Make Solar Power

Solar panels are an amazing invention. Catching energy from the Sun before it even enters Earth's food chain, photovoltaics are like an all-natural nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, the constituted parts of a solar panel are rare, valuable, and subject to the coercive forces ...more

It's hot this summer, but it's not that easy to cool down when you're on the go. You can't take an air conditioner with you, and a handheld fan will just tire you out, so you'll need to find more creative ways to cool down when you're on the go. One of these ways is a DIY sola ...more

Omniscience is not required to make some really cool shit happen. Yes, it took a while, but we can make fuel from the Sun! Solar panels are basically our answer to God. And now that we can make solar electricity, finding the most efficient way to harvest it is tricky. Some so ...more

Artist Michael Jones McKean has harnessed nature with his DIY rainbow machine, a mechanism that uses reclaimed rainwater and solar power to shoot man-made rainbows across the sky at whim. High powered jets and fountain nozzles shoot a heavy wall of rainwater into the air, crea ...more

As sheltering at home orders ease up, we still have to remain respectful of social distancing. Camping is one of your best options. You'll avoid the crowded beaches and trails while still soaking up nature. Right now we can all use some fresh air and sunshine. The last thing ...more

A smartphone is pretty much useless with a dead battery. When you're out and about, it can be hard to find a place to plug in (if you remembered your charger, that is). But this DIY solar panel backpack made by electrical engineer Theodore Protasiewicz will help you use the sc ...more

You can do a lot more with playing cards than you'd think, like turn them into gift boxes, fling them like throwing stars, and make them levitate or disappear. You can even make them recharge your batteries. Instructables user Shawn Frayne was sick of having a bunch of dead ba ...more

No matter if you've used one or not, you've got to admit that 3D printers are pretty darn awesome, especially the self-replicating ones that extrude molten plastic and the shoebox-sized versions that use mesmerizing stereolithography to build tiny objects layer by layer. But w ...more

Glastonberry Solar Concept Tent Camping of the future! I'm usually completely against anything electronic when I go to the great outdoors... but for this, I'll definitely have to make an exception. It's all solar powered! It isn't on the market yet but some of the features wi ...more

Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more

Do you have two dollars and a water bottle? Then you can put together this simple but awesome solar-powered lantern that will provide more than enough light to read by at night. To begin, you'll need a water bottle, of course, some string, and optionally, a little bleach. You ...more

In this video, I show you a technique for hacking a four foot mega magnifying lens out of your old projection TV. Not only are these TVs everywhere, they can be found easily—for FREE! Video: . Don't throw away that old TV! ... ... Hack it! Into a free energy device! A 4 food m ...more

With over 1.5 billion people on this planet without electricity, it's hard for those of us in developed nations to even fathom how anyone can read, write, repair, or do anything else that we take for granted without any lights. While some of our First World problems pale in co ...more

There's nothing worse than when you come up with a brilliant idea while you're busy with other things and then promptly forget it. Whether it's the perfect ending for your novel or a comeback you should've said during that argument with your roommate last week, it's always ann ...more

What's the first thing you would do once you realized you were lost in, say, a desert? If you're like me, you would immediately pull out your cell phone and start dialing every number. But what if you have no service? What if your battery is dead? If you make this survival so ...more

Aside from being completely adorable, Fijibot is a completely autonomous robot that automatically seeks out light sources to charge his solar-powered battery. He's built from a 1.5 liter Fiji water bottle, packed with an Arduino Uno, 6 volt solar panel, and an Arduino Proto Sh ...more

Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more

Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more

André Broessel of rawlemon has developed a solar energy generator that can use both sun and moonlight to create usable power. Oh... and it's gorgeous. The device is essentially a huge glass sphere filled with water that uses a ball lens to refract light in a way that increases ...more

If a solar-powered air conditioner that requires no electricity or moving parts sounds to good to be true, well, then you're not as ambitious as this clever high school student. Instructables user Fozzy13 put together an awesome DIY tutorial on how he built his own air conditi ...more

One of the most annoying things about summer is mowing the lawn. Depending on how big your yard is, it can mean spending hours out in the hot sun while you could be doing something a lot more fun like watching the Olympics or making giant soap bubbles. Reclaim your summer with ...more

A group of New Zealand students have designed the ultimate green addition for eco-friendly living: a "clip-on" Plant Room. The Plant Room is a small cubic room that bolts to the exterior of a building, allowing extra space for the typical cramped city dweller. The space is in ...more

Here's a DIY dream. Solar-power, recycled bottles, snap'n'go toy car! Simple. How easy to transform trash into toys. Plastic bottles take 700 years to decompose in a landfill. And annually, America uses over 150 billion plastic water bottles. The inventor of this solar powe ...more

As our society and population grows, more developments such as housing and restaurants are built. While this is beneficial for us, it's not so great for the environment and the animals that occupy it. Some of the victims of our prosperity have been the birds, forced from their ...more

What do you do when your favorite new car is still two years away from hitting the road? Look to augmented reality, of course. That's what one app developer did in the wake of Elon Musk's Tesla Cybertruck reveal a couple of weeks ago. Now, anyone looking to get their own up-c ...more

Here is how you can build a frame for your MEGA SOLAR SCORCHER in under an hour, and for less than $8!! This is effectively a 4 foot magnifying lens that concentrates insane amounts of heat from the sun. What would you do with all this free solar power? My design for this cust ...more

2019 has been a great year for smartphone batteries. Several phones have topped the 5,000 mAh threshold, and Apple finally went all in on 18 W USB PD charging, which means millions of new users are finally taking advantage of fast charging. All of this gets even better when yo ...more

For this project, I sacrificed some of my kids' clothes and a can of tuna to make some high-quality fire starter! Here's how to make a great batch of char cloth to add to your emergency survival kit. Video: . WARNING: This project should not be attempted without adult supervis ...more

It's officially the last day of the year and there's no better way to end 2010 at WonderHowTo than with our own Top 10 list. The following 10 how-to videos have been hand-picked by the curators at WonderHowTo, and three of them have to do with male private parts, so be warned ...more

If you saw this so-called automobile out on the street, you'd probably think a UFO had landed, but sure enough, it's a car - a solar powered race car. Japan's Tokai Challenger solar vehicle won the 2009 Global Green Challenge, with speeds of up to 93MPH, running at only 1.8KW ...more

Sputnik, Apollo and the Space Race. If you watched the State of the Union address last night, you probably heard President Barack Obama mention those three things. The Space Race was an informal bout between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (USA) over the ascenda ...more

This is definitely the work of a Trekkie. Reddit user ModXMV shared the below image of his uncle's new homemade Star Trek mailbox. It's constructed of different-sized PVC pipe, a plastic dish container, wood, lights, etc. It even has a solar panel attached so it can light up ...more

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