A photograph taken with a heavily modified video doorbell received an Honorable Mention in the Fine Art / Special Effects category at the 2026 Budapest International Foto Awards. Titled After Monet, it shows an orange fish drifting through an emerald-green pool.
Photographer Kamitaba used the doorbell's 1-megapixel sensor. Colors bleed beyond the edges of objects and outlines soften into a watercolor-like image. The effect came from the camera itself, not post-processing.
A camera made to check who's at the door has ended up in a fine-art photography competition. Its technical imperfections became the feature.
Drop an offering into the machine and it rapidly strikes a bell from four directions. The device, called the High-Speed Worldly Desires Removal Machine, automates the 108 bell strikes traditionally associated with New Year's Eve in Japan.
Its creator, known as Ningen no Hashikure, rebuilt an earlier version using traditional Japanese temple architecture as a reference. The wooden-looking bell tower is actually assembled from 3D-printed plastic parts without screws, with electrically operated strikers built into the structure.
A ritual of 108 bell strikes has been turned into a rapid-fire batch operation. Even New Year's Eve bells can apparently be put on fast-forward.
A giant rotating ring displays scrolling text using black and white marbles as pixels. Radial channels around the ring each hold seven marbles to form a vertical column of the display. Once a column has passed, its marbles roll back down to be reused for the next characters.
Creator Ivan Miranda built the mechanism with just three motors to rotate the ring, select the marble colors and feed the marbles into the channels.
To make text scroll, the pixels themselves have to roll around a giant wheel. The display is doing almost as much moving as the message.
PenBot Mini is a credit-card-sized drawing robot that moves a pen using linked arms. Creator Dorian Todd originally began the project with the goal of building a robot to sign a senior yearbook. Along the way, a toaster-sized version drew more than 50 vector portraits of visitors at a 2025 event.
Shrinking the mechanism made even tiny motor inaccuracies visible on paper, so Todd added miniature bearings to its joints and software that calculates and corrects the pen's position.
It started with signing a yearbook, detoured through a portrait-drawing robot, and ended up as a pocket-sized precision machine. That's a long route to a signature.
A lockbox opens when a magnet is moved across its surface in a programmed pattern, with no visible keyhole or keypad. An 8-by-8 array of 64 magnetic sensors tracks the motion; when the gesture matches the stored pattern, a servo releases the latch.
Creator Stephen Cass found that the sensor area was only about three centimeters square, making it difficult to trace the gesture reliably. He decorated the box with a Celtic knot pattern and used part of it as a disguised positioning guide.
To hide the lock, he made a secret magnetic gesture and then hid the gesture's guide inside decorative knotwork. Opening a box becomes a tiny puzzle.
Auto Perfume Sprayer is a work-in-progress device intended to check a person's odor as they return home. A smell sensor feeds readings to a microcontroller; when the result is classified as 'BAD,' a servo presses a perfume bottle to spray automatically.
Makers BULAT IARKIEV and Yadanar Htay describe the project on ProtoPedia as a way to respond to odors that people may not notice themselves, such as after exercise. The project is currently marked as in development.
Come home and the doorway silently judges your smell, then responds with perfume. That's a rather opinionated welcome.
iDangle is a ceiling-mounted phone holder designed for watching videos while lying down. Flip a switch to bring the holder down, attach a phone magnetically, then remove the phone and send the holder back up when finished.
Inventor Matty Benedetto presents it as part of his Unnecessary Inventions collection.
To avoid holding a phone in bed, the ceiling now has to do the work. That's a lot of hardware to rest your arms.
A Ford Festiva was split down the middle and rebuilt into a car 10 feet (about 3 meters) wide. New floor and roof sections fill the expanded middle, and the cabin has two steering wheels.
The creators at Prop Department obtained a special wide-load permit and filmed both the build and the finished car driving on public roads.
They made a small car bigger by stretching it sideways. The cabin got so wide it ended up with two steering wheels.
A mini fridge mounted on tank treads can follow a person or run away from them. Designed for speeds above 15 mph, the robot uses autonomous navigation, human position tracking and behavior switching.
Creator Dorian Todd integrated a ROS 2-based control and perception system, working through a series of firmware and sensor-processing problems.
A fridge that comes to you is convenient. A fridge that can flee with your drinks is something else.
A treasure chest project called 'Shimachan and the Whistling Pirates' Treasure' uses the pitch and number of whistles to encode Japanese syllables and enter a personal password. The design pairs the opening of a physical chest with lights and sounds. Its maker, @kuchibuekun3, lists Arduino among the hardware and currently marks the project as in development on ProtoPedia.
No key to carry around, but you have to whistle a little tune every time you want to open your treasure chest.
A maker added a linkage and rubber bands to make a Mini 4WD car jump. The first version held its legs in place with a cable tie, which had to be cut with nippers to release the jump.
A second version introduced remote-controlled release and achieved more stable jumps, but increasing the number of rubber bands to 32 dislodged a press-fit axle. Jumping while driving remains a goal for the next version.
The shortcut over the track has become a project in figuring out how to jump at all.
Maker TPalowski13 built an experimental Bluetooth speaker that squeaks a rubber chicken in time with the bass in music. Audio from salvaged Bluetooth earbuds is analyzed into frequency bands, and low-frequency signals trigger a solenoid to squeeze the toy. A custom 3D-printed holder supports the chicken and actuator. The chicken is not reproducing bass notes; it squeaks along with the beat.
Instead of reproducing the bass, it makes a rubber chicken squeak along with it. The rhythm section has acquired poultry.
A camera made to check who's at the door has ended up in a fine-art photography competition. Its technical imperfections became the feature.