« March 2008 | Main | September 2008 »

April 27, 2008

Ikea Speaker Lamp

Ikea Speaker Lamp

Yesterday we did a small half-a-day project to modify 2 Ikea lamps into a speaker set for the bedroom using 2 old speaker components from our old Philips widescreen TV. I used the amplifier of a broken set of pc speakers to power the speakers. It not the kind of thing for audiophiles, but we're satisfied with the result.

Ikea Speaker Lamp

I especially appreciate the narrow form factor of these speaker components, which allows us to scale down the shades/covers in the future and play with some interesting form factors. We intend to use the pull switches on the lamps for some fun applications like Yasmina's Chatterlight© concept. For now we'll put that on our ever-growing ToDo list of prototyping projects.

Ikea Speaker Lamp

April 13, 2008

Toy Story

DSC_0323.JPG

We have moved to Porta Genova (yay!) recently and we need the occasional break. While packing I ran into this broken cat robot and on my quest to weight reduction decided that the cat's days were numbered... time to take out the cat's internals to see what sensor goodness it has to offer.

Today's harvest? A touch sensor, a microphone, a mini speaker, 2 LEDs, a DC motor and the logic board with a microcontroller. One day these will come in handy.

DSC_0336.JPG