Apr 16
You wouldn’t think that a four-wheeled car would go faster if one of its wheels didn’t touch the ground. Or if its axles were bent. Or if it was designed to grind against a wall. But you’d be wrong, and here’s the science to prove it.
Dec 05
Back in May, our friend and ex-NASA JPL engineer Mark Rober, figured out a way to shoot "bullet time" videos on the cheap
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Dec 02
Mark Rober has been wowing us for three of years now with his innovative, high-tech Halloween costumes
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Oct 31
Two years ago, NASA engineer Mark Rober blew YouTube’s mind with a video of his Halloween costume: a hole in his chest. Or at least it looked like a hole in his chest. In fact, it was an optical illusion made possible by two iPads, a little duct tape and a lot of ingenuity. Well, you won’t believe what he’s been up to since then.
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Oct 07
Two years ago a NASA engineer named Mark Rober emailed us a halloween costume that used two iPads to make it look like you had a gaping hole in your stomach
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Mar 03
Sick of people coming into your office and talking your ear off? There are plenty of ways to get them to leave, but I’ve never thought of using an old NES system to hurry them on their way.
Mark Rober and his pal Chad Grant hacked together this NES console – dubbed the “Annoying Person Remover “- which plays classic sound effects from the game when a person enters your space. When they first come in, it plays Mario’s pipe sound, and then the familiar level music and sounds as they hang out. But they only have 400 seconds to complete the level before they’re booted from your office, with that lovely Hurry Up tune that plays when you’re running out of time, and the Game Over tune when it’s time to GTFO.
The build is actually pretty simple, using an old NES, an Arduino board (with Music and Sound add-on), a motion sensor, and a clock display. You can grab all of the information you need to build your own over on Dropbox, including a parts list, and Arduino programming files.
Feb 28
If you start wasting somebody’s time at NASA, this is how they’re going to get you out of their office. Or, it’s how JPL engineer Mark Rober will, anyway. This hacked Nintendo console will definitely put you on notice. More »
Dec 07
Just how many ways can one guy use the video capabilities of his mobile devices to entertain us with? Well if you’re tinkerer Mark Rober, I guess the answer is “plenty.” After amusing us with his iPad Halloween costume and Gorilla Cam, Mark is back with another fun hack – the animated ugly sweater.
By mounting an iPad inside of a sweater rigged with a fake fireplace surround, Rober created the illusion of a warm holiday fire burning in the middle of his gut. Here, check it out in action:
You can grab the fireplace animation as part of Mark’s DigitalDudz Christmas iOS app. Be sure to keep an eye out on Mark’s youtube channel in the coming days for a video showing how to make your own ugly fireplace sweater.
Nov 29
Are there any here among us who didn’t watch Scooby Doo as a kid, see a villain spying (with blinking eyes) behind a picture on the wall, and secretly wish we could do that? We may never be allowed to carve holes in our walls, but we can still make that dream come true. More »
Oct 03
Last year around this time, a NASA JPL engineer blew us away with a Halloween costume that used two iPads to create the illusion of a gaping hole in his chest. Cool, if you could afford two iPads. For the 99 percent of us that couldn’t, he promised that his 2012 costume would be equally awesome and infinitely more affordable. More »
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