Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
31–40 of 694 posts
Guitar straps made with handwoven Peruvian textiles:
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#32A battery-powered sky camera I put together using a raspberry pi pico that connects over wifi to send photos every hour. Ended up going crazy and making a custom PCB for it. Need to do more work on the battery life + camera exposure levels, but overall I'm pretty happy with it, especially how reliable it is given my minimal C skills.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#33Apart from a bunch of high speed wireless communications chips, this:
https://foundrytechnologies.com/relay.php
About 50% of the work on this was software, to be clear.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#34A engagement ring for my wife. Made it out of a piece of wire coat-hanger that I hammered down and polished, then mounted a small cubic zirconia gem to it. Probably took a couple of days to make.
We're still happily married six years later. :)
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#35Wooden puzzle boxes.
Do you have more info? Blog?
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#36Workbench with inbuilt table saw and router, from that I’m building many cool and insanely rewarding things.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#37Two Daft Punk outfits with about 70m of EL wire coupled with arduinos plugged into LED arrays stuck inside bicycle helmets. Turned out pretty good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHrWllxRLgQ
Wrote the step-by-step and uploaded the code onto Instructables, it's still there ~15 years later:
https://www.instructables.com/How-To-Make-Two-Daft-Punk-Outf...
I made them with my girlfriend (now wife/co-founder) for my 30th, was lots of fun.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#38It is software-related, but also physical: pong with the bats moved by exercise bikes: http://lushprojects.com/cyclepong2/
It's been around more than 15 years in various forms now, but people still love playing it. If you're in London it is at https://www.novelty-automation.com/
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#39Not nearly as cool as most responses but the other day I re-hung our house's back door as the hinge had snapped. I had to chisel new slots for the bigger hinges in the frame and the door. No way as neat as a proper carpenter would do but very satifying especially when you open and close the door for the first time and it doesn't catch the frame and the lock still lines up.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#40Cliche response but has to be said, a daughter.
mine is a son. he's tempering my patience all day every day. and I'm absolutely fine with it.