Add an MP3 Player Input to Your Car Stereo
If you’re sick of the poor sound quality that you get from one of those FM transmitters for your car, and you no longer have a tape deck to hook up an adapter too, then what can you do to get good sound quality from your ipod or MP3 player? Student Donn Morrison, shows us how you can add an auxiliary input to your car stereo, so you can have a direct line in from your MP3 player. This means no more static from the FM transmitter! All you need is a pair of old headphones and a soldering iron (with maybe some soldering skills to go along with it) and you’re ready to take on this project.
These instructions are specific to a certain audio processor, but if you dont have the same part, he suggests that all you need to do is look up your part number on the internet and find the correct circuits to solder.
To see how Donn Morrison added a MP3 player input to his car stereo, click here. And if you need to brush up on your soldering skills, take a read through our beginners guide to soldering.
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25 Skills Every Man Should Know
Popular Mechanics has picked out the most important entries from the book of man-knowledge and compiled them into this great guide for us. Now this isn’t geek specific, but every now and then we might need to build a campfire or something manly like that, and armed with this information you will have no problem.
This guide will tell arm you with all the tools you need to be more then just ‘the computer guy’. When you’re done reading you’ll be able to Fillet a Fish, Paddle a Canoe, Paint a room and even get your car unstuck. Make sure to bookmark this one, your present / future son will thank you for it.
You can find the guide here: 25 Skills Every Man Should Know
DIY Roll Up Keyboard
Looking for a nice keyboard to take on the go? Or you just want to do something cool with that old keyboard that you have laying around but just can’t throw out? Here is an easy little project to build a roll-up keyboard with only a USB keyboard, screwdriver and a few stickers. The result may not be the most durable keyboard out there but it’s pretty neat and a lot cheaper than buying one of these in a store.
Head over to the DIY site Instructables to see the guide on how to Make your own roll-up keyboard.
Build a Home Theater PC for $200
Home theater PCs are becoming more and more popular these days. It’s a great way to watch TV shows without being restricted to the schedule that the networks set for you. If you have a lot of media on your PC, its a lot nicer to sit on your couch and enjoy it on a big screen rather then sit at your desk and watch your movie on 19 inches 3 feet away.
Many people might find it difficult to justify the cost to purchase another computer, just for media, when their existing one can play it just fine, but with this guide, you can get a full setup for $200, even less if you search for deals. This guide will set you up with a 1.2GHz Celeron 220 processor, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 250GB SATA hard drive and a small 90W power supply, all in a small form factor.
Check out Paul Stamatiou’s guide for details on how you can build your own.
Beginners Guide to Soldering
One of the most important skills for a Do It Yourselfer is the ability to solder, especially for geeks. Many of the guides posted on this site will assume that you have basic soldering skills, but for those of you who have never touched a soldering iron, here is a a great guide to help you get started. It’s full of high resolution pictures and detailed instructions so even someone brand new to soldering will have no problem getting started here.
Check out the Soldering 101 guide over at Instructables.com, and when you’e done with that, dont forget to take a look at Soldering 102 as well.
Cheap DIY Metal Detector
In this video, RazorG shows us how to make a check metal detector using nothing but an old AM radio, some tape, and a calculator. What you want to do, is to turn the volume up to max on the radio and tune it to the high end of the frequency but not directly on a broadcast station as you want to hear static. Once you have done that, position the calculator on the back of it while both devices are turned on. Adjust the position of the calculator until you hear a tone, and then securely tape them together so it can’t move.
That’s all you need to do, you now have a simple DIY metal detector. RazorG says this works because the loud tone coming from the radio is the calculator’s circuit board which produces a radio frequency signal. The radio waves from the calculator, bounce off the metal object and are heard through the radio’s speakers. Check out the video for an explanation and demonstration.
Build Your Own Sawed-Off USB Thumb Drive
Well this DIY project isn’t necessairly the most useful, but it sure has the potential to be a lot of fun! This guide shows you how to build your very own unique USB thumb drive that ends up looking like a sawed off usb cable.
The guide is pretty thorough and it’s actually surprisingly simple to make. All you need is a slim USB drive and any old USB cable that doesn’t hold sentimental value in your heart and you’ll be the talk of the office!
Check out How to make a Sawed-off USB Key over at Evil Mad Scientest Laboratories for more details
