Saturday, February 19, 2011

Stupid Hack #2

I seemed to have gotten off on a tangent of "Useful" hacks recently, which goes against the name of this here blog. So, in the spirit of "Stupid" hacks, I present Stupid Hack #2!

From ‹‹ Stµpid Hax ››


You may recognize the 2-outlet box from my "Fonera Automated Reset Technology" post I made previously. Since I am no longer using internet from Comcast, I am not plagued with modem freezes anymore (Hurray!). As a result, this device I built has been sitting around without much of a purpose recently.

The other night I was thinking about what I could use it for, and came up with this idea. I am using a 5 volt power supply to trigger the 5 volt relay inside the outlet box. As you may recall, I spit the two outlets inside the box so one outlet is on the normally open side of the relay, and the other is on the normal closed side. So I plug the 5 volt power supply into the "Surge Protection Only" half of the UPS, and the outlet box into the "Battery powered" half. I plug a lamp into the "Normally Closed" side of the outlet box (which is "open" as long as the 5 volt PSU is powered up). As soon as the power goes out, the 5 volt PSU losses power, flipping the relay back to Normally closed, thus turning on the lamp.

Very simple and dare I say it... useful? (Damn, I failed at creating something useless once again!)

Anyway, it's a great way of giving yourself some emergency work light when everything else in the house is off.


Here's a quick demonstration video: