For many, the path to DIY begins with watching a video: I received a link to an interesting video, was impressed, I started to make my own project from a rower and sticks. The problem is that a separate video about unusual mechanisms (without a detailed history of creation) often leaves more questions than gives the answers necessary for the right motivation. The house printed on a 3D printer ^{[ 1 ]} , electrical stimulation of the body ^{[ 2 ]} , a musical concert of drones ^{[ 3 ]} , the effect of water levitation ^{[ 4 ]} and thousands of other stories delight in their own way, but do not indicate the way to begin do no worse? What to push off from, where to get the right iron, how does it even work?

Among Mail.Ru Group developers there are a lot of people for whom DIY is a perennial hobby. Only recently wrote about the smart home on the basis of four controllers and two smart watches. We asked the developers to share links to interesting videos that received the status of "wow, how cool!", And motivating to conduct their own experiments.

How to make a watch in the home workshop

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The epic saga of creating watches looks like a real series. The plot is a bit predictable, but the nuances are fascinating. While there were 17 parts of the video. How many parts will be still is not clear, but all the time costs are justified by the scrupulous approach: the master carefully grinds all the details of the mechanism. Moreover, the author has created part of the tools for the production of watches according to 200-year-old drawings specially for this project.

Flame imaging

What will happen if you connect 2.5 thousand gas burners? Of course, you can try to make a kind of flamethrower, but Derek Muller from Denmark acted differently. He created the Pyro Board - a device that visualizes music with lights - a two-dimensional version of Rubens' pipe. This is usually an iron pipe with a large number of equidistant holes drilled along its entire length. At one end of the pipe they install a speaker, from the other end they let in gas, which, coming out through the holes, ignites, and the sound waves cause the tongues of flame to "dance". More information about the experience written in the wiki .

Pyro Board uses 2.5 thousand mini-tubes mounted on a square iron base. Otherwise, there are no fundamental differences from the standard Rubens pipe.

How to make a mechanical toy

Disney is not just movies, animations, and amusement parks that bring billions of dollars in profits. There is also a Disney Research laboratory that conducts research and development for various departments of the company. Sometimes they lift the veil of secrecy over their developments and produce exciting videos.

The video above demonstrates how software works, allowing even inexperienced users to create animated mechanical characters, and then displays models created using 3D printing. It’s hard to say how it will work outside the laboratory in Zurich, but in the long run, development will be useful not only for creating mechanical toys, but will also contribute to the growth of production of individual models of robots that could interact with their environment to perform complex tasks.



Disney Research also has a CAD solution for creating various robots using 3D printing. More is written here , but, unfortunately, Disney does not often share the results of his experiments. The software itself cannot be downloaded yet, so we look and get aesthetic pleasure.

How to build a LED display

There is nothing difficult in flexible LED screens based on LED strips. To do this, you need to make a ready layout for the screen, strengthen the tape, find the right source (or several sources) of power and install the microcontroller. Instructions for building on the Internet a lot, here, for example, one of them .

Levitation of water droplets

After the previous videos make a variety of simple experiment, available in practice to each reader. All you need is an audio speaker, water and a camera capable of shooting 24 frames per second. The effect of the movement of water in the opposite direction appears at a frequency of 23 Hz, but it is visible only through the camera. At 25 Hz, the water will run down in slow-mo.

Digital tricks

Zach King proudly bears the title of King of Video Editing. He has dozens of videos with tricks where he turns water into ice, takes money out of the monitor, cuts an apple with a playing card, throws garbage through window glass and does other exciting things with magic and Final Cut. You can repeat the digital focus exactly, after reading tutorials from King himself (a channel with a similar Russian-language version), or do something of your own in Adobe After Effects. In any case, this unusual type of DIY will appeal to those who prefer software, rather than a soldering iron.

Custom mirrors

Daniel Rozin created the world's first interactive fur mirror. It would be possible to dwell on this, but the designer constantly creates mirrors from light-absorbing objects - from wooden pegs, rusty steel panels, aluminum bottles, glossy metal balls and other unusual materials. They are created according to one technology: a camera is built in the middle, capturing the movement of the viewer and “pixelating” them into the image. The signal from the camera enters the computer, which controls several dozens or even hundreds (depending on the project) motors. Each motor is responsible for the behavior of a separate "pixel" of the mirror. Depending on the angle of inclination (or color) of the elements from which the mirror is made, the specular reflection of the viewer is formed by shadows, highlights and the desired shade of color.

Looped light

The installation, consisting of 78 tungsten lamps, reduces the unusual effects of light to the simple classical laws of mechanics. A piezoelectric sensor installed in the first lamp captures the pressing force and generates an electrical signal that moves along the entire loop of the lamps. The initial impulse is regulated by pressing force. Who can repeat? More detailed description of the project by reference .

Travel with magnetic balls

Another variation on the Goldberg Machine . The journey of the ball, arranging a long sequence of interactions on the principle of dominoes, was repeated thousands of times, but this project is notable for the fact that it uses magnetic neocube balls. The author of the project claims that building a similar model is easier than placing domino cubes on the table, and the possibilities that appear with the use of magnets are limited only by your imagination.

Strange musical instrument

The project from the field “is so hard to repeat”. Swedish musician Martin Molin for 14 months built a musical instrument that uses in the work of 2 thousand moving metal balls. The mechanism is set in motion manually, and built-in microphones and mixers are used for sound recording. The whole process of creating a car is laid out on the channel .