DIY Gadgets you'd Love to Make at Home

Ever thought of building your very own Potato Canon which is powered by a hairspray! Well, Instructable user Matt (who is an engineer by the way) has just the equipment and procedure for you. Utilizing one of the commonest thermo-plastics, i.e., ABS pipes along with some other readily available materials, this DIY gun is touted to shoot potatoes over a distance of a whopping 100 yards. The components required are - two types of ABS pipes (5ft of a 3 inch pipe and 2ft of a 1.5 inch pipe), a reducer, a thread adapter, an igniter, and an end cap along with some ABS cement. Now, for the projectile part of course you would require potatoes and a hair-spray. Finally after the assembly, the whole project would only cost you $30 and an hour of your precious life.

We did mention something about DIY projects exceeding the scope for home improvement. So beyond mundane domesticity, Instructable user AppleGuy has shown us something with a serious sci-fi vibe. It is a fully fledged wi-fi robot / spybot, which can be built by any moderately skilled robot enthusiast in less than two hours. The items required for the conception are not so highfalutin after all, as you would require - a RC car (which obviously has to stripped of its circuitry), a Barracuda wi-fi robot controller (which has to be bought online), a Wi-Fi Router, a network camera (along with regulators), Ethernet Cables and of course 7.2v RC batteries.

What happens when you are an ardent movie buff and an innovative DIY enthusiast? The potent combination is surely to give way to a conception unique in its allure and quirky in its bearing. Well, Instructable user Chandler104 has exactly done that by contriving his very own Matrix DIY phone. This project (as the name suggests) is based on the mobile phone design used (for the ultra cool ‘teleporting’) in the sci-fi movie series of The Matrix. Here the designer has utilized an old Nokia 5165 cell phone, a second generation iPod Nano with the rockbox installed along with a pair of pliers. Now one may ask - what is the ‘cool’ factor here? Well, the answer is that the phone nonchalantly displays those ubiquitous green codes (the matrix) running down across the screen!

We have seen a variety of odd ball conceptions ranging from potato cannons to Matrix mobile phones. So, now it is time for some conventional fun with an old school paintball gun. Except for in this instance, the paintball gun is wholly home made by Instructable user Geckowil. According to the creator, the contraption is made from cheap Steyr AUG AEG (used for light weight rifles in the airsoft category), while the design part (other than the barrel and breech) has been specially customized to his preference. The whole system takes around 4 seconds to fire, starting with the activation of the attached air compressor to the pulling of the trigger. As for user convenience, we can only hope for a safe solution to all those wires hanging dangerously.

The fascinating DIY fusion of natural elements with physical electricity; this is the ingenious (if not so practical) Potato battery. These 500 lbs natural batteries may pack a punch of just 5 volts, but it is the simplistic yet novel technology that has appealed to us. In physics, batteries work by a simple theory - the passing of electrons from one electrode to another through a medium. In relation to that the potatoes provide phosphoric acid (as the acidic medium), which facilitates the chemical reaction for electron flow between readily available zinc and copper components. According to the creator, even citrus fruits can be used for the acidic medium, but then again potatoes are certainly cheaper.