The Gadget Blog » DIY

DIY Detector Opens Doors Upon Correct Knock

Rico Mossesgeld — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:30:43 +0000

This is so cool! The brainchild of Steve Hoefer, the “Secret Knock Detecting Door Lock” attaches to a doorknob and its corresponding lock with suction cups. Upon detecting the correct knock pattern (by default, the classic shave and a haircut), it unlocks the door to grant access.

Even better, the knock detector is completely programmable. Changing the secret knock cadence is a simple matter of holding the red button while executing a new lock pattern, with a max of 20 knocks. The system simply detects the pattern, and not the tempo, providing allowance for users who knock slower or faster than usual.

But perhaps the best thing about Steve Hoefer’s Secret Knock Detecting Door Lock is that its a result of a DIY project. Conceivably, with the instructions available here, you can secure your own doors, limiting access only to people who know the correct knock pattern.

Secret Knock Detecting Door Lock

Post from: The Gadget Blog

DIY USB Fan

Rico Mossesgeld — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:39:36 +0000

This is an old hack/mod, but it works pretty well. Here’s what you need:

An old desktop case fan
1 USB cable
A piece of stiff wire
Some electrical tape
A pair of pliers
Cutter

Here are the steps to take:

Cut of one end of the USB cable, and unsheathe the main cord it to reveal a red and black wires. These two wires pull power from a computer’s USB port.
The next step is really simple: Strip the red and black wires of the USB and the old desktop fan, then twist them together. Red to red and black to black of course
Get some electrical tape, and wrap the red wire connection with it twice. Continuing the roll, wrap twice around the red wire and black wire. This will keep the red wire from touching the black wire.
Bend the stiff wire to form a “U” and insert the “legs” through one set of the desktop fan’s screw holes. The legs should thread towards the side where the fan blows the air.
Bend the stiff wire so that you can insert both legs into the other set of screw holes, threading the wire towards the opposite side.
Cut off any slack stiff wire, leaving around half-an-inch.
Place the desktop fan on a hard flat surface, with the U on top. Push down hard on the fan frame to “finalize” the stiff wire bends.
Use pliers to bend the slack stiff wire, and hammer it into the frame to make it as flush as possible.
And voila! There you have it! A video of the entire procedure is available here.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Stuff Needed to Turn Bottle into a Tripod

Rico Mossesgeld — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:14:12 +0000

Who woulda thunk it?

The following:

Drill with 1/4-inch bit
Screwdriver
Wrench

Well… well, continue reading please…
Can turn these:

1/4-inch Stainless steel washer
1/4-20×1 1/2-inch stainless steel pan head machine screw
1/4-20 Bar Knob
1/4-20 stainless steel lock nut
lid from a 20oz bottle

Into this:

Of course, you can’t help but wonder: what if your camera’s tripod mount is off-center, as pictured above? Do you have to hold the bottle steady while taking the picture? Even if that’s the case, it’s still better than those impossible-to-keep-still hands mother nature’s cursed us with. In any case, bottle-holding is probably a requisite for any bottle-camera combo, given that the wind can easily tip over the top-heavy setup.

(images and idea courtesy of hackedgadgets.com)

Post from: The Gadget Blog

DIY Email Clock Ticks Down Kilobytes of Procrastination

Rico Mossesgeld — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:26:56 +0000

Complex DIY Project: As DIY-er Tom Igoe writes: “I have a lot of anxiety about email. Every kilobyte in my Inbox destroys another minute of my life, but I can’t stop checking it. So I decided to embody my anxiety in a device that would worry about my incoming mail for me.” In short, this DIY Email Clock counts down the kilobytes of email you’ve received, putting an unorthodox counter on your procrastination.

Here’s how each tick—representing one kilobyte—gets clocked down. The microcontroller driving the clock connects with a mail-server query program over the Internet, which is responsible for passing the number of kilobytes going unread.

The complete instructions to make one are available here, but even for veteran home workers, is this email clock worth the time and effort? Why go analog then? Digital indications dominate our lives for a good reason: they provide much more info at a single glance. After all, wouldn’t you rather see “2:33″ right away, instead of figuring out just how far that minute is from the four?

Still, this would be a great product idea for a manufacturer to pick-up, novelty-nature and all. How about making a wireless version? Igoe’s DIY project relies on an Ethernet connection to pull data from the net.

(image from the MAKE: Blog)

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Rubber Band Metal Gun DIY

Rico Mossesgeld — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:44:01 +0000

Check it out: mimicking the classic wooden setup, but in the words of Boing Boing, “this one has a working safety and is far prettier. (And heavier!)”

Post from: The Gadget Blog

DIY Wall-Mounted Digital Picture Gallery

Rico Mossesgeld — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:00:57 +0000

Here’s some family-friendly tech that doesn’t come off as boring. Kudos to Verizon for finding a natural way to advertise their FiOS service—even if they sneaked in the hard-sell from time to time.

The concept is simple: hook up a computer to the internet. Hook up lots of monitors to said computer. Set-up Windows to display photos it pulls from whichever online photo feeds you specify. The kicker is that, as new photos are added to these online streams, they show up on the so-called “memory wall”.

Less simple is how to do this. The instructions are clear enough, but we imagine it will take some master carpentry and patience to make this work. Well worth the effort though.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

How to Make a Strip Camera

Rico Mossesgeld — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:00:20 +0000

[Image removed upon request]

Perverts, check out this camera designed for surveillance purposes.

Now that’s out of the way, abstract photography connoisseurs may be interested in this strip camera DIY. It’s hard to see the appeal of distorted sports photography, but then again, artists are never understood in their own time!

By far the best place to start is by reading the works of Andrew Davidhazy, a professor at RIT with a passion for strip cameras and a prolific writer. In his publication “Basics of Strip Photography” (ref 10), Andrew describes a simple method of using a standard 35mm film camera and converting it to a strip camera. It was this piece that inspired me to try my hand. Do a Google search on Andrew and you’ll find several other publications on strip cameras such as in references 11-13.

And of course, analog art, dependent on regularly replenished supplies like film and antique equipment, may be a bit more expensive than its digital counterpart. But you can feel like you’re a real artiste, no?

Post from: The Gadget Blog