Carphone
Released on: 2008-11-20

The basic idea

Imagine your phone is ringing and you can't find it. Probably the last thing you want is for it to be quietly driving away from you. Well that's what this one does. The concept is simple: Take power directly from the battery and use the vibrator power as an input signal.

Details

My biggest mistake was underspec'ing the transistor. “A motor can draw twice its specified current as it powers on�. Once I had a more powerful transistor I tested it and the motor twitched once, then all was quiet. This was a good bit of encouragement. Everything did what it was supposed to do. It just didn't last very long before something died.

The successful transistor was a tip3055

These transistors are pretty common (uk). Having said that, I can't find it at DSE (nz), so these will also serve you well:

I've had lots of great feed back already, but if you see something that should be different, please let me know by commenting or email me at [email protected]. One suggestion was that I should explain more about the transistor, ie how it works and how to use it. This is too much for the purposes of this episode, but there will be another opportunity in an up and coming episode. In the mean time, take a look at:

There is also a massive amount of info at:

I haven't read all the way through all of these links, but I have been looking for particular material in there which is likely to help you, and these links should be most of what you need.

This post references

Hi! This is me: At the age of 6, my dad taught me the basics of electronics, and I've been trying to electrocute myself ever since. This blog began from ......
We're still compiling the information to go here. But in the mean time you can contact me here: You're already here And Tim's address is..... oh oh! I'll get back ......

This post is referenced by

We're still compiling the information to go here. But in the mean time you can contact me here: You're already here And Tim's address is..... oh oh! I'll get back ......
Woah! You've found a really old link! Here are some things that are probably what you're looking for: ......

Posts using the same tags

RandomKSandom, the spiritual successor to Funnyhacks has begun....
Thyme travel has been an obsession of mine since the 80s. And now I've done it!...
Intro Chrooting to provide a desktop environment on a mobile device is not a new concept, but it is still with it's challenges. This post is about the various successes ......
Over the last while it has been becoming increasingly apparent that I'm simply trying to do too much. So let's address that.This post covers- Where is ......
Today I show you how to get some extra brightness on your LCD in the sun.This is part 2 where I repair a mistake I made in part 1 ......
I'm nearing the end of my sabbatical, and I did stuff! Here's an ultra short summary of what I did.Polishing projects This phase was to get my open source ......
Today we bring another unreleased episode from the archive to show you how to charge a phone that is too flat to charge. Overview The basic idea of this is ......
Today I dig up another unreleased FunnyHacks episode from the archive. This one is about a fly swat that I've turbocharged with an electric drill. This episode really hits on ......
Today I show you why it matters which lead is connected first when jump-starting a car, and why it's not obvious if you have an electronics background. The answer is ......
Today I show you the semi-working prototype of the final tablet.While I made prototypes of many parts, this was the only one bringing everything together, and there was still ......
Today I show you an adapter I made that converts a tablet into its own mouse.  This is basically the insides of a mouse, with a drastically shortened cable and ......
Today I reassemble a doorlock that was replaced after our flat was burgled. The result surprised me! Verifying the results To confirm my results, I compared this lock to a ......
Today I answer questions about running a laptop off AA batteries.It seems to be necessary to remind you that as with all hacks, don't do this on anything you ......
Today I show you how I did the dog eyes on the bike box. This is pretty much the same method that I used in the koala I don't ......
Today I show you how I pimped up a granny stroller to help me out during a tough time in my life. I broke my collar bone, which meant I ......
Today I show you more details with making the tablet. - Battery dock - Gluing without making too much mess - Planning the layout ......
Here I make a defective torch useful using a simple modification to stop the straps from falling off. In the original design it's very easy for the strap to slide ......
ColouredWeb generates and installs a custom stylesheet that re-colours the internet to make it easier for people who are sensitive to particular colours to use the internet. Here is an ......
Track where your time is going on the command line....
Maintain a single source of truth about your servers across different clouds, and interact with them quickly....
A language for robotics, and more....
Getting the videos done took much longer than I expected, namely because I had a lot more in my head than I realised, which lead to me recording over 6 ......
As mentioned here FunnyHacks is coming back. We're now days away.The last few weeks have been spent doing documentation, discovering little things that needed tidying and generally making this ......
FunnyHacks season 3 is back. I'm taking a break from work to pursue my passions for a few months. As a result, FunnyHacks is going to getting love. I've got ......
Every morning I look up at the ceiling and see a fuzzy representation of the world below. Light hits the objects and bounces off in various directions. Some of it ......
A few days ago I started playing with the idea of trying to post to facebook from a fresh windows 95 VM using only software that I could aquire from ......
Mass is a tool for manipulating lots of servers concurrently. Open up an SSH terminal to each server that maches your request, do the same with cluster SSH upload a ......
This is one of my more impressive looking builds. Not the most complex by any means, but it certainly looks cool. Where ever I take it, I get lots of ......
This is a tablet that I've built from an old Asus Eee 701 I've wanted a tablet for years. My motivation for building one instead of buying one was that ......
Today I talk about the technical details of making the bike box work. ......
Simply put, this is a box to put on the back of your bike and be seen. The response from this one has been amazing. If you were to only ......
One of the biggest challenges of capturing 3D footage is getting the footage syncronised. Sure, you can do it in post production. But on most cameras, you have granularity of ......
Slow mo footage of an RC car in puddles and on shingle. This is simply having fun with a radio controlled car to demonstraight the concepts discussed in 3DMount ......
Recording 3D footage on two 2D cameras can be quite challenging. In this episode I go through the technical details of making it happen. Adjustment I found making things loose ......
3D video is really taking off, and most of my work over the last year has been in 3D. So I thought that it was about time to show how ......
In this episode we are really starting to get somewhere! This was a lot of fun and I hope to get out there again before I leave NZ. We have ......
Today I walk you through the technical details of building the home made parachute.This is a stupid thing to do, so if you have not yet gone over the ......
Most work on this site is licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license which should allow you to do most of what you'd like to do. (Most ......
This is the first of at least a couple of compilation videos of our progress as we play with different ideas. We've taken literally hours of footage, so these compilations ......
The basic idea As a kid I always wanted to make a parachute. I kept jumping off hedges using a tiny sheet with the hope of sailing down. The ......
We're still compiling the information to go here. But in the mean time you can contact me here: You're already here And Tim's address is..... oh oh! I'll get back ......
Hi! This is me: At the age of 6, my dad taught me the basics of electronics, and I've been trying to electrocute myself ever since. This blog began from ......
Woah! You've found a really old link! Here are some things that are probably what you're looking for: ......
All hacks involve risk. Usually it's breaking what ever it is you are hacking, but often there are other risks which we need to take into account as well such ......
In 2010 I released this short film to demo some concepts I had shown in an earlier FunnyHacks episode: I made a couple of ringtones for it: * Sheep - ......
I went down south to help my sister sell cookies, and to my surprise, I got given the coolest job in the world... My task was to destroy a room ......
The basic idea Modifying a phone so that it can take headphones. The hardest bit about this hack is making it all fit in the phone... So it's not ......
A big thankyou to david at for featuring this episode!The basic idea So you've done all the little optimisations to make your laptop last an extra half hour. Wireless ......
The basic idea In this episose I power a camera and phone using a 3 battery batterypack. This hack is basically the next step after in getting the contacts ......
The basic idea Hook every audio source to every audio output in an easily switchable way. Series vs Parallel Choosing whether to hook things up in series or parallel ......
You may remember the car that could drive on the ceiling. It didn't last very long. So now I've turned it into a boat.This episode was filmed out in ......
Someone driving you up the walls? Get some space and drive on the ceiling instead! In this episode, I show you how to drive an RC car on the ceiling. ......
Radio Controlled models are a ton of fun, but sooner or later they end up auditioning for the trash can. This hack comes to the rescue to salvage all those ......
The basic idea Imagine your phone is ringing and you can't find it. Probably the last thing you want is for it to be quietly driving away from you. ......
In 2008 I traveled around the word. This was an amazing time in my life, so at the end of it, I put a video together of a few highlights: ......
This remains one of my favourite hacks. It didn't make it into the show simply because I blogged about it before I started the show. It's really simple: find out ......
Home | About | Contact | Cookies | Risks | Site map