I New Idea Homepage

Directly or sideways, actually you can decide the way your wall (or wallpaper) looks at you, simply by drawing different kinds of eyes on them.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Built with a moisture sensor that detects your tears and a speaker inside, the Sleepy Weepy Pillow will automatically play a song to comfort you when it “notices” that you’re sad. But since the pillow works merely based on detecting your tear, those who drool in their sleep or have over-active sweat glands will receive more comfort songs from it.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

A car installed with a wood-burning stove inside?? That sounds really crazy, but that’s innovative as well, indeed. Designed to fight against the cold weather in Swiss, Pascal Prokop has built a stove in his 1990 Volvo 240 station wagon and even got an operating permit from the Swiss technical inspection authority.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Using an electric circuit, two razor blades, a 3D printer and an LED light, Brian Beebe has successfully created a wire stripper all by himself. The smart device is very clever: when the blades have made it through the plastic sheathing to the metal wire beneath, the circuit is then completed and thus the LED indicator is turned on to alert the users to stop cutting.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Let our opinion become clear and unbiased now: PC games actually can offer something more important than the great fun we usually get – it provides us with creative inspirations too! Look at this Ultimate-battlefield PC Case: it’s designed and made by a PC gamer, with a really cool appearance, good functions and even a beverage storage space.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Developed by Tobias Sonne, the Posture Suspenders can detect a slouch and deliver real-time vibration alerts to help you always keep a correct posture. It’s a fully functional device, but is made with really ordinary things including an Arduino Pro Mini microcontroller board, a normal pair of suspenders, a XeBee wireless radio, and a 3.6 volt battery.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Anytime, anywhere, watch what you’d like to watch, and that’s rightly the thing David Forbes’ Wearable LED TV would help you to do. The wearable LED display involves customized display boards, circuits, batteries, iPod and speakers, making it functional enough to display some videos even during your moving.  For more details and manufacturing costs, you can check out the story at Popsci.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Hyperspectral sensors are usually quite expensive, which keeps many people away from utilizing the hyperspectral image technology. That’s so pity! Hence some scientists have decided to turn a DSLR into a hyperspectral camera using stock SLR glass, a gel diffraction filter, PVC pipe, duct tape and other materials. Certainly they succeeded, as the cheap imaging spectrometer can deliver spectral resolution equal to that of commercial solutions but at a far lower cost. The experiment and process may sound easy, but to construct such a camera you may need to master quite large amount of knowledge.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Use your head and hands, and then you’ll create something simple but magical, just as this privacy monitor. Designed and made with an old LCD monitor, the device looks all white to everybody except you, as you’re wearing “magic” glasses. But why and how? Check out the link below for more details and you may even try to make your own privacy monitor too.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Have a new try! Without no darkroom or specialized technical, you can print photos on fabric or wood or anything else with the magic dye, and it could get finished in four simple steps. Just paint the dye on, put a negative or object on top, put it in the sun and wash it with water, and then you’ll get exclusive clothes on the world. Available in red, orange and blue, the dye would create new colors when you mix them.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Innovating is everywhere, and several people from German have collaborated to make the first manned flight with an e-powered multicopter recently. The flight is easy to operate, while not featuring a good performance as that of common aircrafts we seen in the sky. Even so, it still offers a future of flight, piloting an aircraft as easily as driving a car.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Bags to pack, bags to ship and bags to advertise. Nowadays, just as you may have ever noticed, almost everything in daily life has been a medium for advertising. Bags are included too. Some of the bags emphasize the product’s features, some seem to be really magic and some just make the jokes. So which would be your No.1? Rank them out then. [Read the rest of this entry...]

We need a camera, to record beautiful scenes, lovely people, important dates, and many other valuable things. But sometimes, we use a camera, simply to show off – look at me, my cameras are so cool, huh? [Read the rest of this entry...]

After iPhones make we humans same, now we really need something to make us different. So we need these cross-stitch kits. They’re available in 6 colors, with 2 needles, thread and patterns for us to DIY our own iPhone cases. Or you can finish something special on it with your own imagination. Try these iPhone4 DIY Cases and try to be different. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Things will be totally different if without Fabian Bernhard and Thomas Burkard: before the item is merely a stretcher but soon after it becomes a chair leaning against the wall to keep its steadibility. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Small Iris Cards are just what the name implies: 3.5″ x 2″ business cards that can function as a mechanical iris used in photography machines. When rotating the tab on the card, you can open the hole in the center of the card gradually to a maximum size of one inch. Sometimes, you may even see a photo after the hole is opened if you’re with a special kind of Small Iris Cards. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Eggs not merely provide nutrition, sometimes they offer love too. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Jennifer Rieker has innovatively redefined “shoes” by allowing the wearers to participate in the production process. Every Creo Shoe is sent to the consumers in four separate parts, including footbeds, shoelaces, outer soles, and a leather envelope that doubles as the inner part. Besides, a sewing pattern is also available to instruct you. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Making a speaker is much easier than you’ve ever imagined, and what you need to prepare is merely: textile (or paper), conductive tape and some strong magnets. Try this one made by Hannah Perner-Wilson and you’ll find it quite impressive. [Read the rest of this entry...]

If you don’t have enough money to get a big house outside, you may just build a two-floor house inside your loft? Wow wow, it’s still costy! [Read the rest of this entry...]

42 pieces of floppy disks were recently brought together and found their new function, that is, to work as an innovative handbag! It is really a clever way to recycle old things. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Ji Ga Zo is not an ordinary puzzle as what it looks. It can present anything you’d like to arrange after you upload digital images with the Ji Ga Zo software, and thus you can create any face including even your own! Isn’t that interesting? I even couldn’t wait to try that. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Use our intelligence. We should do this because we can create innovative or even magical things with our talent, just as Sandy Sanderson makes these mini cars with old cans, metal wires and his imagination. So incredible! [Read the rest of this entry...]

Street Flyer by Dr. Carsten Mehring seems more like an over-sized three-wheeler. But instead of sitting on the top, one is hanged beneath and moves his/her body to propel the vehicle. Even though the Street Flyer cannot compare with paragliders, it clearly offers a much safer trip of flying. [Read the rest of this entry...]

One may guess the power of the sunlight over the hottest and driest days in summer, while Eric Jacqmain takes on an experiment to find a more accurate answer by building a fiberglass satellite dish with 5,800 tiny mirror tiles. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Have a try with this huge magic cube that consists of 17 layers and 1539 components, and you’ll know why the toy is so charming. Simply to assemble it, the designer has spent more than 15 hours, and we really couldn’t figure out how much time you’ll need to manage the game. Just try it and let us know. [Read the rest of this entry...]

One piece of equipment that most boys and girls may be interested in is of course the speakers, and quite often they spend many months and days in making unique ones-speakers that can represent their own characteristics. And here we’d like to share some interesting concepts with you guys, so can you imagine that they’re all built by computer fanciers rather than professionals? [Read the rest of this entry...]

Craig Smith, who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has made a unique snow removal using his two old bikes. The new vehicle looks bit of impractical on pictures, if you couldn’t control two bikes at the same time. But according to Mr. Smith, his DIY snow removal three-wheeler performs very well in cleaning the snow. So will you make one too? [Read the rest of this entry...]

Can you imagine that all these deliberate mini motorbikes are transformed from old cigar lighters? Somebody has recently achieved a big success, by disassembling the cigar lighters and then building mini cars with all those components. Isn’t that great? You may have a try too if you have both interest and smart hands. [Read the rest of this entry...]

What would your ideal sled be like, decorated with white and red ribbons just as the one of Mr. Santa‘s, or built with a large wheel just as the one shown here? [Read the rest of this entry...]

Flying white snow has created us a fantastic world that seemingly almost the same as the one in a fairy story, and everybody feels excited to see that scenery especially on the Christmas Eve. But when the snow covers the road, the situation will be completely different and we may have to fight against any risks of slipping on the snow and ice. So today we’d like to share a simple but practical tip to keep your bikes from slipping and falling. That is, to fasten some plastic bands onto them. Easy as that! [Read the rest of this entry...]

Nearly all the calendars we see nowadays are creative, and obviously the Life Calendar is among them too. “How was your day?” is the first of the series, which asks the users to draw different pictures so as to record their various emotions. Even though you still need to do some work, you’ll actually find it much easier to document your life with a Life Calendar rather than with a diary. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I am always amazed when I hear people saving those used crayons and use them to make new ones. But the Crayola Crayon Maker proves that is practical. And now it seems as if we seldom need to buy any new crayons as long as we can own such a smart machine… [Read the rest of this entry...]

Italian artist Franco Recchia is a man with great curiosity. When taking apart old computers, he suddenly realized that it may be interesting to make some sculptures with their component parts and thus these mixed-media sculptures were brought to us. Each featuring rich details and clean lines, these sculptures here present a new look of Central Park, Manhattan, Boston and Pittsburgh and they’re all full of imagination and creativity. Really nice work, Recchia! [Read the rest of this entry...]

Though simply removing the front wheel and mounting two wheels under the handlebars, design graduate Berk Asal has succeeded in having the three wheeler work in a totally different way. That is: Triblean’s wheels would tilt into corners for a quick conversion when running on the roads. As a result, riding a bike will be more exciting, right? [Read the rest of this entry...]

The play of imagination gives a new life to an old cooking stove, which now turns into a fantastic household acoustic apparatus with four 6.5-inch loudspeakers, one 7-inch touch screen and something else. Doesn’t that look good on the pictures? I even couldn’t wait to make my own one. [Read the rest of this entry...]

It doesn’t mean that your earphones are no longer usable when something is wrong with them. In fact with this DIY Earphone System, each part and every wire of which is detachable and replaceable, everybody can easily “fix” their earphones to make them work again. To meet your different needs, the module comes in two modes: basic and Bluetooth. You can also hook up two separate sets to the central module,  if you’d like to share good music with your friend. [Read the rest of this entry...]

A luxurious but cheap couch does not always exist in IKEA, sometimes it may rightly stand in your apartment. When looking for something creative for a close friend’s wedding, Adrian Johnson came up with an idea to build a couch with a discarded refrigerator and a vintage BMW two-door coupe. And the finished item looks fine in both appearance and functions, just as shown in the pictures. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Admittedly not everybody has a chance to pilot a plane by himself, but at least we can try out the experience with a Moving Axis AirCraft Simulator. When you fly a virtual plane, the device will then tilt and shift as a real plane does. If you’d also like to build a similar one, you can check out the video below to see how Matt Thomas made this. [Read the rest of this entry...]

If you could have only one piece of jewelry, you’ll never need one made of recycled bottle caps, but if you do have more than one cap in your drawers, you’d better make them into jewelry like these created by Yoav Kotik. Look, they’re really fantastic on your necks and wrists. [Read the rest of this entry...]