ESPager replaces the radio receiver inside a vintage pager with a small Wi-Fi-enabled board. A message entered in a web browser appears on the pager's original display.
Creator Corey Harding uses an ESP32-C3 to generate the encoded signals expected by the pager and feeds them directly into the original data input. The project targets the first-generation Motorola Advisor and compatible models, and also documents integration with telephone exchange software.
A pager built to receive radio calls has had its radio receiver removed. The outside stays vintage while the message delivery moves to the web.
A door sensor uses crushed garlic peel and plastic to generate an electrical signal as the door opens. When the layers touch and separate, static electricity is produced. A two-sided garlic-peel version generated about 400 volts at very low current.
Researchers Deepak Bharti and Manas Tiwari at Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur demonstrated a home-security system that alerts a smartphone when the door opens, detecting openings with 92% accuracy across 50 tests. The sensing element needs no external power, although the microcontroller transmitting the alert used a power bank.
A home-security sensor relies on the peel of a garlic clove. Kitchen scraps have found a new job guarding the door.
A pair of traditional Japanese geta sandals moves forward on its own with a little hopping motion. Turn it over and the mechanism is made from LEGO parts and a motor. It can also move backward.
The device was exhibited by Sugoi Lab at Maker Faire Tokyo 2026 and featured in a report on the event.
See the section 'コアメモリにダーツ、LEGO —— 古い技術と遊び心' in the linked article.
Geta are supposed to help a person walk, but these sandals can walk off without anyone wearing them. The footwear is doing the traveling.
Shigemichi Enoshima made another attempt at modifying an arcade fight stick to perform special moves more reliably in Street Fighter 6.
He bought a used controller and replacement joystick parts, then chose a riverbank for the project. Despite launching a tiny retaining clip into the grass, he found it again and made good progress. In the middle of the work, he noticed that his trouser fly had been open for an unknown amount of time, possibly since shopping in Akihabara.
The modification ultimately worked, making special moves much easier to perform.
He could fine-tune when the joystick registers an input, but couldn't tell how long his own fly had been open.
LastComputer turned a badly damaged Samsung Galaxy S23 into a desktop gaming computer. The build combines the phone's mainboard with a 512 GB SSD, USB hubs including HDMI output, and an added cooling fan.
The creator straightened the bent frame with a hammer and installed a replacement battery. A heatsink and fan lowered temperatures by about seven degrees Celsius compared with the phone's original cooling setup. Samsung DeX provides the desktop environment, with PS2 emulation and other games demonstrated.
The phone looks beyond saving as a phone, but a hammer, fan and SSD give it a second career as a gaming PC.
RayTriangle built a game console inside a tiny television antenna plug, including its battery. An ESP32-S3 generates the video and audio signals for an older PAL television and runs DOOM.
Two small circuit boards sit on either side of the battery and connect through a flexible cable. The system creates an analog television carrier signal, while a Bluetooth game controller handles input.
The game console has shrunk until it is effectively the antenna plug behind the television. DOOM is on the screen, but the console is almost invisible.
Electron Dust built the Hexa-Bouncer to keep a ping-pong ball bouncing on a moving platform. Two cameras track the ball while six arms move and tilt a triangular platform to meet its predicted landing point.
According to the creator, the machine uses a Teensy 4.0, six geared NEMA 23 stepper motors, six motor drivers, a 36 V 14 A power supply, two cameras and a GPU-equipped Windows PC. The image-recognition and motor-control software are custom-built, and the many aluminum parts were machined on a desktop CNC.
Keeping one tiny ping-pong ball going calls in two cameras, six powerful motors and a GPU. The support equipment completely dwarfs the thing it is supporting.
X-Mule is an online game in which browser controls move a physical rover around a Mars-themed set. Rather than using a simulated world, actions such as charging and moving cargo take place with real robots and physical objects.
Players control the hardware over the internet and carry out missions inside a physically built arena.
Instead of making a simulated game world look more realistic, this project simply builds the game world out of real objects. There is an actual robot waiting on the far side of your browser controls.
Photon Matrix is a device that detects flying mosquitoes and other small insects and knocks them out of the air with a laser. It scans a six-meter-radius, 90-degree sector with LiDAR 50,000 times per second and is described as detecting flying objects 2–20 mm long moving at up to 1 m/s. After AI vision confirms a target, the laser fires within 0.003 seconds.
A millimeter-wave radar stops the laser when larger objects such as people or pets approach. Its companion app also includes a mosquito kill-count ranking. The system was developed by Changzhou Photon Matrix Intelligent Technology in China.
Mosquito control has escalated into scanning, target confirmation and laser interception, followed by a kill-count leaderboard. The opponent is tiny; the defense system is not.
To reduce the need to count tiny screws and nuts by hand when packing clock kits, a set of dedicated dispensers was built to release fixed quantities. Laser-cut acrylic channels line the parts up, and operating a lever drops the required number.
One dispenser releases six nuts at a time and another releases three magnets. The screw version went through several revisions to its tracks and hopper and was eventually expanded to hold more than fifteen sets ready to distribute into paper cups. The maker is mitxela.
Not wanting to miscount six tiny parts has turned into something resembling a custom ammunition magazine. The counting task disappeared into a surprisingly substantial piece of machinery.
A physical build recreates the post-capture motion of the ball from Pokémon Legends: Arceus, actually jumping and releasing smoke. The ball also includes automatic opening and closing.
Kiara's Workshop built the working replica of the game's older-style Poké Ball. Hackaday's article also includes the creator's build video.
A split-second game animation—hop, puff of smoke—becomes a real mechanical engineering problem when you insist that the prop actually do it. Screen logic gets expensive in the physical world.
Sole-Sageel automates the gesture of lowering your beer mug below the other person's during a toast. Two long-stroke solenoids physically raise and lower the mug.
The device was created by Pokosute for Takaha Kiko's 13th Solenoid Contest, where it won an award for especially absurd and useless creations. On the linked page, see the section titled 自動忖度マシーン「ソレサゲール」.
A tiny gesture that normally takes one hand now gets two long-stroke solenoids. Automating humility somehow makes the whole ritual much more elaborate.
A pager built to receive radio calls has had its radio receiver removed. The outside stays vintage while the message delivery moves to the web.