Burglar Alarm In A Zippo Lighter

surprisingly awesome

[Madmanmoe64] has really done a fantastic job with this burglar alarm built into a zippo.  He crammed a picaxe microcontroller, some IR LEDs, an IR sensor, a battery and various switches in there quite well. It almost closes perfectly, something we think he could remedy if it really bugged him that much.

It has several modes, all initiated by a different sequence of button presses. There is the proximity alarm, which sounds when something moves very close. The reverse proximity alarm which sounds when you remove something from its immediate vicinity.  A doorbell mode, and a silent alarm mode. Check out the video after the break to see it in action.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4LkrV53E6E]

9 thoughts on “Burglar Alarm In A Zippo Lighter

  1. Nice miniaturisation, though the lack of closing would really bug me, but a miniature alarm is a bit pointless as you can just pocket it and it’d be virtually muted.

    Still, it’s a novelty.

  2. You are not clever using music in your video.. STOP USING COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL YOU DONT HAVE THE RIGHT TO USE IN YOUR VIDEOS!

    Also turn off auto focus.. it never works and makes your video look like crap. Actually learn to use your camera.

  3. Henry Mancini is probably not going to go after royalties on this, if it is not already public domain. Pink Panther theme song is over fifty years old. It is what is called a classic.

  4. In my own testing of using a Picaxe with a 38khz IR sensor and an IR LED to test making an ‘invisible barrier alarm’ with the sensor+LED on the same chip and the light being bounced back from a reflector across a corridor/room, I found the sensor would only trigger once for a short period time no matter how long a 38khz pulse is sent from the IR LED, meaning I had to pulse the 38khz singal to the LED. I took a look at this guy’s code to see how he got around that but it has so many goto commands I keep getting lost.

  5. Be great if it could operate while completely closed. The pocketing solution to stifling the noise could be fixed by making it louder and also making sound in a frequency people can’t normally hear. Might drive dogs crazy though. Now if only you could make it have a sound that attracts dogs… there’s a good burglar alarm!

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