend of pet-friendly furniture like the Cat Tunnel Sofa and Dog House Sofa, these structures hope to change the way people interact with their dogs in shared living spaces.  Read More

Steve Norris, a software engineer with a knack for robotics, has built himself a remote-controlled robot in his spare time that could give professional bots a run for their money. The aptly titled PatrolBot Mark II trundles around on wheels and sends its operator a live video feed from its night vision camera. Of course, being a hobby project it isn't designed to be dangerous – but its 100-db car horn and water gun might put a scare into trespassing raccoons.  Read More

What would you do if your 12 year-old son announced that he’d like to dress up as the armor-clad Emile character from the game Halo: Reach for Hallowe’en? While many parents might just take a cursory look for a cheap, ready-made costume, that’s not what Steve Sobchyshyn did. Instead, he spent an estimated 150 hours and a couple of hundred bucks building his own from scratch. The end result, we’re sure you’ll agree, was well worth it.  Read More

Every Halloween brings a new batch of creative takes on the traditional Jack-o-lantern, but very few of these actually try to give a pumpkin a technological enhancement. This year, one programmer decided to change that by hacking a pumpkin into a working version of Tetris by using a grid of LED lights and converting the stem into a functional joystick.  Read More

A Kickstarter campaign seeking to build a US$99 "supercomputer for everyone" saw its funding target of $750,000 comfortably met on Saturday, raising just shy of $900,000 in pledges. The Parallella is billed by its designers at Adapteva as an affordable, open and easy parallel computing platform based on the company's own multicore Epiphany chips.  Read More

Back in June we demonstrated the incredible versatility of LEGO and the mind-boggling talent of those who spend hours and hours snapping together tiny bits of plastic to create something awesome. One contender for the next round is the LEGO Wheelchair built by Simon Burfield.  Read More

With the current surging popularity of electric bicycles, it only makes sense that we’re seeing an increase in something else getting motorized – the skateboard. Just in the past couple of years, Gizmag has featured electric boards such as the Fiik, Gnarboard, ZBoard, LiquidRoam, and the Boosted Board. While all of those come as complete skateboards, Florida-based RedRock Boardshop is offering something a little different – the powered LaGrange L1 truck, that turns any board into an electric vehicle.  Read More