The tronifier
When I was about 16 and spending most of the money I earned in Tandy, I had one of the first laser pointers. It ran of 3 N cells and was rather chunky and hexagonal. Eventually I got annoyed at locating the wierd batteries for it and wired in a power socket. Later on I decided to add a second one to the push button switch as this was starting to get a bit flakey. As there was now a load of unused space in the casing I then decided to saw the battery compartment off and tidy it up with the end cap.

I had a retractable headphone extender that had a circuit board inside with two brushes on it allowing the drum to turn but still keeping the headphones connected. One day I was messing around with the laser, decided to wire it up to this and stuck an old tape deck motor on it to make it turn. I had hoped to make some kind of cool laser display but then noticed it turned much faster than I thought it would and effectively drew a line on the wall. I thought "hey this is neat it makes stuff look a bit like tron when I turn the lights out.

I think I also had this thing in a plastic drum on the front of my bike at one point while riding down dark alleyways so I could do the light cycle thing.

A few years later I notice they now sell the same thing in DIY shops with a spirit level on it so you can hang pictures all in a line. I kinda wish i'd patented the damn thing...
(ME-tan, Thu 20 Aug 2009, 15:45, Reply)