Still trying to solidify that reputation as the office Grinch? This project will let everyone know you’re a complete jerk in no time. It’s called the 8-bit Annoying Person Remover. It detects when someone enters your office at which point it starts to play the Super Mario Bros. theme song while the display counts down 400 seconds. Just like in the game the music gets faster at the end and when it stops they know it’s time to get the heck out.
The hardware inside isn’t too complicated. An Arduino and a Wave shield do most of the work. The song played is stored on an SD card and can easily be changed. There’s a speaker mounted under the top heat vent of the enclosure. The device defaults to displaying the time of day, but monitors a motion sensor on one side to detect when someone comes through the door. This also works when someone leaves, cutting off the music and resetting the display. Don’t miss a video of it in action after the break.
It’s as if this was made specifically for the Comic Book Guy
[via Technabob]
Since we’re having a round of redundancies, I’ll pass. In my experience, showing a lack of social skills at the workplace never ends up being rewarding.
Well, it’s purpose is to remove annoying persons, if you are the kind of person taping stickers on the walls and complaining about having to talk to coworkers there is a good chance this will be the last drop that gets you fired, thus removing an annoying person from the workplace :P
Arduino, Wave shield, SD card?
come on, this could be done with dirt cheap atmega8, buzzer, and few other parts (caps, 7805 etc)
I didn’t want to mention it, but since you brought the subject up….
I did this entire project with 555 timers.
(supposed to be funny)
Fake! At home his wife walks at the right side of the NES, where the sensor is, but in the office they are on the left side, with no sensor!
I actually thought that one of coolest things about this build was the custom NES cartridge printouts for the SD cards. Inspired!
I’d just put a book in front of it.
Make it so you have to enter 4 8 15 16 23 42 at the end.
Oooh, sorry, we were looking for the Konami Code. We also would have accepted “Contra Code”.
*Yawn*… Yet another waste of a perfectly good Nintendo (case).
what if the NES was broken already?
Then it must be repaired.
If it doesn’t have a shot gun built in it’s not an annoying person remover.
Now make a custom cartridge for a working NES that performs this action!
I am also wondering how this is supposed to work in real life, can’t you just wave your hand in front of it to shut it off?
I like it! However I’d like to see a raspberry pi in there to work as a fully functional emulator when not busy scaring people away.
That way it would be more than just a novelty item… and it’s not like there isn’t enough room or anything to fit both functions in.
I would love to see a variant of this: a lock counting the number of seconds since the LAST DISTURBANCE. If you have ten bosses and colleagues asking for help all the time, they might be reminded by this timer that you are, in fact, disturbed too much.