The Black Thunder Driven Development device monitors token usage in AI development tools such as Claude Code and automatically dispenses Black Thunder chocolate bars when usage reaches set thresholds. An indicator shows progress against the five-hour usage limit, with a full limit corresponding to five bars.

When a reward is triggered, the machine cuts open the wrapper and presents the chocolate ready to eat. A robot arm also replenishes the stock. The project won the Blackathon hackathon and was built by YS_beaver, Yota Saito, Mikihiro Urano, and Tomoki Banno.

Issen Boy is a 1.1 cm-square handheld game console built around the world of Issun-boshi, combining light, Japanese-inspired design, and electronics. The tiny circuit board implements the functions of an actual game console, including an input method that makes it genuinely playable.

The project was created by Yugi Tech Lab and won the grand prize in DigiKey Make ONE Challenge 2026. Its ProtoPedia page also lists the team's roles, including overall software, hardware, planning, and implementation by Yugi Tech Lab, AI work by KIRA_YTL, and 3D CAD work by mackey_YTL.

la machine is a new take on the Useless Machine: flip its switch and an arm emerges from the box to switch itself off again.

But it does not turn itself off the same way every time. The arm may emerge immediately, hesitate, move slowly, or combine its movements with different sounds. Sometimes it resists interaction; at other times, when left alone, it may extend its arm to seek attention.

Thousands of behaviors are available, and the machine is designed to develop a different “personality” over time as it is used.

RoboSwap is a prototype in which a single robot arm can switch between tools such as grippers and pipettes for different laboratory tasks. The first working version picks up an electronic pipette, aspirates liquid, and transfers it between containers.

The maker does not have a laboratory, so the prototype is tested in a kitchen using soy sauce and saucers. The pipette also lacks automated tip ejection, so the robot presses its ejector against a stool to remove the tip. The system was prototyped by RoboDrop.

A wrist-worn synthesizer and 16-step sequencer attaches like an old-fashioned slap bracelet. Its transparent enclosure contains an ESP32-S3, display, speaker, and rechargeable battery, while brass contacts along the side can be touched with a stylus to play notes.

Instead of a custom spring mechanism, the wristband uses a curved strip of steel measuring tape wrapped in clear tape. Combined with the transparent PETG enclosure, the result deliberately recreates the translucent gadget aesthetic of the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was built by maker 3DSage.

Janken Automaton is a simple rock-paper-scissors AI that works without electricity. Players can compete directly against the device.

The machine records the player's previous moves and chooses the hand with the highest probability of winning based on the player's tendencies. Players can also repeat a fixed pattern to see whether the device learns it, or simply watch where the ball rolls inside the mechanism. It was created by Yuki Tsuneyoshi of the Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Film and New Media.

A system can use electrical signals from the body to control infrared appliances such as a television. Electrodes capture signals produced by blinks or muscle movements, Neuro PlayGround Lite detects them, and its ESP32-based hardware sends the corresponding infrared remote command.

The Neuro PlayGround Lite can measure small biopotential signals including EEG, EMG, ECG and EOG. In this example, the practical control is less science-fiction mind reading than turning eye and muscle signals into new physical input buttons. The project was demonstrated by Upside Down Labs.

Wormhole Display is an app that turns discontinued Meta Portal devices into wireless displays and speakers for Macs, iPhones and iPads. Once installed, a Portal appears as an AirPlay-compatible receiver and can be used for screen mirroring or as an extended Mac display, with audio through its built-in speakers.

Portal devices are Android-based, so the app is installed as an APK after enabling ADB. The project has been tested on Portal+, Portal Mini, Portal Go and Portal TV, and requires no special software on the sending Apple device. It was released by Piotr Godlewski.

Researchers at the University of Waikato deliberately built a robot called Spike using traits that previous research associated with creepiness: an appearance that is hard to classify as human, animal or machine, plus spikes, unusual facial features, dark colors and unpredictable motion.

They showed Spike to 104 participants. Some described it as angry or unsettling, while others thought it was cool or even cute. The team concluded that there may be no universally creepy robot because perceptions vary strongly between people.

Maker Mirza Makes modified a television remote so its number and control buttons can be used as a computer keyboard. The remote is an input device rather than the computer itself, and it was demonstrated with a Raspberry Pi 5-based handheld PC.

Inside the remote, the membrane keypad is connected to an MCP23017 I/O expander, which sends the button states to the Raspberry Pi over I2C. Rather than appearing as a conventional USB keyboard, the remote's buttons are read directly and turned into computer input.

Since its 1993 release, DOOM has been ported to countless devices that were never intended to be game consoles, including digital cameras, printers and pregnancy-test hardware. The 1997 release of the game's source code, together with an architecture that made platform-specific parts relatively replaceable, helped turn porting DOOM into a widespread hacking tradition.

As unusual ports spread through YouTube and social media, getting DOOM to run became less a practical benchmark and more a trophy for technical ingenuity. Recent projects have connected the game to hardware as unlikely as satellites and models of a fly's nervous system, stretching even the question of what it means for a device to 'run DOOM.'

James' Programming built a physical illusion inspired by Portal: throw an object into one frame and a matching object appears to shoot out of the other. There is no video compositing; the entrance detects the incoming object while a flywheel launcher at the exit fires a duplicate.

Time-of-flight sensors detect the approaching object early enough to compensate for the launcher's mechanical delay. The build took about nine months, and the full detection and automatic realignment sequence was still finicky, succeeding roughly one time in twenty.