Posts with «upcycle» label

Listen to the best of the ‘holdies’ with this Arduino-enabled desk phone

If you’ve ever thought that your life needs a little more hold music in it, then this Greatest Holdies phone from FuzzyWobble could be just the thing. 

The heavily modified device uses the shell of an old-style desk phone, but adds an Arduino Mega, a Music Maker Shield, and an ultrasonic rangefinder for “enhanced” abilities.

Now, when someone comes near the phone, it rings automatically, treating the person curious enough to pick it up to a selection of hold music. Users can choose the tune playing via the phone’s keypad, which is wired into the Arduino, along with the original headset switch that detects when the phone has been picked up. 

Code for the build is available here, but be sure to check out the video below to see what you might be getting into!

Hard Drive Clock is Simple and Elegant

[Aaron] has been wanting to build his own binary desk clock for a while now. This was his first clock project, so he decided to keep it simple and have it simply display the time. No alarms, bells, or whistles.

The electronics are relatively simple. [Aaron] decided to use on of the ATMega328 chips he had lying around that already had the Arduino boot loader burned into them. He first built his own Arduino board on a breadboard and then re-built it on a piece of protoboard as a more permanent solution. The Arduino gets the time from a real-time clock (RTC) module and then displays it using an array of blue and green LED’s. The whole thing is powered using a spare 9V wall wort power supply.

[Aaron] chose to use the DS1307 RTC module to keep time. This will ensure that the time is kept accurately over along period of time. The RTC module has its own built-in battery, which means that if [Aaron's] clock should ever lose power the clock will still remember the time. The RTC battery can theoretically last for up to ten years.

[Aaron] got creative for his clock enclosure, upcycling an old hard drive. All of the hard drive guts were removed and replaced with his own electronics. The front cover had 13 holes drilled out for the LED’s. There are six green LED’s to display the hour, and seven blue LED’s for the minute. The LED’s were wired up as common cathode. Since the hard drive cover is conductive, [Aaron] covered both sides of his circuit board with electrical tape and hot glue to prevent any short circuits. The end result is an elegant binary clock that any geek would be proud of.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks