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UPDATE: It worked! Apparently someone picked it up Monday morning. It went off, and apparently went off for a while. It sounds like they had to disassemble it to shut it up. I'm ridiculously happy with the results.
At my present job, I have been known as something of a crazy hacker. For reasons too complex to explain here I have decided to leave after ten years. This Friday is my last day. I decided to leave a small present behind for anyone trying to scavenge scraps from my old cube.
Several ideas presented themselves to me, but eventually I decided on creating a small alarm that would go off mysteriously when someone moved it. Despite the elaborate title, the design is simple, and not to hard to replicate.
The alarm I used is something I pulled off the scrap dock of the job. It was originally designed to provide an audible alarm for manufacturing machines. Mine is capable of about 80db on a 9v battery, but you could replicate this with a Radio Shack buzzer or other alarm circuit.
The basic idea is to have a box siting on my desk. When someone moves it, an alarm sounds, and won't shut off. This is because the box has a magnetic trigger inside, and when the box was moved from the desk, it was also moved away from the hard drive magnet I planted under the desk, thus triggering the alarm. It will shut off again if they put it back in the same place, but there will *intentionally* not be anything to mark it's position.
At my present job, I have been known as something of a crazy hacker. For reasons too complex to explain here I have decided to leave after ten years. This Friday is my last day. I decided to leave a small present behind for anyone trying to scavenge scraps from my old cube.
Several ideas presented themselves to me, but eventually I decided on creating a small alarm that would go off mysteriously when someone moved it. Despite the elaborate title, the design is simple, and not to hard to replicate.
The alarm I used is something I pulled off the scrap dock of the job. It was originally designed to provide an audible alarm for manufacturing machines. Mine is capable of about 80db on a 9v battery, but you could replicate this with a Radio Shack buzzer or other alarm circuit.
The basic idea is to have a box siting on my desk. When someone moves it, an alarm sounds, and won't shut off. This is because the box has a magnetic trigger inside, and when the box was moved from the desk, it was also moved away from the hard drive magnet I planted under the desk, thus triggering the alarm. It will shut off again if they put it back in the same place, but there will *intentionally* not be anything to mark it's position.
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Signing UpStep 1Parts
You will need:
Parts:
1 Alarm circuit, buzzer, or other device to make noise.
1 project box or enclosure. Preferably plastic. The alarm I had came in an enclosure already.
1 9v battery, or a power source appropriate for the circuit you are using.
Small momentary switch. I used one out of a mouse. It needs to have a light trigger.
Hard drive magnet, or any other form of rare earth magnet. needs to be strong.
Misc hardware and some ingenuity. A genuine distaste for your co-workers is also handy.
Tools:
Soldering gun and solder.
Wire stripper and/or wire cutter
Screwdrivers
Rotary tool
You could make life a lot simpler if you had a magnetically actuated switch laying around you could use, but I rarely have things work out the easy way. I was forced to do it the hard way and create a magnetic switch from a conventional mouse-button switch.
Parts:
1 Alarm circuit, buzzer, or other device to make noise.
1 project box or enclosure. Preferably plastic. The alarm I had came in an enclosure already.
1 9v battery, or a power source appropriate for the circuit you are using.
Small momentary switch. I used one out of a mouse. It needs to have a light trigger.
Hard drive magnet, or any other form of rare earth magnet. needs to be strong.
Misc hardware and some ingenuity. A genuine distaste for your co-workers is also handy.
Tools:
Soldering gun and solder.
Wire stripper and/or wire cutter
Screwdrivers
Rotary tool
You could make life a lot simpler if you had a magnetically actuated switch laying around you could use, but I rarely have things work out the easy way. I was forced to do it the hard way and create a magnetic switch from a conventional mouse-button switch.
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build a large robot with several proximity sensors, powerful wheels, and a big, thick steel body. (use an electric wheelchair or something like that.) give it lots of huge batteries to keep it running for a long time (or make it seek out and plug in to outlets, but that could prove difficult). fill it with concrete so that it's somewhere around 500 lbs, then just set it loose in the halls. make it just wander around without hitting anything, maybe make it get angry if it's moved, etc....
lol
I think there's some fun in store for me, whaddaya think?
=DDD