Hi all,

Sitting here at work... and my mind is wandering. Thought I'd share a gag toy I put together with a 12f675 and still haven't used yet.

My son lives in our basement. In the summer months he would occasionally complain about a cricket that would drive him crazy while he was trying to go to sleep.

If you've ever tried to find a cricket, you'd know it's damn near impossible. You never know when the buggers are gonna make their noise, they only make it in the dark and when they finally do you flip the light on to find them and rip the house up trying.

Since I live vicariously through my 18 year old and he never does any of the annoying things I did when I was his age...

I made a programmable cricket!

It consists of only six parts. The PIC '675, two resistors, a photo sensor (out of a night light) a small piezo beeper from Radio Shack and a 3 volt lithium camera battery (L544).

All the parts fit neatly onto a small circuit board and I bent a wire up and towards one of the PIC pins to make a simplistic push button switch for toggling through the multiple programs I put in it.

The sky is the limit! You can set it to sleep for hours, days or months, only to come on and watch for light changes in the place you've put it. At some point, with simple programming, you can have it chirp, at some random time after the lights go out.

Place it in some out-of-the-way spot in your friends bedroom. It chirps once... maybe twice... then it goes back to sleep until the next night (or a couple of nights later... it is... YOUR... program).

Then it chirps again...

and goes back to sleep (crickets do need their rest too)...

until... then next night...

when it chirps... again...

and goes back to sleep...

Ahh... but after a couple of weeks of this...

your friend DOESN'T go back to sleep...

cause he wants to KILL the little B#ST@RD!

I pulse the piezo such that it REALLY DOES sound like a cricket! And when it sleeps, it comes on every second or so to check the lights and then goes back to sleep conserving energy. It'd probably work for a couple hundred of years on single battery! Ha!

Can you say MOTHER_IN_LAW?

Classroom?

Boss?

Conceal it in a Christmas present... something that might be nice in their bedroom... and program it to start chirping a month later (to cover your tracks :-) !!!


It's the gift that keeps on giving!

LOL

Regards,

Ross