If you like your World War II tanks made of LEGO rather than armor, check this out. This awesome tank model is outfitted with minesweeping flails and is the creation of Tommy Styrvoky. It’s a 1/18th scale replica of a WWII M4 Sherman tank.
It has the aforementioned flails, a turret that moves 360-degrees, a gun that rises up, two-gear transmission and electronic braking. The LEGO axis will not know what hit them. This small tank packs in a ton of features. Check out the video to see it in action.
Awesome job Tommy! Good idea adding those flails. You wouldn’t want this thing blown up by any LEGO mines.
The original Zboard electric skateboard showed up in 2012. Fast forward a few years and we now have the new Zboard 2. The Zboard 2 is better all around than the original and comes in two versions, the Zboard 2 Blue and the Zboard 2 Pearl.
The Blue version has a range of 16 miles while the Pearl has a range of 24 miles. The Pearl also weighs two pounds more than the Blue version at 18 pounds. Both have a top speed of 20mph and use brushless 500w motors.
The brushless motors mean that riders can coast and push the Zboard 2 naturally with the battery off, extending range. These things aren’t cheap with the Pearl costing $1199 and the Blue costing $949 on Indiegogo, the project blew past its $50,000 goal and has raised over $240,000 so far.
Mario Kart is awesome, but it just makes you wish you had a real life version to zip around in and throw banana peels and turtle shells. Well Razor is making a real life version. The Razor Cray Cart XL is a follow-up to a smaller version they made for kids a while back. This one is much cooler.
This one is for the adults who want some real life Mario Kart fun. It will accommodate a 6’3″ 250-pound rider and has even been tested up to 300 pounds. I wouldn’t push it too far past that limit though, for all you Comic Book Guy types out there.
See it in action in the video here. It looks super fun.
The Crazy Cart XL will retail for $800 when it goes on sale in December and will make one heck of a Christmas present.
The Motrr Galileo is a nifty device for those who want to get more out of their smartphone’s camera. This compact gadget provides iPhone users with the ability to capture motion-control video effects, as well as other types of remote camera capabilities.
The Galileo is about the size of a thick hockey puck, but it’s actually quite powerful. The device works in concert with a variety of apps which can do everything from motion time-lapse video, to remote-controlled teleconferencing. It can be set on a tabletop or attached to a standard screw-thread tripod for optimal stability in the field.
Using the Galileo is easy. Simply choose the proper device insert for your iPhone or iPod Touch, and plug it into a USB charger to wake it up the first time, then load the Motrr app onto your smartphone to pair it and learn about compatible apps. Once you’ve selected an app to use with the Galileo, just twist the device, and it will ask to connect within the app. The Galileo is available in either a 30-pin ($99.95) or Bluetooth version ($149.95) – which is the model I’m using.
There are a wide variety of apps available, which you can check out on the Motrr website. My two favorites (so far) are TimeLapse, and Sphere. TimeLapse does what you’d expect, automatically capturing time-lapse video from still images, but making it really easy with pre-sets for common time-lapse scenarios. By combining this with the motion-control aspect of the Galileo, you can create sophisticated time-lapse which usually require much more expensive equipment. One thing to keep in mind with time-lapse footage is that you’ll want to make sure both your camera and the Galileo have enough battery charge, and you’ve temporarily disabled notifications.
Sphere is really cool too. It can capture a 360° panoramic image in under a minute. All you need to do is set your iPhone in the Galileo’s dock, and press the touchscreen. Sphere works in concert with the Galileo to capture all of the images needed, then stitch them together into a panorama you can view directly on your phone or share on the Internet. You can see a sample Sphere I shot below. It’s not perfect with aligning horizontal lines like the ones in the siding, but it’s still pretty nifty.
One thing that’s tricky to do with the iPhone is capture a perfectly smooth panoramic image. Using the DMD Panorama app with Galileo, you can capture foolproof circular panoramas in full photo resolution. Click the icon in the upper right corner of the image below to pop open a full-res panorama captured with the Galileo and this app, or click here for the original hi-res image.
One other app I tested with the Galileo was Videography. This app is great for shooting HD video of motion or faces, since it can automatically track these and pan and tilt the camera accordingly, though the motion tracking has a tendency to be a bit jerky compared to the face and color tracking, which seemed to offer smoother movements.
There are a number of other apps I didn’t get a chance to try, but it’s clear that the Galileo offers much more versatility than its simple premise might suggest. For instance, I wouldn’t have thought about using the Galileo’s platform to create a motorized alarm clock. You can also use it for automated home monitoring – assuming you have a spare iPhone or iPod Touch to use.
While not everyone will find a daily use for the Motrr Galileo, anyone who enjoys photography or has a need for remote telepresence will get plenty of value for the price.
Upuaza Touryou likes to have fun with Amazon boxes. He previously built a model temple out of them. So it only makes sense that now he has built a tank. An amazing, remote controlled tank of a Type 97 Chi-Ha, which was used by the Imperial Japanese Army in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Despite only costing him 1,500 yen (~$15 USD), it took two months to complete. It has tons of nice detail and is quality made all the way. The man is a wizard with an X-Acto knife. A paper model of this quality is impressive enough, but this thing is actually remote controlled and moves around.
This is the best way ever to recycle those Amazon boxes.
Many parts of the country are covered in a ton of snow right now. How do you get around when everything looks like the North Pole? Behold the Powerboard Gas-powered Snowboard! This strange looking vehicle combines the power of a snowmobile with the freedom of a snowboard.
It is a powerful way to navigate through winter wonderlands. It has a rugged frame and is powered by a 6-1/2 horsepower engine that effortlessly glides over snowy terrain. Its tank-like rubber track uses 1 3/4″ snow lugs and flexes as you lean in the direction you wish to go for wide, smooth turns. It will transport riders up to 250 lbs. and has a top speed of 18 mph.
It will only give you up to two hours on only 3/4-gallon of gasoline though. Too bad they can’t combine this idea with the solar-panel snowboard for some extra power. Check it out in action in the video below:
It looks like an awesome way to get around during winter, and sells for $2,500(USD) over at Hammacher Schlemmer.
Back in the old days, in James Bond movies as well as other films and TV shows, people always tricked their pursuers with a license plate that flipped to reveal another. Now you can own your very own license plate flipper.
You can buy one from License Plate Flipper. This unusual device allows you to have two license plates. Just push a button and it will rotate 180 degrees, changing one plate into another within 1.2 seconds.
Of course I’m sure this is illegal in most, if not every state. Take a look at the disclaimer at the bottom of their page:
Improper installation of the product may result in car damage. When purchasing our product, you take full responsibility for all liabilities associated with the use or misuse of our product. Check your local laws and regulations before using this product. The product is great for use in car shows, advertisements or as a novelty / vanity and many more purposeful uses. We discourage the use of our product to avoid red light camera, beating red light cameras or avoiding toll booths or toll cameras.
Some students at the LeCroy Career Technical Center have created an automated lawn mower for a national robotics competition. I say they just didn’t want to mow the lawn anymore. But no matter the reason, they have made a pretty cool lawnmower. Having it do all of the work is a nice bonus though.
This Ardumower was made from a motorized wheelchair, a push mower, an Arduino mini-computer, sensors and other parts. First they disassembled the wheelchair, then created the metal frame and then fitted the programmable hardware that allowed them to autonomously or remotely operate it.
They used Google Maps as the coordinate locater, so that they could program the Arduino to cut grass all by itself. They have to work on obstacle avoidance next.
Or if they had about $3000 lying around, they could just go for one of these.
This custom-built wall clock comes from Etsy’s DIYArtShop, and is based on an earlier design shown over on Instructables. The clock tells time by using colored LEDs that flash rapidly and display the hours, minutes and seconds through slots cut in the rapidly-spinning hard drive platter. The red hand tells hours, the green one is minutes, and the blue one is seconds. There’s also a digital clock at the bottom if you don’t feel like reading the hands. All of those extra LEDs dangling from the bottom are just for show. See it in action in the video clip below:
It’s for sale over on Etsy for $77(USD), which I think is a steal for how cool this thing looks when it’s telling time – though I might get rid of that rustic looking cord that they used to hang it from the wall and replace it with something more modern like aircraft cable. There’s also a desk version available for $87 if you’d rather not hang it on the wall.
This LEGO motorized Tumbler is so detailed that you might think it was made by Wayne Industries, but it was actually made by a guy named Sariel. The man should build for Batman himself – or at least change his name to Lucius.
