MightyOhm

MayorMike, inspired by the article I wrote for Make vol. 20 (Retro Wireless Handset), stuck a bluetooth headset in a plastic toy gun to create his Handgun Bluetooth Earpiece Project.  The best part – the earphone is located at the end of the barrel, so to answer a call, you stick it up to your ear.  Genius.

The innards are shown below.

Nice work, MayorMike!  May I suggest that you pair this with a Hand Grenade MP3 Player?

via BoingBoing

Gary Dion (N4TXI) created a Wifi Radio to match his entertainment center.  His project is inspired by my original Wifi Radio project and shares several of the same parts (such as the Asus WL-520gU wireless router) and design philosophy.

Interesting features of Gary’s version of the radio:

• Very cool 4 line VFD display allows more information to be shown at once (and it’s blue!)
• AVR sends actual shell commands to the router, which allows the serial console to remain enabled for debugging/other purposes – brilliant!
• Nice custom PCB for the ATmega8 microcontroller
• Rotary encoder and significantly more advanced control menus
• IR remote control support!

More details, photos, and source code are available on Gary’s site.

Thanks to the Make: blog for bringing this project to my attention!

Woot is selling a Samsung Bluetooth headset for $17.99 + $5 S/H – $20 MIR = $3 after rebate.

For that price this headset could be a great candidate to use for a DIY Retro Bluetooth Handset.

The catch is that I can’t guarantee this headset is actually hackable until someone buys one and reports back here.

Who will be the first?

Do you have a question about the Wifi Radio project or want help making your own Bluetooth Handset?

Try asking over at the discussion forums!

If you haven’t seen them before, be sure to check them out!

The rain and dropping temperatures in San Francisco this weekend reminded me of a project I made in the winter of 2006.  This was long before mightyohm.com existed, so I originally documented the project at instructables.  I’m not going to repeat everything here, but I wanted to share some pictures and provide a link to the instructable in case anyone else wants to try this at home.

The project involves using a digital programmable thermostat to control an inexpensive space heater.  The original motivation for this was that I wanted to lower the temperature of the heater at night, reducing my energy bill, while still being able to wake up to a toasty room in the morning by setting the heater to turn on full blast 30 minutes before I awoke.

Here’s a schematic of the simple circuit I made to interface the thermostat to the space heater.  The resistor/diode/capacitor circuit allows the thermostat, which is designed to control an AC load, to switch power to a 24VDC coil relay.  A 36VAC

I installed the necessary components inside the case of an old power and telephone line filter, used to protect a fax machine or office copy machine from power surges.  The case came with a handy 110V outlet mounted on the front panel which I reused for this project.  The digital thermostat mounts to the top cover of the case.

I used a barrier strip as a way to simplify the wiring and mount the few loose components:

I had to adjust the value of C1 to get reasonably clean DC to the relay while not having an annoying turn-off lag when the control line from the thermostat goes low.  100uF works well for the relay I used.

Here’s the finished product installed in my former bedroom:

I haven’t used it since I moved into a house with working central heating, but it sure came in handy during the cold winter I spent in a 100 year old farmhouse in Petaluma.  This solved the problem of the sub-50 degree mornings I was having nicely!

instructables.com: Space heater controlled by digital thermostat

Comments?  Questions?  Leave a comment below!