Digital Water Clock

Dutch YouTuber Strange Inventions found a real deal- 65 little bottles for just €6.50. What to do with them? How about designing a digital clock, using bottles of colored water for pixels? It sounded like a good idea at the time, but this project ended up taking 210 hours of work and €580 ($680) in parts. The finished product is pretty, and impressive because it actually works, but as a timepiece it's pretty hard to see the numbers unless you squint. The real entertainment value is in the part of these projects that you usually skip- the build. 

He had no previous project to draw from, and had to figure out each component on his own. That meant failure after failure, and buying more parts at each step. And since he was working with water, there were constant leaks that had to be fixed. Each successful step only revealed problems in the next step. But once he had invested some time and money, he couldn't stop until he got it right.   

This is YouTube, and around here, we appreciate stupidity and esthetics. 

By the end of the video, you feel so sorry for the guy that you have to applaud. Kind of like the way you applaud your child at their awful first band concert because you don't want to destroy their enthusiasm after they've worked so hard. (via Born in Space) 
  
    

One Weird Trick to Unclog a Sink

Don't call a plumber! All you need to unclog a stubborn drain is ...eggs! Lots and lots of eggs. By the time you get to the end of this tutorial, you'll start to fear an egg shortage. Or maybe this guy has his own chicken coop and few neighbors to give eggs to. But at least, you'll be slightly entertained.  

The YouTube channel HowToBasic most often gives us recipes, with similar results, but this time they went in another direction. This has to be a riff on those ads you see about why you should put oil in your toilet or aluminum foil on your door knobs. I still don't know those things because I am well aware that if I click on the ad, I'll be led down a 45-page primrose path of more ads. At least this video gets to the point quickly. (via Boing Boing) 

Homemade Drivable TIE Fighter

If you are in Hubbards, Nova Scotia, and see Darth Vader coming toward you, you aren't necessarily hallucinating. Allan Carver built his own TIE fighter that he can drive around the neighborhood! He says it's roughly a third of the size of Vader's vehicle, and doesn't fly, but it tools around at a maximum of six miles per hour. He still wears a helmet while driving -you can guess what kind. The TIE fighter is powered by several wheelchair motors (hence the speed) controlled by a Sabertooth dual-motor driver and a DX8 remote control receiver, so it can go whether he's in it or not. Read more about the TIE fighter at the YouTube page and at Carver's website. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Homemade Rocket Revolver

A handheld rocket launcher is bad enough, so how about one that carries three rockets at a time? The YouTuber called Current Concept has a 3D printer and plenty of time, so that seemed like a challenge- the kind that will get you a knock on the door from some government agency. Still, he started out knowing nothing about rockets, so the main part of the story is figuring out how his rockets failed so hilariously. And they failed in every kind of way. 

The next challenge was to design the revolver, which he skips through quickly. Maybe it's because he didn't want anyone to try this at home for national security reasons, but I believe it's because it wasn't quite as funny as the rockets. The rocket revolver finally worked! And you'll be glad to hear that the only one injured was himself. There's a sponsor message from 4:28 to 5:13. (via Born in Space) 

LEGO Submarine

Can you build a working submarine from LEGO blocks? Well, I certainly couldn't, but the guy behind Brick Experiment Channel did it. Most of it is LEGO parts, some are homemade, and some are just convenient, like the syringe. This submarine is controlled by Raspberry Pi and PID. This gadget even has laser sensors, a camera, and remote control. It also has a cute minifig captain inside.  

If you want to skip ahead to see the submarine work, that starts at about three minute in, but I was quite impressed to see the quick build. If you want to build your own, the complete project is laid out in a series of articles here. (via kottke) 

42,000 Match Sphere Gets Lit

I've actually thought about the curves and a possible sphere when playing with matches. But it's been long time since I've played with matches, and I never had enough free time to amass this many matches and put this experiment into action. YouTuber All Is Art did it. 

What happens when you start gluing matches together? Because the heads are slightly wider than the wooden bodies, they begin to form a sphere. This was an experiment in how many matches it would take to get all the way around to make a perfect globe. After months of gluing and gluing and gluing we made it to the other side.

The answer is 42,000, give or take a few matches. What do you do with this sphere afterward? Light it up, of course! Don't let the length of this video deter you- that all happens in the first three minutes. Then we get to see it from all angles, then in slow motion. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Turning a Car Into a Computer Mouse

 

Simone Giertz teamed up with William Osman to modify her tiny electric car, Cheese Louise. They turned it into a computer mouse. The aim is to draw a picture on a computer screen by driving the car. What you might need to know is that Giertz had only recently earned her driver's license, and the car is around 30 years old. So the picture isn't all that much, but the project was a success and the video is entertaining. Osman's video about the project goes into more detail about how they did it, and it's funny, too, but longer. 



The story of how Giertz came to own such a ridiculous car is here. (via The Awesomer)

The Magic Piano

A piano can produce beautiful music if you know how to play it, but what if you could see the music as well as hear it? This idea presented a challenge for the guys at HTX Studio, and they spent three years making it happen. In this video, we get to see the many ideas that didn't work, which are all pretty cool anyway. With every failure, the challenge became more important, and that's why they persevered to the end. 

We also have to admire this guy's dedication to learning to play piano in those three years, in order to do the magic piano justice. The result is not only a fascinating musical instrument, but also beautiful music and an astonishingly high-quality DIY video. (via Metafilter) 

Rakovalkea

Ancient people were smarter than we think. They solved problems in the most amazing ways, and sleeping outside in the winter in a cold climate can be a real problem. You could build a fire, but what if it goes out while you're asleep? The answer is the rakovalkea, or Finnish gap fire. This is a fire contained in a small area that's big enough to heat a sleeping body, that burns slow enough to last through the night. Austin of The View From the Clouds takes us through the process of building and using this type of camp fire from finding the proper wood to putting it out the next morning. It's not as tedious as it may sound. 

I was worried about the grass that reaches right up to the fire. Austin explains he is in northern Britain, where the grass is always wet, even when it's frozen. If you build a fire in the US or in any dry area, be sure to clear any flammable material away from your fire spot. (via Laughing Squid) 

Dad Builds Palace For Dogs

Aaron Franks built a doghouse on his deck. That's a bit of an understatement. This is not ordinary doghouse! It's a three-level dog dreamland featuring stairs, three entrances, cubbyholes, beds, a pool, three swings, an umbrella, tunnels, a pirate wheel, a potty pit full of wood chips (complete with fire hydrant), and a water dispenser. Franks also has a monitor in his bedroom so he can watch his four pit bulls enjoy their doggy mansion. His wife didn't realize the scope of the project, as he worked on it for two years. He may add more in the future. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Nicest Car Horn Ever

Mark Rober customized his car horn to make three different sounds for different purposes. One is a "courtesy honk" that doesn't sound nearly as rude as a regular horn. Wait until you hear the others. Rober shares how he did it, too, with lots of links at the YouTube page to the parts he used, and even a WAV file for the sound. (via reddit)

Wallace & Gromit’s Breakfast Machine in Real Life

There is a charming scene in Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers in which Wallace is slung out of bed, dressed, and served breakfast in a mere few seconds by his dog Gromit with the aid of some mechanical shenanigans. Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines saw this as a challenge. Can he recreate the scene in real life without resorting to special effects?

The answer is yes, but it wasn't easy. This time, we get to see the process of building one of Joseph's machines, despite his trepidation about falling from a great height. The jelly made a mess, the bed broke, and there was no plausible substitute for training a real dog to initiate it all. You can skip to 7:39 and see the finished stunt, or you can enjoy all the hard work and bruises that went into making it. (via kottke)

Cross Stitch

(Thanks, Myra!)

Make Your Own Fire Tornadoes

Kevin Kohler, the Backyard Scientist, makes fire tornadoes with no fan or machinery. This is not only pretty cool, but pretty, too! Once you see how it's done, then it all makes sense. And with different kinds of fuel, you can make flames of different colors. He even makes one tornado with two different colors! (via Tastefully Offensive)

How to Do Halloween Decorations

25 years to build, a week to set up! It’s my third year decorating this beautiful old mansion.
byu/UptonDide inhalloween

Redditor UptonDide is a cosplayer at Ren Faires, a model airplane enthusiast, a dad, and is doing renovations on his very old home. He is also very much into Halloween decorations. His collection of tombstones is north of 100 stones now, all handmade. You can look through his post history to see closeups of some of them, with their pun epitaphs. (via reddit)

DIY Project Goes A Little Overboard

Went a little overboard with her creation.
byu/Ayato_jin inDiWHY

 Isn't it cool when you can take natural ingredients from the wild and make something useful? I assure you there is no point in this video where you know what's going to happen next. The reactions to this project at reddit fall into two categories. Watch the video first and then and then continue reading and we'll discuss how you feel on the next page.

How to Make a Mermaid's Crown

First, you fill a container with Orbeez, then you pour in molten Nordic gold, which is an alloy of copper, aluminum, zinc, and tin. I didn't say it would be easy. Joe Myheck has those materials because he does science experiments on YouTube. Be careful with the pattern you pour the metal in, and the result may be a golden crown with some colorful Orbeez stuck to it. Cool, but I have no use for such a thing. I am neither a mermaid nor a queen. (via Born in Space)

Marble Mountain

Ben Tardif spent three years designing and building an intricate marble machine he calls Marble Mountain. It has everything- ramps, stairs, slides, a castle, a luge run, a ski jump, a golf course, a bowling alley, and so much more. He says it’s not yet complete, but it’s complete enough that he can turn it on and show us what it does.

-It has a footprint of 12' x 8' and stands 8' tall
-The material of the tracks and supports consist almost entirely of wood
-Everything is custom-made from materials bought mostly from craft and hardware stores (mainly Michaels and Home Depot)
-The lift is 11 feet long, holds 90 marbles at once, and rotates at 1 revolution per second (60 RPM)
-It takes at least 250 marbles to keep it running without delay, but looks better with 300
-There are 32 possible paths for the marbles
-There are 14 rockers that distribute the marbles onto the different paths
-The first year and a half of construction happened in my apartment before moving to a small warehouse
-The original design was smaller and not as cool, so a redesign took place making it much bigger and morphed into a half-conical shape with the lift right down the middle
-I do know how much it cost to make thus far but even my finaceé doesn't know that number
-It takes just under an hour to set up or tear down Marble Mountain
-Since it is modular, I could remove a section and rebuild it as something else as long as the tracks matched up with the other pieces

Give him a couple more years and this will be a monster. See more of Tardif’s project at Instagram. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Tweet of the Day

Fix holes in clothing👏 pic.twitter.com/R0nTnmTyok

— Tansu Yegen (@TansuYegen) September 17, 2022

(via Everlasting Blort)

Knife-Wielding Tentacle

Think of all the cool stuff you see in DIY videos. Arduino is on the list because it makes all kids of cool things happen. Tentacles are cool. Knives are cool. Robots are cool. YouTube member outaspaceman put all these together in one project. I love his deadpan announcement, “"It appears I have invented a knife wielding tentacle.” Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.  (via reddit)