Afterglow is a homemade digital camera that locks its shutter after each photo until the user turns a winding knob. It simulates rolls of 24 exposures, with 12 and 36 also available, and requires rewinding at the end. A red-lit darkroom animation makes each photo appear to develop, while synthetic winding and shutter sounds complete the experience. The photos are actually saved to an SD card and can be transferred to a phone over Wi-Fi. Creator Nickson Kiprotich built it to bring back the ritual of film photography.
Digital photography spent decades removing the hassle of film. This camera uses electronics to lovingly put that hassle back.
Maker DocJade developed a custom file system to load the game Factorio from a large collection of floppy disks. Files are split across disks, and the user must manually swap in the disk requested during loading.
With only one drive, swapping disks becomes the main bottleneck. Even after optimizing the system to reduce swaps, loading the game takes about a week.
To start a game, you have to keep swapping floppy disks by hand. The setup has practically become a separate game of its own.
A maker has built a way to play video games using ordinary VHS videotapes and a VCR.
The tape stores not just prerecorded pictures but also information needed for the game. When the tape plays, pressing buttons on a controller changes what appears on screen. Demos include Super Mario Bros. backgrounds and a Doom-style game.
Creator Throaty Mumbo uses custom electronics to read the video and game information from the tape.
A VCR used to be for watching recordings. Now it can help run a video game. If you lose, you might instinctively reach for the rewind button.
A port of Super Mario 64 lets Microsoft's 2009 Zune HD music player run the Nintendo 64 game. It supports on-screen touch controls, sound and saving, and the creator says it runs mostly at full speed.
Developer rsheldiii published the project on GitHub. It doesn't distribute the game itself; users must supply a ROM dumped from their own cartridge to build it.
The music player that once competed with the iPod has found a second career running Mario. Perhaps it was a game console all along.
To reduce the temptation to pick up his smartphone, Kevin Noki built a large handset styled after a 1980s mobile phone. It is not a standalone cellular phone: it connects to an existing smartphone via Bluetooth to handle calls.
After an initial Bluetooth setup produced poor audio, Noki switched to a dedicated hands-free module. He shaped a foam mockup before 3D-printing the final enclosure, allowing the real phone to stay out of his hands during calls.
To stop reaching for one phone, he built a second phone. And the new phone still depends on the original one.
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.
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.
A 1970s Texas Instruments Silent 700, which combines a keyboard and thermal printer, has been connected to a local AI so that answers arrive on paper. The device, called Termi3, prints a response two or three seconds after a question is typed. It was built by Cameron Coward.
Earlier versions needed an internet connection to query Wolfram Alpha, but Termi3 runs a 2 GB local LLM on the Arduino and works entirely offline. Coward notes that its answers are sometimes reasonable and accurate, and other times baffling or hilarious.
A modern local AI does the thinking, but the output device is still a 1970s paper terminal. The intelligence got newer while every reply still arrives as a printout.
PicoDMG rebuilds the original Game Boy experience with modern microcontrollers while preserving the original shell, controls, and AA-battery feel. Game files live on microSD, and a game can be selected by holding a cartridge fitted with an NFC tag near the system.
On the original Game Boy, changing games meant inserting a cartridge into the console. PicoDMG modernizes that interaction too: the open-source project by dodger-one can associate an NFC tag in a cartridge or other object with a corresponding ROM and launch it when scanned.
Even the old clunk of inserting a cartridge has been modernized into a tap. The Game Boy makeover reaches all the way to how the cartridge is used.
Digital photography spent decades removing the hassle of film. This camera uses electronics to lovingly put that hassle back.