Collaborate Disseminate
In the waiting rooms of some dentists or doctors, you might have seen a giant metal ball rolling around in a large glass case. While it sure beats looking through …read more Continue reading Pop Goes the Mechanical Ping Pong Sculpture
Ping-pong balls have many uses: apart from playing table tennis, they have been used for countless art projects, science experiments, and even to raise ships from the bottom of the …read more Continue reading Modular Design Enables Huge Ping-Pong Ball LED Displays
We use electricity to move things with the help of motors and magnets all the time. But if you have enough voltage, you can move things with voltage alone. As …read more Continue reading Moving Things with Electricity
Recreating classic games in software is a great way to get better at coding or learn to code in the first place. If you do it in hardware though, you’ll gain a lot more than coding skills. Just ask [Kelly] and [Jack] did, when they built this Arduino-based electronic Connect …read more
Continue reading Electronic Connect Four Has No Pieces to Lose
Although RGB LEDs diffused by ping pong balls will probably never stop being cool, [thomasj152] feels that flat panels of balls have become a bit of a tired concept. After a lot of effort and two complete builds, he has spun up an 80-ball spherical lamp. The results are positively …read more
There’s something enchanting about the soft glow of a properly diffused LED, and this is only improved by greater numbers of LEDs. [Manoj Nathwani] was well aware of this, setting out to build a large display using ping-pong balls for their desirable optical qualities.Unfortunately, not everything went to plan, but …read more
Continue reading Glitching LED Display Proves Crowd Favorite
There is a special breed of hardware hacker whose playground lies in the high voltage arena. Their bench sizzles with the ozone and plasma of Tesla coils, and perhaps it’s best not to approach it without a handy fluorescent light tube to sniff for unseen hazards. There are many amazing things that can come of these experiments, and fortunately for those of us who lack the means or courage to experiment with them there are many YouTube videos to satisfy our curiosity.
One such comes from [Plasma channel], in the form of a table-top ping-pong ball accelerator. It lacks impressive …read more
Continue reading Electrostatically Accelerated Ping-Pong Ball Travels the Circuit
What do you do when you’re into trackball mice, but nothing out there is affordable or meets all your murine needs? You build one, of course. And if you’re like [Dangerously Explosive], who has a bunch of old optical mice squeaking around the shop, you can mix and match them to build the perfect one.
The mouse, which looks frozen mid-transformation into a rodential assassin, is a customized work of utilitarian art. Despite the excellent results, this project was not without its traps. [Dangerously] got really far into the build before discovering the USB interface chip was dead. Then he …read more
Have you ever wanted to roll your own pinball machine? It’s one of those kinds of builds where it’s easy to go off the deep end. But if you’re just getting your feet wet and want to mess around with different playfield configurations, start with something like [joesinstructables]’ Arduino Laser Pinball.
It’s made from meccano pieces attached with standoffs, so the targets are easy to rearrange on the playfield. [joesinstructables] wanted to use rollover switches in the targets, but found that ping pong balls are much too light to actuate them. Instead, each of the targets uses a tripwire made …read more
