On Star Trek, all Kirk and friends had to do was snap the button on the always conveniently located intercom panel, start talking, and the intended recipient would immediately respond no matter where they were in the ship. How did it work? Who knows. In spite of, or perhaps even because of, the lightly-explained nature of the technology, the cherry-red wall intercoms still hold a certain charm for fans of the groundbreaking show.
A viewer sent [Fran Blanche] a scaled down replica of the intercom from ThinkGeek, and while it certainly looks fairly close to the original prop, it has a couple of annoying design elements. When triggered by the side-mounted motion sensors, the panel will play either the iconic swoosh of the automatic doors or the “Red Alert” sound effect. It’s a cute idea for a kid’s bedroom maybe, but not exactly ideal for somebody who regularly records YouTube videos.
So the first order of business was to cut the motion sensors out of the circuit and replace them with a push button. [Fran] draws up a quick diagram to explain how these sensors work, and shows that they can easily be bypassed with a momentary switch since they normally bring the line high when triggered. She then converted the indicator light on the right side of the panel into a button to enable the alert sound effect, which is more accurate to how it worked in the show anyway.
The other issue, and perhaps the most egregious to Star Trek fans, is that the “Red Alert” indicator on the top of the panel didn’t actually flash like it did in the show. To design and build this panel and not put a few LEDs behind that piece of frosted plastic seems a bit like producing a Matchbox car and forgetting to make the wheels spin. With a couple of red LEDs and a bit of new wiring, the oversight was quickly rectified.
While it might not be perfect, at least ThinkGeek actually produced a functional product this time. It could have ended up like one of their April Fool’s “products” that never get put into production, forcing a desperate Trekkie to begrudgingly build his own version.
RIP Thinkgeek. You are missed!
Ahh, not so much, the mourning period has passed They lost what made them great almost a decade ago.
Whoa! I had no idea thinkgeek went out of business. So sad. It was always a tad too expensive for me, but they had great stuff.
They’re not exactly gone. GameStop bought them and integrated their game/nerd merch into their physical stores. So you could actually argue that ThinkGeek now has more mainstream eyeballs on their stuff then ever, albeit they have a drastically reduced collection of products.
Of course, who knows where GameStop will be in the next 5 – 10 years…
Gamestop is making the dumb decision to try to drive traffic into their dying stores by stuffing a successful website inside them, and it will lead to the death of both.
Had one hooked up as our doorbell but my spousal unit objected to the red alert signal as too alarming
It looks like something that could be 3D printed and operated by an ESP or Arduino.
I have two of these in boxes waiting for me to turn them into an intercom – as they were intended to be!