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:

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3 comments:

  1. UnknownFebruary 21, 2011 at 5:38 PM

    Hi, My name is Paul and I am the admin of a site called HackHut. You obviously have a lot of skill, and I just wanted to let you know about HackHut because it seems like a perfect fit for you. We are a hosting service somewhat like wordpress, blogspot, or Instructables accept run by and geared toward the hacker/DIYer. We offer, or are working on features that people like you want and can use. I hope you check us out and feel free to contact me there if you have any requests for features or questions about the site.

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  2. emergencylights homeMarch 22, 2012 at 11:38 PM

    I just wanted to add a comment here to mention thanks for you very nice ideas. Blogs are troublesome to run and time consuming thus I appreciate when I see well written material. Your time isn’t going to waste with your posts. Thanks so much and stick with it No doubt you will definitely reach your goals! have a great day!

    led emergency lights

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  3. GigawattsApril 22, 2012 at 8:08 PM

    Thanks emergencylights. I enjoy making and tinkering with all kinds of things. Glad to see others out there that enjoy reading about my projects :)

    ReplyDelete

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