What can I do with this? Anyone have any ideas?

I bought this at a yard sale but can't sell it on ebay, not worth much. If anyone has any cool ideas for it let me know.

Comments

[nocontroller]

Gut it and put a TV-be-gone into it!

[afridave]

Add it to your William Shatner costume

[jetbones]

turn it into a tiny little guitar amp. And if you wire some capacitors to each button it could be quite a cool little unit. Check out cigarette box amps. Amplifiers in a cigarette box!

[Dr.Bill]

No Batteries either.

[pellepeloton]

make a dog, cat or rodent repeller out of it. It is an old TV remote as someone told before. It works on ultrasonic frequencies which some animals can hear and find annoying. Test it with some dogs and tell us if it works?

[SasquatchKid]

An awesome guitar amp

[dustin_srn]

Electric Shaver?

[gmark]

you could make a pretty rocktackular steampunk garage door opener.

[pokerella]

I had a old remote contol like that and I painted blue put a star trak insignia on it and used it as a Fazer.

[shop dweller]

It's a television remote, and it's from a time before infra-red LEDs were in common use. If you open the case you will find little metal tube bells (or reeds of some type) that acted kind of like a windchime. When the buttons were pushed a tiny "hammer" would "ring" them with a very high pitch that you couldn't hear. The tv was set up to activate a relay when it picked up the tone, and would respond by changing the channel or turning power on and off etc. They were also quite problematic since the rattle of keys would turn on the television set, along with other sounds that weren't supposed to (of course this led to a lot of haunted house stories). If it were me, I would leave it tact simply because of it's curiosity value. You can always build a circuit to respond to it as well as create all sorts of interesting experiments - I wonder if your dog can hear it? (remote controlled pooch - LOL!). It didn't need batteries because it's operation is strictly mechanical.  

[P821543016]

Give it to me or explode it
very simple yes?

[3VIL G3NIUS]

 you could make it switch power points on and off.

[buffysissy1]

You've inspired me, I think I'll make it into a speaker for my ipod. Wait, I don't have an ipod.

[macmccune]

make it an ipod! :)

[cherishcherub]

Novelty mp3 speakers:

empty it out and hide a speaker in 

then at the bottom (where the mesh is) the sound will come out

and the headphone wire/jack will come out the outher end

reply if this helps

[RetroLeatherHatter]

Wow! I've always wondered how the first remotes worked, which came out in the 1950s, as I've heard.  That one would make a really cool  USB flash drive with, say, 20gigs of capacity!

Or could be converted into a retro-style keyless entry/ alarm thingie for a 1950s/60s classic car!

[Dr.Bill]

The old 4 button 'Clickers' clicked.
The click was a kind of hammer that tapped a metal rod that produced an ultra-sonic sound that was picked-up by a circuit in the TV and did
1) On/off
2) Volume
3) Change channel up
4) Change channel down
Totally mechanical unit.
We had a Zenith B+W TV that had the 'Clicker'.

[garrett10]

make a star trek communicator

[Bad Maxx]

Wow! If I'm not mistaken that was a remote to a TV. Channel up and down and Volume up and down? I'm not much help with what to do with it, but we used to have the TV that went with it... The first TV we ever had with a remote control or Clicker as my mom called it.

[steampunked gal]

lol take it all the little buttons out and put one big red button in it and label it self destruct but really just use it to open the fridge or something lol.

[crak-a-bottle]

give it to meeeeee! :D whatever it is....it looks awesome

[yeehacmh]

Gut it and put in a flat USB Hub with 4  inputs. Insert 4 "64 MB" thumbdrives and tell people it's a StarTrek 256.

[wdlaurie]

Hey! I just saw this same item in Entertainment Weekly's coverage of how the set designer for "Mad Men" uses authentic , vintage props for dressing the set. Cool!

[kevinhannan]

I think you should go to a Star Trek convention with it - you'd be the coolest gizmo guy around!

[wupme]

That was so my first thought about it "Wow looks like something Captain Kirk or Mr.Spock would have."

[OBar]

make some kind of musical instrument?....or, better yet an rf jammer to jam the radios of those around you who play those soft rock/rap stations at top volume while you are trying to do your job!

[OBar]

and no I'm not bitter/angry about it.

[EagleDude]

Make a video with it.... push a button and make something explode!

[porcupinemamma]

I see a type of communicator from the original Star Treck. I see teeth on a piece of sculpture I see a small shelf I see a type of hook ...

[mr.origami]

you can throw it at people that annoy you?

[elguapo]

That would make the coolest functioning remote control.

[buffysissy1]

It's going to be an MP3 speaker, it's big enough. Or maybe I can make into a cool wallet that shoots out change or my metro card.

[buffysissy1]

I wonder if you could really make it work.

[kelseymh]

It's a Zenith TV remote, circa 1970s. You could use the shell as the basis for a steampunk/cyberpunk/SF prop (think ST:TOS hand phaser). The internal components should be large enough that you could read off part numbers and maybe track down pieces to fab a working receiver. Scavenging components is always an option.

[rjnerd]

Its an old enough unit, that its purely mechanical. All thats inside are four tuned metal bars. Push the button, and its basically hitting an ultrasonic tuning fork. All you need is a microphone and a frequency counter to figure out the pitches. A receiver is a microphone, and some sharp filters to sort out which bar of metal got hit. Would be a good intro to digital filtering/DSP programming to implement the decoder in the digital domain.

[shabaki]

tho bakground noise might be factor in the fact that if one of the pitches was hit in conversaionit would change it and background noiise might blok the tones

[jeff-o]

Seriously? That's crazy! I always thought they went from a remote on a long cord directly to infrared.

[buffysissy1]

I think the vcr remotes had the cord not the tv sets.

[jeff-o]

Hmmm, maybe that's what I was remembering. All of these pre-IR remote technologies were before my time, though!

[DELETED_GuardianFox]

It's pretty much just one step up from having a little prehistoric bird fly out of the remote, change the channel on the TV set, and then come back. Very clever.

[JCO72]

My parents always had the first of everything in my old neighborhood (before  I was born)  First color TV, first remote comtrolled TV... One of my brother's friends had a jangly bracelet, and he could change the channel on it by rattling his wrist.  My mom had a remote that I could turn on and off by whistling.

[orksecurity]

Yep (just for confirmation). My grandparents had one of these, or maybe the previous generation with only two tones (one on/off, one to advance the channel).

[kelseymh]

Now that is sweet! I've never opened one up, and had no idea it was acoustic.

[fwjs28]

Those were the days 'eh?

[adam 101]

can't see much in the picture. can you show more views?

[jocekortan]

http://www.swordssource.comAbsolutely no clue....

[Bigev]

For the trekkie in allof us, you could make a communicator. It looks about right.

[QuiksilverRox]

Thats what I thought

[Kiteman]

Remove the innards (discard or recycle as required) and replace them with a tone generator, or the innards of one of those key-ring toys that makes Star Wars sound effects when you press a button.

[Noumenon]

kazoo!