DIY Hacks

Phone Recorder

Our friend Muris from elektronika.ba has sent in his latest project. It is a Phone Recorder that records all phone conversations in the entire house. There is also no need to turn it on or off, it monitors the phone line and starts recording as soon as a phone is picked up. It stores all of the conversations in MP3 format for easy storage or review. There is an archive

Electronic Business Card

Having a memorable business card is a big plus and we have seen some of these cards before, the Gear Business Card comes to mind. Aaron Alai has designed and created an Electronic Business Card that I guarantee no one who is lucky enough to receive will ever toss in the garbage. The only drawback is that each card takes Aaron 1 hour to make, hopefully he lands his dream

DIY Binary Clock Build

If you are looking for a nice DIY Binary Clock design have a look at this one by Kenneth Finnegan. It uses a sweet DS3232 RTC, but at a cost of $7.63 it better also do the dishes… “The time is kept by a DS3232, which is a very cool chip in that it has a built in temperature sensor, which it uses to compensate the crystal to try and

DIY Soil Moisture Sensor

I recently bought some house plant seeds via a mail order seed company. I don’t seem to have the knack of caring for the seeds though. I followed the instructions on the packet but don’t seem to be having much luck in getting any of the seeds to sprout. I am thinking that next time I attempt this I will need some automation on my side. When I was looking

Strobeshnik Hard Drive Clock

Svofski sent in a neat hard drive clock design he calls Strobeshnik. The clock looks wonderful and he has documented the entire build including how he etched through the aluminum hard drive platters to make the number cutouts. There is a full schematic and code for the microcontroller provided. “Strobeshnik uses stroboscopic effect to create the illusion of persistent numeric display. The hard drive platter has 10 digits, colon and

Time Delay Door Alarm Project

BlackCow from Homebrew Tech has a curious cat who likes to open the front door if it wasn’t properly latched. This Time Delay Door Alarm Project solves that problem by monitoring the door and producing a tone if it has been left open for more than around 30 seconds. This way it isn’t buzzing every time you use the door normally.  The schematic is available on his site if you

Pain Toy

When you think of toys normally you think of something that is fun and pleasurable. Well this toy by Harcos Labs is anything but pleasurable! It senses your brain waves using a Mindflex brainwave reader and if you are caught thinking hard about something…. ZAPPPPP, you get an electric shock. I think I need a reverse model of this to keep my productivity up all day, just think about the