Have you ever looked out the window at traffic and seen a giant crane driving alone the road? Have you ever wanted a little 3D printed version you could drive for yourself without the risk of demolishing your neighbors house? Well, [ProfessorBoots] has just the build for you.

The build, inspired by the Liebherr LTM 1300, isn’t just a little RC car that looks like a crane. It’s a real working crane, too! So you can drive this thing around, and you can park it up. Then you can deploy the fully working stabilizer booms like you’re some big construction site hot shot. From there, you can relish in the subtle joy of extending the massive three-foot boom while the necessary counterweight automatically locks itself in place. You can then use the crane to lift and move small objects to your heart’s content.

The video describes how the build works in intimate detail, from the gears and linkages all the way up to the grander assembly. It’s no simple beast either, with ten gearmotors, four servos, and two ESP32s used for control. If you really need to build one for yourself, [ProfessorBoots] sells his plans on his website.

We’ve seen great stuff from [ProfessorBoots] before—he’s come a long way from his skid steer design last year. Video after the break.

Thanks to [Hudson Bazemore] for the tip!

For racing games, flight simulators, and a few other simulation-style games, a simple controller just won’t do. You want something that looks and feels closer to the real thing. The major downsides to these more elaborate input methods is that they take up a large amount of space, requiring extra time for setup, and can be quite expensive as well. To solve both of these problems [Rahel zahir Ali] created a miniature steering wheel controller for some of his favorite games.

While there are some commercial offerings of small steering wheels integrated into an otherwise standard video game controller and a few 3D printed homebrew options, nothing really felt like a true substitute. The main design goal with this controller was to maintain the 900-degree rotation of a standard car steering wheel in a smaller size. It uses a 600P/R rotary encoder attached to a knob inside of a printed case, with two spring-loaded levers to act as a throttle and brake, as well as a standard joystick to adjust camera angle and four additional buttons. Everything is wired together with an Arduino Leonardo that sends the inputs along to the computer.

Now he’s ready to play some of his favorite games and includes some gameplay footage using this controller in the video linked below. If you’re racing vehicles other than cars and trucks, though, you might want a different type of controller for your games instead.