The Evil Button: That Was Evil

Trick out your Easy button from Staples to deliver custom phrases and have a slick new Halloween look.

What you need for this project:

• A Staples Easy Button (Dure)
• A small recording and playback device

~Mine was from Radio Shack, but a YakBak can do, or anything else you deem worthy.

• Orange, white, black, and clear gloss spray paint
• Sand paper & Dremel
• Hot glue gun
• Soldering Iron, Solder, and your normal soldering things
• Wire

Note: I'm extremely close to finishing this project and will post pictures of the finished product once I finish.

Step 1: Dissemble It!

Take it apart! There are screws under the four feet on the bottom. Take the feet off, but save them for later. Unscrew the screws and keep 'em safe too.

Take the top part off, including both the easy part and the silver ring. We're going to do the case mod first.

Step 2: Case Modding - Part 1: Sanding

Grab the "Easy" part and sand down all of the letters except the "e". You can put tape over it, or something to protect the letter in case you accidentally go over.

Dremels make things go faster. A lot faster. Consider using one.

Step 3: Case Modding - Part 2: Letters

Now, we're going to make the rest of the letters to spell out "evil." I decided to use a hot glue gun because it was easy and I knew how to work one. Simply spread hot glue in globs to finish the word. Let it dry, and if you feel you need another layer of glue, go ahead.

After you finish, look for any glue whisps to get rid of. We're going to spray paint this next, and we don't want to have them get in the way.

Step 4: Case Modding - Part 3: Painting

Grab your cans of white and black spray paint. Paint the now "evil" part with a white base coat. In the end, this part will be orange, but I wasn't sure if the red would taint the orange color. So, just paint the "easy"/"evil" part white now.

After the white paint dies, put an orange coat on. The white undercoating also helps accentuate where you've painted and what needs painting.

While waiting for that to dry, grab your black spray paint and coat the silver ring with it's first layer. Once that dries, spray on a second layer of black. Grab your clear gloss and finish the black off with a clear coat, after the second black layer dries, of course.

Finally, you need some regular paint to color in "evil" on the button. Grab a paintbrush and slowly fill in the letters.

Step 5: Recording Module Disassembly

Get the recording module and take it apart. There are three screws to worry about, all small Phillips head. Then, you need to crack it open, but be careful not to break anything.

Now, we are going to strip down the parts that we don't need for this project. Desolder or clip the wires leading from the speaker and the wires going to the speakers. That includes the clock and the LED. Take off the LED and the display for the clock. Also desolder the smaller circuit boards coming off of the recorder. These take up too much space for where I want to put it.

Step 6: Easy Button Disassembly

Continue to take apart the easy button. The pictures should be self explanatory. You also want to desolder all of the wires going onto the circuit board: those going to the battery and those going to the speaker.

Step 7: More Case Modding

Now, we need to make a place for the recording module to reside. I chose the battery place because then I could put on and take off the lid and also change those batteries easily.

I took my Dremel to it and destroyed the divider. Then, I made a gap in the side because the circuit board was just a bit too big to fit in there. I only did one side because I didn't want to weaken the plastic too much or else the big button might not work. Check out the pics for some visuals.

Step 8: Recording Button, Light, & Mic

In this step, I mounted the aforementioned items. Make sure when you place your items that they will fit where you want them. I need to re-place the recording button because of this, and I'll update when I do that.

Drill on the side of the ring with the speaker on it. The battery compartment takes up all of it's space, and you can only maybe fit wires there.

After you fit your items, stick some hot glue behind them so they stay put. Now we're almost finished....

Step 9: Soldering!

Here we're going to solder the speaker wires from the recording module to the one in the easy button. Also, solder the wires leading from the play button onto pads on the Easy Button circuit board. I wanted to keep the nice click to the Evil Button, and using the old circuit board is the easiest way to keep it.

Step 10: "That Was Evil..."

Here, I whipped up a sound file for recording onto the Evil Button. I found the typical "That was easy" file online, and then search for some text to speech generators for the "evil" part. I used Cepstral for this, and then used Audacity to merge the files together. Attached is the rushed final product, and I think later I'll add an evil laugh at the end or something.

And, of course, you can record your own evil laugh or phrase.

Step 11: It's All Coming Together...

Screw everything back in, fit it all together, and finish!

Keep in mind that I'm 95% done, but not quite. These are pics of what the final product will be. There are still a few things I need to clean up, and I will post ASAP. Thanks for reading my Instructable!