Throaty Mumbo built NESCD-001, an unofficial optical-disc add-on for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. A custom RP2350B board bridges a standard IDE CD drive and an EverDrive N8 Pro, reading a game ROM from the disc and transferring it to the flash cartridge so the NES can launch it.
The creator describes the project as something made "just because," and it can even play ordinary audio CDs through the console. The idea began with the history of the canceled SNES CD add-on, then deliberately moved one generation backward to a machine for which an optical drive makes even less historical sense.
This is not restoring a lost NES accessory; it is manufacturing an alternate history in which the NES somehow demanded a CD drive. Engineering has been used to create nostalgia for something that never existed.
XPENG commissioned a production line for its IRON humanoid robot in September 2026. Once the first unit was assembled, it was not carried away on a cart: the finished robot autonomously walked off the production line under its own power.
XPENG says more than 80% of the line's core processes are automated. IRON has 76 body degrees of freedom and 21 in each hand, and the company plans to begin mass production by the end of 2026 with deliveries starting in 2027.
Most products leave a factory as cargo. This one reaches the end of the line and simply walks out like its shift has started.
For Maker Faire Tokyo 2026, maker Okome built a coin bank centered on a fictional virtual streamer named Kogane Maneki. A photo-interrupter detects inserted coins and the display reacts as though the character has received live-stream donations; accumulated money also drives subscriber growth and life events inside the simulated stream.
Repeated coin insertions can trigger a "Super Chat Fever" mode that boosts the on-screen subscriber count. What began as a beginner electronics exercise grew into a Raspberry Pi-powered display, 3D-printed enclosure, fictional character, stream interface, and a very physical way to donate real cash to someone who does not exist.
Online tipping has been converted back into putting coins in a box. The VTuber is fictional, but at least the money remains extremely physical.
BB Korry’s “Anything Runway” is a small automated stage that sends hand-sized objects down a catwalk as if they were fashion models. Curtains open, an object moves along the narrow stage, performs turns or pauses at the end, and then returns so the next “performer” can appear.
Lighting and sound can change for each object, letting figures, snacks and even a bottle of shichimi spice receive full runway treatment. Magnets and a moving platform handle the automatic performer changes.
If the model cannot walk, simply make the runway do the walking instead. Suddenly even a spice bottle has stage presence.
Hasbro's 1999 Easy-Bake Kitchen is a plastic kitchen playset that straps over a standard PC keyboard. Moving its measuring cup, egg, mixer, oven door and other controls simply presses real keys underneath, letting children operate the accompanying CD-ROM cooking game through a physical toy interface.
LGR's Clint Basinger revisited the hardware in September 2026 and eventually remapped its controls to play DOOM II. A toy designed to turn a keyboard into a pretend kitchen becomes, decades later, an extremely impractical FPS controller.
If the toy kitchen is really just pressing keyboard keys, then of course the egg and mixer can control DOOM. The logic is sound; seeing it happen is wonderfully wrong.
The Volkswagen-branded e-bike from n+ Bikes is promoted around a suite of safety technology including a rear camera, radar, smart glasses, a connected helmet and handlebar displays. When a Gizmodo reporter tried the bike at IFA 2026, however, the battery packs had not arrived at the venue because of a logistics delay.
Without the battery, the powered riding experience and most of the headline electronics could not be tested on the bike. The technology-heavy e-bike ended up being ridden largely as an ordinary bicycle.
Add enough connected safety hardware and the demo can become wonderfully simple when one battery shipment is missing. Underneath all the technology, it turns out there was still a bicycle.
Peter Ryseck built a system that keeps a long pole standing on one end by mounting a quadcopter-like set of propellers at the top. The propellers are not used to lift the pole away from the ground; instead, the controller changes thrust to counter each developing tilt.
The project had to deal with motor response, oscillation and even flex in the pole itself. The final control strategy can let the pole lean slightly into the wind rather than demanding a perfectly vertical pose.
The goal is a pole that appears to stand still, achieved by putting a small storm of actively controlled propellers on top. Maintaining “nothing happening” takes an impressive amount of happening.
Dynamic Creatures launched in September 2026 to turn advanced mobile robots into interactive characters for theme parks, hotels and other guest-facing spaces. The company is Boston Dynamics' official entertainment and hospitality partner and plans to build both character systems based on existing robotic platforms and fully custom machines.
Its target sits between fixed animatronics and task-oriented service robots. Public examples show familiar-looking quadruped robotics transformed with fur, faces and character design into something closer to a roaming theme-park creature. After solving difficult locomotion, one of the next engineering problems is apparently making the machine look huggable.
After years of improving robot-dog locomotion, the next technical requirement turns out to be “make it fluffier.” Robotics has successfully advanced all the way to costume design.
The open-source project imrobot flips the usual CAPTCHA model around. Instead of testing whether a visitor is human, it generates chains of operations such as string reversal, Caesar shifts, XOR, and hashing that software agents can execute quickly but humans would find impractical by hand.
Developer Leo Pechnicki presents it as a way to gate agent-only APIs and other services intended specifically for automated clients. This time, humans are the visitors the verification gate is designed to reject.
After years of clicking boxes that say “I’m not a robot,” humans finally get to fail a CAPTCHA for being too human. The gatekeeper and the unwanted visitor have swapped places perfectly.
Matt Denton's Spoolbot looks almost exactly like a 2 kg spool of 3D-printer filament, complete with real filament wrapped around the outside. At a glance, there is little to suggest that it is a mobile robot.
Inside are an ESP32-C3-based controller, IMU, RC receiver, geared DC motors, and battery packs used as ballast. The spool's black end discs act as the wheels, while the internal frame stays upright as the shell rolls around it.
A part whose entire job is to sit beside a 3D printer holding filament has been turned into a robot without giving up the disguise. You might not notice anything unusual until the spool drives away.
Living directly under the departure path from San Francisco International Airport, Cameron Paczek built a Raspberry Pi 5 system that receives 1090 MHz ADS-B broadcasts with an RTL-SDR, calculates each aircraft's position relative to his home, and projects the live position onto his ceiling.
An outdoor PTZ camera uses ADS-B data for its initial aim, then YOLOX-Nano finds the aircraft in frame and adjusts the camera to follow it. The video is streamed to the TV, completing a plane-spotting setup that can be enjoyed from the couch.
Missing a plane overhead led to reconstructing the sky on the ceiling and automating an outdoor tracking camera too. The commitment to plane-spotting without leaving the couch is impressive.
Maker zomb23 built a drum machine around a rotating cylinder covered in LEGO studs. Orange pieces are placed on the grid to program beats, while a smartphone camera watches the cylinder and triggers sounds according to which pieces reach the front.
Spin the cylinder faster and the tempo increases; turn it the other way and the sequence plays in reverse. A software-style step sequencer has been turned into a physical object you can reprogram with LEGO and control by hand.
Remove the tempo knob and suddenly how enthusiastically you spin the cylinder becomes the tempo control. Music sequencing has become unexpectedly athletic.
This is not restoring a lost NES accessory; it is manufacturing an alternate history in which the NES somehow demanded a CD drive. Engineering has been used to create nostalgia for something that never existed.