#Weird Tech
12 stories on this topic, newest first.
OKA's Mori brings a 12-inch wool-blend mushroom robot to your living room that deliberately avoids voice assistants and notifications. For $649, it offers local facial recognition, ambient lighting, and gentle physical movements instead of smart-home chores.
Enthusiasts have resurrected a control panel from a 1970s Soviet ES-4001 mainframe, exposing the contrast between repairable historical engineering and today's sealed, disposable hardware.
Engineer Sebastian Molano turned his master's thesis into the TAKTO ONE, a 10-motor hand exoskeleton designed to guide finger movements. While you cannot buy it at a store, all hardware and software files are available on GitHub for dedicated makers willing to
A maker known as PowerfulChart560 has converted a $5 ESP32 touchscreen module into a local marine ecosystem featuring 100 species and no subscription fees. The offline project runs entirely on device memory, bypassing cloud servers and companion apps for a
Weighing just 18 grams with no screen and a tiny 1.38-megapixel sensor, the Kenko Tokina Pieni III trades smartphone perfection for pure tactile novelty. It costs $38 and ditches computational photography entirely, leaving every shot a surprise until you
The $Seeed Studio Wio Tracker L2 Pro features a 3.2-inch color touchscreen and built-in GPS to run independent Meshtastic chats without a smartphone. Without an active local radio community nearby, however, this pocket node quickly turns into an expensive
Canadian developer Anthony Sistilli built a cheap automated license plate reader to track police cruisers and got a doorstep visit two weeks later. The garage-built setup exposes the double standard of mass surveillance and why private tracking is a liability.
Brax Technologies launched the Brax Wink, a $450 privacy-focused smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard and no front camera. It targets digital minimalists willing to ditch standard apps and Google services for extreme security.
A manufacturing oversight in MediaTek Wi-Fi chips lets enthusiasts turn a cheap network adapter into a software-defined radio. While it saves hundreds of dollars compared to professional gear, the raw debugging tool currently requires constant terminal
Developer abhi245y transformed a hacked PlayStation 5 into a $300 AI accelerator running language models via Vulkan. However, the modification triggers permanent network bans and ruins online console functions.
Enthusiast Joshua Bird bypassed standard four-motor drone design by building a working single-propeller aircraft from scratch. Using custom code, a hinged blade hub, and an external infrared beacon, he solved a stability problem that defeats most commercial
An independent modder got the rendering engine of Doom to run on a $5 Sonoff Basic R2 light switch. The stunt proves that cheap microcontrollers possess more raw computing muscle than overpriced smart home hubs demand.