Those old cell phone and laptop batteries staring you in the eye? Don’t worry, recycling them is easy. Step 1: Collect your leftover batteries Collect all your leftover batteries. Rechargeable batteries from cell phones and laptops are especially important to recycle since th ...more
Repairs Universe demonstrates how to replace the LCD screen on the LG Xenon GR500 cell phone. First, remove the battery and the SIM card from the phone. Then, use a small phillips head screwdriver remove six screws from the back of the phone. Next, use a safe pry tool to relea ...more
Richpin demonstrates how to test an alternator with a standard multimeter. First make sure that the vehicle's battery is fully charged. Take the negative lead of the multimeter and put it on the negative post of the battery. Place the positive lead of the meter on the positive ...more
Check out this Do It Yourself (DIY) RV maintenance and repair video to learn how about RV battery maintenance. Know how to do it to keep your batteries running strong in your recreational vehicle with this RV tutorial video. Items you will need: Wire Brush Battery Terminal Pr ...more
In this how-to video, some children demonstrate one of the techniques for starting a fire when you don't have a lighter, matches, lighter fluid, or anything like that. Here we see how to start a fire using just a 9 volt battery and some steel wool. TO start a fire using just a ...more
In this how-to video, you will learn how to make a hover craft from a meat tray. You will need a meat tray, a piece of cardboard, a 9 volt battery, tape, a propeller of some sort, a motor, and two tires. All you have to do is assemble the motor so that it connects to the batte ...more
Trick Life demonstrates how to make a lamp out of a USB cable. To make the lamp, cut the end off the USB cable, strip the wire and separate the black wire from the red wire. Attach the wire to a box using a soldering iron. Attach a six volt bulb to the wires. Insert the appara ...more
One thing the whole Internet can agree with is that cats are cute and (sometimes) cuddly. But what those endless cat videos you find yourself watching for hours on YouTube don't tell you is that cats stink. While cats aren't the source of the smell, owning a cat means a stinky ...more
In the following video, I demonstrate how to create a device capable of charging the body of anyone who wears it with static electricity, allowing a powerful shock to be discharged into anything that is touched. This grants the wearer the ability to do some pretty amazing thin ...more
I love robots. They have the potential to evolve into Asimovian destroyers of the human species, but have only just mastered the art of cleaning my rug. They have an ever increasing cool factor and a growing number of cheap and simple components that let the hobby roboticist r ...more
My grandfather's brother won this car in a lottery during 1957. He had no driver's license, but his brothers used to give him a lift in it. From 1975 to 1996, the car was parked in my grandfather's brother's garage. My grandfather moved the car on a trailer in 1996 to his gara ...more
Night vision goggles are awesome, but the price? Not so much. Luckily, you can make your own pair that will have you sneaking up on your friends in just a few simple steps. For this project, you'll need to get your hands on an infrared LED array, on/off switch, 9.6 volt batte ...more
Fireworks are the best part about the Fourth of July and other celebrations, but they can easily cause accidental injuries. It's both safer and more fun to set them off remotely, so we'll hack some standard fireworks with nichrome wire, a relay, and an Arduino to ignite remote ...more
Want to spice up your origami cranes? MIT's High-Low Tech Group made two electronic origami cranes that flap their wings when you squeeze their tails. Video: . If that's not cool enough, they connected them wirelessly so that when one flaps its wings, the other lights up. Vide ...more
If you're breaking a sweat in the summer heat, but not trying to break the bank, this dead simple trick will show you how to make your own air conditioner for under ten bucks. Video: . What You'll Need 1 styrofoam cooler 2 dryer vents 1 small fan you've probably got lying aro ...more
Eating flowers is a time-honored culinary tradition, from nibbling on nasturtiums to grazing on candied violets. And why not? They look beautiful and lend a unique floral flavors to salads, desserts, and anything in between. Don't Miss: Weird Ingredient Wednesday—Zucchini Blo ...more
If you want to control electronic devices, such as a relay or motor, you can do so using MicroPython with an ESP8266 and web browser. Usually, you'd program an ESP8266 using Arduino, but C++, which Arduino uses, is not always the easiest programming language for beginners to l ...more
This summer's going to be a hot one, so skip the water pistol this year and break out the big guns! In this project, I'll be showing you how to build a water balloon shotgun—a high-powered water balloon launcher that's capable of firing 17 water balloons at the same time! Vide ...more
There was a dynamic mic in my junk box, but without any stand or connection cable. I needed a high-quality microphone to narrate my project videos, so I had to think of a way to build a stand for the mic. This is what I came up with. Video: . I used a 2GB sound recorder for wi ...more
To make soap, you need fat, and if you've seen Fight Club, you're probably well aware of where soapmaker Tyler Durden got his fat from. Liposuction clinics. If you're not willing to go that far for a perfect bar of homemade soap, you can just use some drain cleaner and America ...more
Here's how to build a sexy looking water-fuel generator that will convert your tap water into an extremely powerful, clean burning gas! Video: . An oxyhydrogen generator, like this one, uses electricity from your car battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gasses. Toge ...more
When it comes to resistance to the elements, Samsung seems to believe in the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." They've carried over the IP68 rating under IEC 60529 that was first found on the S8 all the way to their tenth-anniversary flagship, the Galaxy S10. While ...more
When it comes to modding an Android device, a custom kernel can take you farther than almost anything else. Most offer the ability to overclock your processor for performance gains, change your CPU governor, or even under-volt to increase battery life, among other features. O ...more
The day has finally arrived — Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy S9 and S9+. Apart from minor upgrades, the two might not appear to be much different from last year's S8 and S8+, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. One feature that hasn't changed is the Galaxy's IP68 water-re ...more
Every state has begun reopening in some capacity. While there are important steps for everyone to get back to work and begin socializing, precautions will be in place for some time, especially with an expected second wave coming this fall. The virus is not over. Keeping yours ...more
For almost a decade, projector phones have tried to entice consumers with their convenience as media machines. While these devices are alluring, they've never really taken off with mainstream success. The latest effort, Moviphone, sounds tempting if you watch a lot of films an ...more
If you've never heard of geocaching, it's kind of a grown-up treasure hunt you play everywhere in the world. GPS coordinates are given as clues and the players must find the cache box. There is usually a log book to write your name and a small toy or present to collect. The l ...more
The ESP32-CAM is a convenient little camera module with a lot of built-in power, and you can turn one into an inconspicuous spy camera to hide in any room. There's only one issue: it does omit a USB port. That makes it a little harder to program, but with an ESP32-based board, ...more
In the case of Apple Watch v. Fitbit, the winner comes down to the judge at hand. Apple currently offers two smartwatches — the Series 5 and the Series 3 — while Fitbit offers three models — the Fitbit Versa 2, Fitbit Ionic, and Fitbit Versa Lite. Whatever your assumptions abo ...more
And so it begins... CES 2017 is upon us! This is a very exciting time for those who are looking out for the newest innovations and releases from the world of technology. I said this was going to be a fun week, and here we start it with a bang from smartglasses developer Osterh ...more
Do you have two dollars and a water bottle? Then you can put together this simple but awesome solar-powered lantern that will provide more than enough light to read by at night. To begin, you'll need a water bottle, of course, some string, and optionally, a little bleach. You ...more
So the new iPhones have arrived. Like last year, Apple released three iPhones in three different sizes that vary in price and specs. There's the base model iPhone 11, and then there are the real deal, premium models, the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max. The iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro ...more
Surprising? No. Exciting? Absolutely. After a grand introduction by at the Apple event on September 10, 2019, the iPhone 11 is finally here. We may have known nearly everything about this new iOS device ahead of time, thanks to the usual surge of reliable leaks and rumors. Th ...more
|Choose Your View: Quick Bullet Points | Detailed Descriptions Android's newest major update is a special one — it's the tenth full version of the world's most commonly used operating system. The latest release, dubbed simply Android 10 (codename Android Q), was first showcas ...more
So you can't figure which one to buy. It's understandable. Apple released three iPhones, each designed for a different segment of the market. But which one is right for you? The iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, or iPhone 11 Pro Max? That's a good question. We recommend checking out ...more
Aside from being completely adorable, Fijibot is a completely autonomous robot that automatically seeks out light sources to charge his solar-powered battery. He's built from a 1.5 liter Fiji water bottle, packed with an Arduino Uno, 6 volt solar panel, and an Arduino Proto Sh ...more
The Samsung Galaxy S8+ isn't yet available for consumers to buy, but that isn't stopping tech reviewers from discovering what the phone is capable of. Turns out, the S8+ has a good battery—just not as good as the iPhone 7 Plus. PhoneArena released the results of their battery ...more
If you want to get started sniffing Wi-Fi networks, you usually need to start with a wireless network adapter. But thanks to a Wi-Fi sniffing library written in Arduino and the ultra-cheap ESP8266 chip, you might not need one. For less than $10 in electronics, you can build a ...more
Images of the newest Moto X flagship phones surfaced over the weekend, and it looks like Motorola has a cool new feature in store for the handsets, which are tentatively titled Vertex and Vector Thin. There are 12 dots near the bottom on the backs of each phone in the photos, ...more
The iPhone XR is the best bang for your buck option among the 2018 iPhones. Splitting the XR and XR Max right in the middle with screen size, it makes small compromises to to keep the price low. However, with the release of the Galaxy Note 9, Samsung has their own formidable m ...more
Want an electric car without the price tag? You could always build your own, or maybe just hack your old gas guzzler into an eco-friendly electric machine... This weekend at Defcon, security consultant David Brown showed off his "Voltswagon" project, a 1974 Beetle named Shocky ...more
Augmented reality wearables maker ThirdEye Gen, Inc. has officially released what it claims are the "smallest mixed reality glasses" in the X2, which will be available for hands-on demonstrations at the company's CES 2019 booth this week. The sequel to the X1 model, the X2 pa ...more
After years of rumors and waiting, Samsung's first foldable smartphone is finally a reality. The phone itself is a bit wild, but with Samsung going so far out of their comfort zone with this one, there were some bumps in the road that caused a delayed release. The launch has b ...more
OnePlus surprised the mobile industry last year when it revealed the OnePlus 3T in November, an improved version of the OnePlus 3 that came out just months earlier in June. While many thought this was a fluke, history has repeated itself with the arrival of the OnePlus 5T. It ...more
Apple has their regular iPhone 11, then two higher-end "Pro" models. Samsung went the other way — they have the Galaxy S20 and S20+, then there's the S20 Ultra. But one thing these smartphone lines do have in common is the base model flagship. How do they compare? Where the i ...more
If I told you to follow as many users as you could possibly follow, in order to get more Instagram followers, that may seem counterintuitive, right? If I told you I'm trying to brainwash/annoy you with how many times I could possibly say versions of the word "follow" in an ope ...more
Most of us have conducted an investigatory science project without even knowing it, or at least without knowing that's what it was called. Most science experiments performed, from elementary to high school students and all the way up to professional scientists, are investigato ...more
High-end augmented reality devices like the HoloLens and the Magic Leap 1, as well as the Ultraleap motion tracking modules, have demonstrated robust hand-tracking capabilities. However, many AR wearables (including Magic Leap) still rely on handheld controllers for interactio ...more
Microsoft recently released "Seeing AI," an app aimed to help the blind understand their surroundings. As Microsoft puts it, "the app narrates the world around you by turning the visual world into an audible experience." We asked Matthew Chao, the brother of one of our founde ...more
I was in college, and my 15-inch Sony Vaio laptop was my prized possession. It was my first PC and probably the most important thing I brought with me to my dorm — it was both how I completed my assignments and my primary source of entertainment. How could it turn its back on ...more
Apple just seeded the fourth public beta for iOS 13 to software testers today, Tuesday, July 30. AppleSeed participants saw this beta one day early, alongside the release of developer beta 5. Now, developer and public testers alike are up-to-speed with the latest in iOS 13. B ...more
There's no doubt you've heard the old saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." The phrase was penned in an obituary to a dwarf actor in 1915 by an anarchist named Elbert Hubbard, who lost his life five months later aboard the RMS Lusitania when it was torpedoed by ...more
The original iPhone SE was, for some, the perfect iPhone. It brought back the popular one-handed form factor of the iPhone 5 but packed in the internals of the then-new iPhone 6S. Now, the second-generation iPhone SE is here for 2020, but can it live up to what made the first- ...more
Apple's successor to the iPhone X is a beautifully made smartphone with much of the same characteristics, including a 5.8-inch OLED screen, two storage choices, and Face ID. But many features set the iPhone XS apart from its predecessor, as well as the other 2018 lineup of iPh ...more
With a cheap computer, smaller than the Raspberry Pi, an attacker can create a remote hacking device. The device can be attached to a target router without anyone's knowledge and enable the hacker to perform a variety of network-based attacks from anywhere in the world. As th ...more
Create a miniature hover craft from the fan, polystrene or Styrofoam plate, batteries and double-sided scotch tape. It really works. Powered by two 9 volt batteries you can use paper plates for the body of the hovercraft if need be. This is a cool cat toy or just a household h ...more
This video explains electricity as the flow of atomic particles called electrons. Animations demonstrate electron flow. Batteries are described as chemical devices designed to create electron flow. Terms covered in video include Volts, current and Amperes
Rust protection doesn't have to cost a fortune. With a little zinc and some electricity, you can protect your precious metals from rust by galvanization. When you galvanize something, you're giving it a protective coating, and in this case, it's a zinc coating. Watch this sci ...more
Watch this science video tutorial from Nurd Rage on how to restore silver with electrochemistry. You can restore old silver with aluminum foil or a battery by simple electrochemistry. Old silver is often tarnished by a thin layer of silver sulfide that appears as a brown colo ...more
One day, your car may break down and you won't be able to afford to hire a mechanic, so what do you do... you look on the web for some how-to vehicle repair videos and become your own car mechanic, that's what. You don't need any advanced training to perform repairs and simple ...more