This Home Improvement Gadget Lets Your Phone See Through Walls

Here’s how to transform your smart phone into a DIY home improvement dynamo.

Walabot DIY reveals pipes

The sadistic but true reason why you watch DIY shows is that you hope they’ll completely fuck up their project worse than you ever could. It’s okay to admit it. But rather than rely on others’ potential failures, one gadget can help boost your own home improvement game.

The Walabot DIY is fancy device that magnetically snaps onto the back of your Android phone and uses an app to produce fancy 3D imaging that adds a whole other dimension to “measure twice, cut once.” By seeing through cement and drywall, it allows you to see exactly where plumbing, wires and studs are hiding in space, including their depth.

It shows materials, depth and movement (Photo: Walabot)
It shows materials, depth and movement (Photo: Walabot)

Similarly helpful, it distinguishes materials and can detect motion. So, um…you really won’t be needing your dad’s old hand-me-down stud finder, with its pre-Cambrian lights and beeps. This is the real deal, revealing with sophisticated sensors and imaging exactly where and where not to pound, cut and demolish.

Hey, you can order one of these things for $199. Or then again, you can also take your chances with that tried and true method of knocking on the wall as if you know what the hell you’re doing—and hoping you don’t cause $200 or more worth of damage with your self-righteous tinkering. Good luck!

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