This impressive, large shelving unit with built-in desk is something you can make yourself out of plumbing pipes and pine planks for about $US200. Morgan Satterfield of The Brick House offers step-by-step directions for creating this massive storage unit.
If you want to try bicycling on the cheap and support keeping waste out of landfills, consider restoring a discarded bicycle as your next project. While the time and money investment will vary depending on the condition of the bike, you still should save a decent chunk of money and will have learned essential repair skills.
Knob controllers can control volume settings, scroll through web pages and help edit movies among other uses. You can buy a commercial one from Griffin Technology for $US45 or build one yourself with an old scroll-wheel mouse and a few electronics components and tools.
If your headphone cables are starting to fray or you have a bad habit of getting your cables hung on random items and nearly pulling out (like I do) you may want to consider installing headphone jacks on each earpiece. You’ll need two 1/8″ mono jacks, two 1/8″ mono plugs and heat shrink tubing as well as access to a soldering iron, heat gun and a drill or dremel tool.
Don’t you hate it when your automatic sprinkler system turns on in the middle of the night when it had previously rained all day? Hobbyist developer and maker Jashua became so annoyed by this he hacked together a control system for his sprinkler system utilising the Python programming language and around $US45 in parts.
In the past we’ve covered how to turn the inexpensive Ikea Sunnan solar lamp into a solar display case and today we have a hack from electronics manufacturer Voltaic Systems to turn the same lamp into a solar charging station for an iPad or other power-hungry phone or tablet.
Software developer and maker John Riney hacked a thermal label printer into accepting standard receipt paper rolls and then wrote code to create an app that checks Twitter every 30 seconds and will print out any tweets that have a particular hashtag. This modern interpretation of a ticker tape was inspired by how the author was alerted to the recent US east coast earthquake by tweets before it appeared on any other online or broadcast news source.
Have an old floppy drive lying around that you have no use for, but can’t bear to throw away? Software engineer and electronics hobbyist Michael Kohn created a circuit that will shake a floppy disk head at particular frequencies to make music.
Do you have an old radio that looks great but for which you have no practical use? If you’re not afraid of a soldering iron you can add a new solid-state amplifier to give you a standard 3.5mm input jack for your smartphone or MP3 player.
Instructables poster Justin Seiter didn’t let a slightly cheesey but expensive Hallmark card with audio go to waste. Using a glue gun, a junky set of old headphones, electrical tape, a utility knife and a mini-cereal box, he created a speaker for his iPod (or any stereo-jack-accepting device). It might not power your home theatre, but it gets stereo sound from the headphone wires and might make for a geek-pride spare speaker in a bedroom or bathroom. Hit the link for full instructions on piecing your childhood breakfast favourites and throwaway electronics into modern audio accessories. Make an iPod Speaker from a Hallmark Music Card [Instructables]
