Make a Laser Pointer Burn

Have you ever wondered what sort of microscopic critters are floating around in your water? Well, you can find out with just a few bucks worth of materials and a laser pointer. Really. That's all it takes to build your very own homemade laser projection microscope, aka a water ...more

Building a DIY Alarm System: The Concept So, you want to protect your property, or maybe a room, car, or even your backyard. The concept of an alarm system is to notify the "alarm administrator" that there is an intruder entering the previously designated boundaries. The trig ...more

Interested in taking a few snapshots of the likely auroras from the recent solar flare the Sun sent our way? It's reported that we'll have the biggest solar radiation storm in over 7 years thanks to the Earth-directed CME (coronal mass ejection). But if you live in the right ...more

If you take two flat mirrors and place them front to back and look at them, you can see an infinite number of reflections. While this is a self-replicating pattern and can be somewhat mesmerizing, it isn't anywhere as interesting as looking at the chaotic scattering of light t ...more

I'm back with the third part to my laser weapon series (see part one and two), and I'll be explaining the function, application, and potential of semiconductor lasers, aka laser diodes. Surely, most of you have used a laser pointer at some point. Whether purchased at a dollar ...more

How is it possible that Iron Man is not yet a reality? DVICE reports that super-powered exoskeletons are indeed within our grasp (if not quite as flashy as Hollywood SFX just yet). Real life exoskeletons fall into the realm of not-too-distant futuristic warfare. Below, five e ...more

In this series on weaponized lasers, I'll be exploring the function, operation, strength and building instructions for three basic laser weapons; CO2, Diode, and Flashlamp. These laser types are just a few of many, selected because of their simplicity and basic construction (d ...more

If you're interested in bypassing Windows and Linux passwords, there is a great tool from the good people at Kryptoslogic. Have you ever forgotten your administrator password? Have you ever bought a used computer with a password on it? Well, Kryptoslogic have created a boot-di ...more

What the I have recently been thinking about how fun it would be to go around town with a somewhat high powered laser pointer (300MW or so) to pull pranks on people and watch their reaction to the fun pranks you can do with a laser pointer. For example: Popping water balloons ...more

Our dog has tons of energy and always wants to play. However, play time can be exhausting to the humans of the house. We found out a few months ago that the dog loves to play ‘chase the red dot.' Boredom leads to creativity, so we attached a laser pointer to her head with a ba ...more

If you're into photography, you're probably no stranger to the myriad of ways you can take macros with your smartphone. Your phone's built-in camera may not take great pictures up close, but you can modify it to do so with anything from a magnifying glass to a drop of water. H ...more

Want to learn how to build a laser tripwire and alarm out of snap circuits? I'll show you how to build both circuits— the laser tripwire circuit and the alarm circuit. Video: . The alarm is a very simple two-transistor oscillator that is switched on by the relay in the laser t ...more

Eavesdropping from a distance can be tricky because it usually requires some sort of bug or transmitter. It's easy to transmit audio through lasers, but you can also use lasers to build a microphone that picks up audio from a distance. LucidScience built the Laser Spy System f ...more

Add-on smartphone lenses are nothing new, but they have definitely gotten better as time goes on. Case in point: the Olloclip series of lenses for iPhones and Samsung Galaxy devices (the S4 and S5 only at the moment). Their newer 4-in-1 lenses give you fisheye, wide angle, 10 ...more

After some social media teasing, the Star Wars universe's Magic Leap debut has finally arrived. On Tuesday, Magic Leap announced the release of Star Wars: Project Prog, which is available for free via Magic Leap World. In addition, ILMxLAB, the immersive entertainment divisi ...more

Could your fever, body aches, cough, and sore throat be the flu? Soon, finding out may not involve a trip to the doctor. Right now, diagnosing the flu is something done at your doctor's office or hospital and involves a gag-inducing brushing inside your nose to collect cells ...more

While visiting the Made by Google pop-up shop in New York City this morning, I had a chance to try out the new Daydream View virtual reality headset. First impressions are important, and Google's new mobile VR product makes a good one. The headset is made of a soft fabric that ...more

Before attacking any website, a hacker or penetration tester will first compile a list of target surfaces. After they've used some good recon and found the right places to point their scope at, they'll use a web server scanning tool such as Nikto for hunting down vulnerabiliti ...more

With just a few taps, an Android phone can be weaponized into a covert hacking device capable of running tools such as Nmap, Nikto, and Netcat — all without rooting the device. UserLAnd, created by UserLAnd Technologies, is a completely free Android app that makes installing ...more

It's easier than you might think to hack into Wi-Fi routers using just one unrooted Android phone. This method doesn't require brute-forcing the password, a Windows OS for converting PowerShell scripts into EXE format, a reliable VPS for intercepting hacked Wi-Fi passwords, or ...more

In this article, I'll show you how to make an awesome "Death Ray" using the large magnifying lens from an old projection TV. The lens is called a Fresnel lens; a device that employs several ridges to focus light, rather than a complete curve. When sunlight passes through the ...more

What Is Ferrofluid? Ferrofluid is a black, solvent-based liquid, that, in the presence of a magnetic field, becomes strongly magnetized. The fluid is made up of nanomagnetic particles coated with an "anti-stick" or surfactant compound, suspended in a "carrier", commonly an or ...more

In my second article of the laser weapon series (see the first part here on CO2 lasers), I'll be expanding on the potential of pulsed lasers. I'm sure most everyone has seen those green and red laser pulses on Star Wars. Theoretically, those lasers could be built using a conc ...more

Homemade circuits are amazing. You can build any kind of circuit on a simple perfboard, as we have seen in previous projects. However, some projects require very tiny circuit boards. We could special order some boards from a printed circuit board (PCB) factory, but that will m ...more

Many windows users, if not all, run into a virus infection once in a while. This is unavoidable when using Microsoft's operating system. Without digressing too much, the fact that Windows is such a popular OS with no controlled software sources makes it easy for viruses and ma ...more

Looking for an (explosively) fun Thanksgiving project this week? Something that involves fire and lasers? Check it out. YouTube creator StyroPyro lights ten matches in 9 seconds with a modded laser. One word: Awesome. Luckily both StyroPyro and Kipkay provide HowTo's. First, H ...more

If you're a developer in the augmented and mixed reality space, there's a high probability that you're intimately familiar with the 3D application and game engine Unity. In May, at VisionSummit 2017, Microsoft announced that 91% of all HoloLens applications have been made with ...more

Apple is notoriously private when it comes to perspective products, but the latest leak from their De Anza office in Cupertino suggests that a new augmented reality device could be coming to a store near you. Gizmodo has obtained documents which appear to confirm that the tec ...more

While hackers know and love the Raspberry Pi, many don't know of its cheaper cousin, the microcontroller. Unlike a Pi, which can be used more or less like a regular computer, microcontrollers like the Wi-Fi connected ESP8266 require some necessary programming skill to master. ...more