Category: DIY Electronics

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Fun Project – Nintendo Wii Remote Flashlight

If you read this blog on a regular basis you would already know I enjoy re-purposing broken electronics into new useful gear. I had an old Wii remote sitting around that was broken and it was calling out flashlight to me. I figured I would give it a shot.

My self imposed requirements called for using one of the original buttons to turn on the light, and I also had to reuse the original battery holder.

Tools you can use:

Triwing Screwdriver – Nintendo likes to use “special” screws across all their equipment. The Wii is no different and requires a Triwing screwdriver to open the Wii remote. This kit is $11.99 and covers them all!

 

About 12″ of wire the lighter the gauge the better. This 22 gauge wire collection would be a great addition to your tool box. $20.00 at Amazon Continue reading “Fun Project – Nintendo Wii Remote Flashlight”

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Don’t believe the hype – MP3 is NOT Dead!

What did we do before MP3? I remember the early years using my Dolby high speed dubbing tape decks to make copies of the tapes my friends and I used to share. Not too soon after came the Compact Disc, and I ran out to buy a Pentium 60mhz with a 2x CD-Recorder to make my mix CD’s.

I was amazed that we could “rip” huge wav files off the CD’s and play them back on the PC. But disk space was at a premium in the 90’s, due to the limited capacity of hard drives.

There had to be a better way to store music! That’s when a friend introduced me to the MP3 format. Full length songs at decent quality only 3mb – 5mb! WOW this was amazing, think of the possibilities.  There were no portable MP3 players yet, I found myself taking a laptop in the car hooked to an FM transmitter to listen to my music.

My car MP3 Player Website

I even marketed a CD on eBay for $10 that had plans for a car MP3 Player Just imagine putting a computer in a pizza box in the trunk of your car, running a PS/2 cable to a numeric keypad and mounting a 40 character display to your dash board with a parallel cable.   It was good business until the portable MP3 players began to arrive about a year later.

A BRIEF TRIP DOWN THE PORTABLE MP3 PLAYER MEMORY LANE

Continue reading “Don’t believe the hype – MP3 is NOT Dead!”

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DIY Summer Project – Make your own Sun & Moon Jar Night Light

The Sun & Moon Jar night light helps set the mood in any room. Place the jar in your family room, bed room, back yard patio or even take it on your next camping trip. No matter where you place the jar, the warm glow will surely add ambiance to your surroundings.

Today I’m going to explain the steps to make your own Sun & Moon Jar.

Visit www.GeekGearStore.com for a completed version of this project!

Supplies you will need:

Tools You Can Use:

Let’s Get Building!

If you are not familiar with how LED’s work give this post a quick read.

Light Up Your Projects With (LED) Light Emitting Diodes

SUN & MOON JAR STEP 1 – Prepare The LED module

Take each LED and bend the Cathode (negative) post as shown.

I use a small needle nose to make the “L” shape.

 

Continue reading “DIY Summer Project – Make your own Sun & Moon Jar Night Light”

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Build Your Own Google Home Assistant – Google AIY & Raspberry Pi

As a huge fan of the Raspberry Pi, I’m always looking for cool new projects to try. Google had released a free hardware kit with Issue 57 of the MagPi magazine. The kit included a Pi Voice Hat, a microphone board, speaker, a “traditional google” card board case and various bits to put it all together. Apparently this is Google’s answer the Raspberry Pi Amazon Echo that was released last year.

If you were lucky enough to get your hands on the kit, I hope you put it to good use. They were in limited supply and are sold out at this point. Maybe they will make another run and sell them in the Google store?

If you still want to try this project with out the kit you can! Google has published instructions.

Supplies you will need

 

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and power supply

Continue reading “Build Your Own Google Home Assistant – Google AIY & Raspberry Pi”

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Add sound to your project – Nintendo NES cartridge clock plays Mario theme song.

This is a fun project even without the sound. I enjoy taking vintage NES cartridges and making them into clocks. No worries the cartridges are broken beyond repair before I gut and start drilling holes in them. The NES cartridge clock is a great way to recycle.

I will cover building the clock in another post later on. This article is going to focus on adding the audio module and making them sing.

Supplies You Will  Need

  • 30 Second audio recording module – $12.00
  • An old Nintendo NES cartridge – Ebay or Free(if you have one)
  • Soldering iron – $16.00
  • Small piece of wire – You got this
  • Hot glue / or any glue  $11.00
  • NES Security bit – $5.00

Let’s get building

Continue reading “Add sound to your project – Nintendo NES cartridge clock plays Mario theme song.”

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How to make a Nintendo NES controller USB flash drive.

This is a fun project that takes an old Nintendo NES controller and converts it into a cool USB drive that your friends will envy.

Time to build: 1 hours
Skill Level: Easy

Supplies:

A classic NES controller. Can be found on EBAY or at the bottom of your closet or in the basement.

 

Any USB drive extracted from its case. I used a 16gb drive for this project.

 

A USB extension cable. I found this one laying around the shop.

 

Continue reading “How to make a Nintendo NES controller USB flash drive.”

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Turn On Your “Pi Hole” and say hello ad blocking on all your devices!

We are bombarded with Internet advertisements all day long. They have become such a part of the landscape most of us don’t even notice them anymore, let alone click on them. Marketers have become ever more clever to get noticed on both our desktops and mobile devices. This is when the advertisements become obnoxious! Pop-ups, video ads with auto-play, even adds on our mobile devices that are ridiculously intrusive and  hide the “X” to exit.

Enough is enough already!

This is where Pi Hole fits in! What is a Pi Hole you say? Think of the Pi Hole as an open source advertisement blocking network appliance for your entire home.  The developers of the Pi Hole software found an easy way to block most advertisements from displaying on all your devices. When you boil it down the Pi Hole is simply a DNS black list joined with the inexpensive Raspberry Pi computer. Continue reading “Turn On Your “Pi Hole” and say hello ad blocking on all your devices!”

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Want To Turn Back Time? How To Make A Clock Tick In Reverse! (Counterclockwise)

To turn back the hands of time, its something we all wished we could do at some point in our lives. Well this project won’t help you punch a hole in the space-time continuum, but it will help you make a cool desk or wall clock that has a counterclockwise movement.

We begin with the Q80 clock movement from Quartex they are readily available on the internet and I have a good stock of them if you would like to purchase one. (just email me at ideas@webcommand.net)

 

 

STEP 1 – Remove the back cover

  • To begin we need to remove the back cover of the movement. There are two plastic latching clips on each side of the movement. To remove the cover insert a flat small screwdriver, or pocket knife and gently pry the clip up slightly. Then wiggle the back cover off. Repeat this procedure on the other side. At this point the back cover should slide off easily. Don’t worry about any of the internal components as they are all self contained  within a clear plastic case. However do note the battery terminals can fall out. They are easy to reinsert so just put them on the side for now.

Continue reading “Want To Turn Back Time? How To Make A Clock Tick In Reverse! (Counterclockwise)”

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How To Partially Cut The Cord With HDHR by Silicon Dust (Part 2 of 2)

In my previous post  “How To Partially Cut The Cord Part 1″ I explained the ease of reducing your cable bill by purchasing an HD Home Run from Silicon Dust. I have been a huge fan of their tuners for the last 10 years and in this post I’m going to give you an idea of how my setup works.

I am a Verizon Fios customer and subscribe to one of their silver packages. I have two HD Home Runs. The first is a dual tuner HDHR Connect $93.00 at Amazon and the second is an HDHR Prime $119 at Amazon.

TUNE IN – My tuners:
The HDHR Connect will allow you to tune 2 channels of unencrypted QAM or over the air digital TV. I am lucky since FIOS has all OTA channels in clear QAM on their line. The HDHR Prime has a Verizon supplied cable card (mcard) installed for $5.00/per month and can tune 3 channels of encrypted signals. This gives me a total of 5 tuners to play with.

WATCHING TV – Live:
Once the HDHR tuners are setup on your home network, you can easily stream HD content to a ton of devices. I have tested mine with a Windows 7 & Windows 10 pc, Android tablet, XBOX One, Amazon Fire Stick, and a Raspberry Pi 3 running Kodi. All are able to keep up with HD content over my wireless N network. Continue reading “How To Partially Cut The Cord With HDHR by Silicon Dust (Part 2 of 2)”

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Light Up Your Projects With (LED) Light Emitting Diodes

Have an old painting that could use a little lift? Maybe you want to light up a jar or a clock? LEDs can help add a little extra something and turn drab into fab.

LED is an acronym for Light Emitting Diode and they have been appearing in our devices since the early 1960’s. Over the years LED’s have become increasingly popular and can now be found in everything from our home lighting, cars and even our television and computer monitors.

LED’s are very inexpensive and easy to work with. In this post I will do my best to explain some of the basics to get started with your project.

Before we begin its a good idea to make sure you have the correct tools.  A suggested list of tools can be found below:

At the bottom of this post I will have a list of good sources where you can purchase the tools.

The next step is to make sure you have the correct parts. Not only will you need LEDs, but you should also have a battery holder, resistors, an on/off switch, batteries, a length of wire and some solder.

Continue reading “Light Up Your Projects With (LED) Light Emitting Diodes”

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