Posts by Category: diy

Do it yourself, dude!

diy January 4, 2007 posted by

DIY Voice Recognition Security System – who goes there?

If you’ve got a spare few minutes this weekend why not sit down and replicate the DIY Voice Recognition System project from Xiaowen Lu and Shihjia Lee. Of course you’ll need to know about the Nyquist Rate Theorem, Chebychev filters and the Fourier Transform, but apart from that it should be a piece of cake, eh?  The project has not met our expectations fully, as we initially specified that the system would be able to recognize a sentence as a password….


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diy January 2, 2007 posted by

Battery hacking – turn your 9V into 6 AAA cells

Clever emergency hack of a Duracell 9V battery pack to provide six AAA batteries. Not sure how safe, useful or cost effective this is, but it’s worth remembering. Maybe. Lots of disclaimers.  You will notice that these internal cells are a bit smaller than a normal “AAA” battery. However, by bending the attached tab on the internal cell, you can get it to work in most any application requiring a triple A cell, at least as a temporary fix until…


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diy December 15, 2006 posted by

Build your own Infrared Paint Remover – stripping made easy

The DIY Infrared Paint Remover. You’ve gotta love teh internets haven’t you? Here we have an intelligent use of common sense, applied to a product which appears to be somewhat over-priced in the marketplace. Result? Home decorators across the world rejoice, while paint peels off doors, windows and wooden domestic appliances without a murmur. Wife calling you crazy: freeParts: $40Money Saved: $400Watching wife enjoy stripping paint: Priceless. The rest of this page focuses on simply repackaging a quartz heater to…


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diy November 27, 2006 posted by

DIY Hard Drive Clock

The DIY Hard Drive Clock shows that there are occasions when a ticking noise coming from your hard disk may be a good thing. The perfect project for those of us with…ah…less than leet DIY electronicz skillz.  This is a hard drive clock that requires only a power drill and some basic hand tools. No electronics knowledge is necessary. Total project time: 60-90 minutes. Supplies: * Old hard drive (duh). I happened to find a 5.25” model while working at FreeGeek….


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diy November 17, 2006 posted by

DIY iPod Solar Charger – cheap and cheerful

How to build your own cheapo iPod solar charger. A soldering iron, a bit of Velcro, steady hands and the usual caveats and you’re done.  I looked everywhere for a lightweight solar iPod charger. Nothing fancy, just something I could attach to the top of my backpack. I couldn’t find one anywhere, I couldn’t even find instructions on how to build one. So, I set about building one for myself. As this was all about getting very light materials, this…


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diy November 8, 2006 posted by

DIY Telephone Handset Microphone

The DIY Telephone Handset Microphone. You know, to make your vocals sound like they’re coming from the bottom of a 200 foot well, under water, through a…er…telephone handset. Yeah well, let’s just assume you’ve got lots of time on your hands, OK?  Some time ago my girlfriend asked me if I would make her one of those telephone microphones like the kind that all of those hipster bands have. So, I of course told her I would. Much time passed……


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diy November 1, 2006 posted by

DIY Laptop bag

A DIY Laptop Tote made out of neoprene, rubber, velcro and some tape. It looks quite cool really, in a utility street-fashion kinda way. And it doubles up as a mouse mat when open, which is rather fine, doncha think? Not sure how much money was saved though…  I cut the neoprene so that when the bag is folded together it forms the interior of the bag. One of the final steps is to adhere it to the rubber mat with contact cement….


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diy October 26, 2006 posted by

Build your own concealed room

Build your own cheapo DIY Concealed Room. Who needs a $5,000 budget and a team of workmen? With just a small dowel, some rigging pulleys and a couple of bookcases you can play Mr Bond in the privacy of your own crib. Ooh and look, there’s another set of plans here.  On this shelf the left-most book is an old Sherlock Holmes book that I picked up (quite apt for its new purpose I thought.) Tilt this book and… Voila!!! Nothing too…


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diy October 25, 2006 posted by

Turn your photos into a Lichtenstein pop art

Excellent Photoshop tutorial by Melissa Clifton on how to turn your photos into Lichtenstein inspired pop art. It’s not for Photoshop beginners, but it’s well worth reading if only for the cool factor of being able to create fab retro posters with your choice of subject matter.  Benday dots were Lichtenstein’s trademark. Benday dots are a printing process which combines two (or more) different small, coloured dots to create a third colour. Back in the day, pulp comic books used benday dots in primary colours…


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diy October 24, 2006 posted by

DIY Thumb Drive Raid Array

The DIY Thumb Drive RAID Array. Missed this one first time out, but it’s still pretty cool. A USB 2.0 RAID array using four standard 512 MB USB flash drives. The results, using a very cheap hub and some naff drives, was a sixfold increase in I/O speeds but at the cost of reliability. Oh and it only seemed to work on Linux. It would be interesting to try this again now with a bunch of higher quality 4 GB drives and…


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diy October 23, 2006 posted by

DIY Light Box Mk II – Ikea style!

DIY Light Box Mk II. Apparently if you turn a $10.00 IKEA laundry basket on its side you get a reasonable and cheap light box. Who’d a thunk it? And it folds up neatly afterwards too. Golly!  IKEA makes a hamper or laundry bag called dimpa. It cost’s about 10$ and they also make quite a cheap energy saver lamp that fits perfect inside it. It is called the liesta and costs about 15$.


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diy October 18, 2006 posted by

DIY Coat Hanger Robot

The DIY Coat Hanger Robot. Why buy a creepy-crawlie, when you can make one at home out of useless household junk and some batteries? A perfect project for newbie robot wars geeks?  It makes use of techno-junk. Okay, so a coat hanger isn’t very “techno,” but if you have a decent techno-junk stash (and who among us doesn’t have access to old computers, motorized toys, analog modems, old answering machines, etc. at this point?), you likely have some of the other components…


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diy October 13, 2006 posted by

DIY paper cellphone cover

The DIY Paper Cellphone Cover looks a hoot. And let’s talk cheap, shall we? Just stay away from large puddles. [via textually]  So far its held up to 2 days of punnishment. The window is plenty strong enough, remember the tape that holds the food bag on to the paper (inside cover), well that reinforces things nicely. I did however put some extra tiny bits of tape on the front over the join between paper and plastic to prevent lift/peeling….


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diy October 4, 2006 posted by

Cool low cost Skype home security tip

Here’s a neat tip on setting up Skype to act as a cheap home security web cam system. Crude maybe, but effective.  1) Open two new accounts. 2) On account 1 add new user two as your ONLY contact 3)Re-log in as account 1 and set as follows: Go to tools–>options–>advanced–>(tick) automatically answer Incoming calls–> then go to Tools–>options–>Video–>(tick) start video automatically and Only People in My contacts–>save. Leave this account online 4)Log in as account 2 from another PC….


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