In theory, all parts are ideal and do just exactly what they say on the box. In practice, everything has its limits, most components have non-ideal characteristics, and you can even turn most parts’ functionality upside down.
The Component Abuse Challenge celebrates the use of LEDs as photosensors, capacitors as microphones, and resistors as heat sources. If you’re using parts for purposes that simply aren’t on the label, or getting away with pushing them to their absolute maximum ratings or beyond, this is the contest for you.
If you committed these sins against engineering out of need, DigiKey wants to help you out. They’ve probably got the right part, and they’re providing us with three $150 gift certificates to give out to the top projects. (If you’re hacking just for fun, well, you’re still in the running.)
This is the contest where the number one rule is that you must break the rules, and the project has to work anyway. You’ve got eight weeks, until Nov 11th. Open up a project over at Hackaday.io, pull down the menu to enter in the contest, and let the parts know no mercy!
Honorable Mention Categories:
We’ve come up with a few honorable mention categories to get your ideas flowing. You don’t have to fit into one of these boxes to enter, but we’ll be picking our favorites in these four categories for a shout-out when we reveal the winners.
- Bizarro World: There is a duality in almost every component out there. Speakers are microphones, LEDs are light sensors, and peltier coolers generate electricity. Turn the parts upside down and show us what they can do.
- Side Effects: Most of the time, you’re sad when a part’s spec varies with temperature. Turn those lemons into lemonade, or better yet, thermometers.
- Out of Spec: How hard can you push that MOSFET before it lets go of the magic smoke? Show us your project dancing on the edge of the abyss and surviving.
- Junk Box Substitutions: What you really needed was an igniter coil. You used an eighth-watt resistor, and got it hot enough to catch the rocket motor on fire. Share your parts-swapping exploits with us.
Inspiration
Diodes can do nearly anything. Their forward voltage varies with temperature, making them excellent thermometers. Even the humble LED can both glow and tell you how hot it is. And don’t get us started on the photo-diode. They are not just photocells, but radiation detectors.
Here’s a trick to double the current that a 555 timer can sink. We’d love to see other cases of 555 abuse, of course, but any other IC is fair game.
Resistors get hot. Thermochromic paint changes color with temperature. Every five years or so, we see an awesome new design. This ancient clock of [Sprite_tm]’s lays the foundation, [Daniel Valuch] takes it into the matrix, and [anneosaur] uses the effect to brighten our days.
Of course, thin traces can also be resistors, and resistors can get really hot. Check out [Carl Bujega]’s self-soldering four-layer PCB. And while magnetism is nearly magic, a broken inductor can still be put to good use as a bike chain sensor.
Or maybe you have a new twist on the absolutely classic LEDs-as-light-sensors? Just because it’s been done since the early says of [Forrest Mims] doesn’t mean we don’t want to see your take.
Get out there and show us how you can do it wrong too.
Is Digikey still doing the obnoxious thing of blocking any browser running an adblocker? I’m not turning off my adblocker, and I’m absolutely not turning off my adblocker for anyone who demands that I do so in order to give them money. Something’s gone badly wrong over there and it makes me more sad than angry.
I use a network-wide Pihole and also Adblock plus in my browser.
Digikey works fine.
I also have this problem — I think that something in their “are you a robot” algorithm detects less common browsers / user-agent strings as being illegit.
I have to fire up a second browser to access their site.
I have moved over to using rs-online due to the “robot” detection of Digikey. I use many blocking type features, so will appear abnormal to the website. Another good example of how automated tasks are ruining the internet. Hopefully the Really Simple Licensing standard fixes this back in our (the humans) favour.
I actually attempted to visit digikey’s website but accidentally typed in ‘digikey.co’ instead of ‘digikey.com’. Multiple redirects, and a bunch of fake Windows defender popups in the browser lol.
I once made a CATV data transceiver wherein the transmitter was comprised of a 74HCU04 hex unbuffered inverter. One section was an LC oscillator stabilized with N750 ceramic caps and modulated via a varactor diode. The remaining five sections were paralleled and configure as a linear amplifier via a large-value feedback resistor.
It’s not eligible for the contest for two reasons. First, it was done more than twenty years ago and was a commercial design which actually saw (limited) production. Second, linear operation of the HCU04 is one of its advertised features and appears in the app notes. I just thought I’d mention it here because using a hex inverter as an analog RF oscillator and amplifier is ‘abuse adjacent’, and because someone might find the idea helpful.
Yay!
And I guess in that spirit: https://hackaday.com/2015/03/09/logic-noise-sawing-away-with-analog-waveforms/
But agreed that having the typical voltage transfer curve in the datasheet makes it almost approved use.
My “favorite” abuse isn’t in the spirit of the contest and takes almost zero creativity, but it’s technically (okay, very much literally) abuse: Using a part as a shim, weight, or other “thing that sits there and takes up space.” Need something to hold something down temporarily? That bag of resistors might do the job. Need a door-stop? That old broken circuit board just might work.
+1 ….. I’ve got a large surplus PCB with lots of through component hole in it that works great as a fly swat. Particularly effective on blue bottles and wasps. I’m not going to enter it as i think it has no chance of winning.
I saw a PCB once that used a surface mount cap on a thin PCB peninsula as a latch for an SD card.
i’m slightly off topic but i made a charge status display using a couple BJTs and an FET that would momentarily light an LED each time i turned tho device on. if the battery was fully charged (4V+), the indicator would be on for 5+ seconds. and if the battery was flat (less than 3.7V) then it would be lit for less than a second. it worked great on the bench but i was trickling microamps out of a ceramic capacitor over a period of seconds and you shouldn’t be surprised at the punchline: i made a thermometer. many times more sensitive to temperature than to voltage
A long time ago I determined experimentally that an SCR would explode like a firecracker if you accidentally put the switched voltage onto the gate.
I’m seriously thinking of making a remote control detonator or noisemaker or something, if I can reproduce the effect…
A long time ago my associates and I determined pragmatically that a low-valued resistor would explode like a firecracker when connected across the two active prongs of a power cord (a simple twist works just fine).
No one ever checks the prongs of a power cord before plugging the cord in…
…As does a loop of small-diameter solder, which also makes a nice smoke cloud!
When I was at school I used to use electrolytic capacitors as small pyrotechnic devices. Made a satisfying bang when you turned the mains on, but you needed to watch out for the flying almuinium can.
Lol. You reminded me of my exploits at primary school. I used to get the small electric motors out of battery toys and plug them into mains 😁 they would actually spin up (momentarily) before spectacular failure. I tried “recharging” AA cells as well, I don’t recall the results… I think just blown mains fuse?
Another favorite pastime was getting several kids to hold hands in a circle and I’d zap them all at the same time with my hand wind generator salvaged from an old phone… That did get confiscated 🙁 I don’t think I was ever caught/reprimanded re: plugging stuff into mains. 240v here, so I guess I’m lucky to have survived primary school!!
Back in the 60’s, my friend from next door wired some 12 gauge copper wire across the prongs of a Nema 5-15 plug. Back then, motorists plugged their cars in overnight (-40f in North Dakota USA.). The circuit’s fuse would blow, rendering the block heater useless. Pure vandalism.
Do mechanical components count? Such as having an engine producing double its rated power?
Sure! We don’t see enough gearhead hacks.
Ok. I’m not sure I will have this finished by the deadline, but I’ll try!
I’ve always been fond of the light emitting resistor. They don’t last very long, though.
Unless you edison it in a vacumed jar.
Well played
I find the light-emitting eprom just that little more sophisticated. :P Lasts about as long.
That is the built-in “installed backwards” warning light.
Most LEDs pop their top to considerable distance when connected to 24V without series resistor. Maybe that could be used for some kind of target shooting game?
One needs to be VERY careful…
this almost destroyed an associate’s eye.
Wear safety glasses if you fancy trying this as it is very dangerous.
The sound emitting diode has an even shorter lifetime. But with the correct drive it can be spectacular.
A long time ago, when I was a kid, I discovered that by applying high voltage (but low current) to a germanium diode, it would emit a good amount of UV. (It may need to be pulsed for that to work, I don’t remember.) Not enough to tan or burn skin, but plenty to make fluorescent items glow in the dark. Lots of fun back when UV LEDs were simply not commonly available.
I forgot to mention that the diode did make a “click” sound when the high voltage supply (involved using a transistor and audio transformer) was turned on. The diode lasted a surprisingly long time with that abuse.
If true, this is one of those very rare hidden gems that is really ‘neat’ to know about…which, quite possibly, almost know one knows.
Unfortunately, it uses a device—a germanium diode—which is, due to no longer being in production, simultaneously in very short supply and in very high demand by those who absolutely need the characteristics of a germanium diode (crystal-radio-design purists, for example).
This would, hands down, get my vote for either the very best, or the very worst, abuse of a component.
It’s very hard to decide which.
Thankfully, there’s no point doing that hack nowadays, UV LEDs are far superior as UV sources.
From what I have read, Schottky signal diodes (not to be confused with the more common Schottky power diodes which have a lot more capacitance) are a drop in replacement for germanium diodes in RF applications. For guitar effects, some series resistance is needed to emulate the high series resistance of a germanium diode.
From [NiHaoMike]
“From what I have read, Schottky signal diodes (not to be confused with the more common Schottky power diodes which have a lot more capacitance) are a drop in replacement for germanium diodes in RF applications.”
Careful…only an extremely small few are ‘drop-in replacements’. You need to do your homework.
The very few tend to be high-frequency mixer diodes.
Do not go anywhere near any Schottky whose description contains the words “rectifier”; “power supply”, or anything such as that.
AND…be extremely careful and cautious about buying anything, in this category, from eBay (a lot of the supposed ‘1N34As’ on eBay have the forward-voltage-drop characteristics of a silicon diode).
BIG hint: here’s a good example of what to not waste your money on:
https://www.amazon.com/BlueStars-Germanium-Schottky-Rectifier-Blocking/dp/B0C4T9TNTY
as a kid i used the joystick port of a broken Commodore 64 to power a salt water / lead battery!
“a broken inductor can still be put to good use as a bike chain sensor”
Kinda reminds me of the old but not that old mechanics trick of using a discarded but still functional variable reluctance sensor.
Those are often found on crankshafts or camshafts somewhere on older EFI engines or at the wheels of older cars with ABS systems.
Basically by hooking the two signal wires which are going straight to the VR coil up to a oscilloscope set to AC mode, you can play doctor with a stethoscope on ignition coils with integrated igniter, since said stage makes it impossible to do the classic test of measuring the resistance of the input, low voltage side of the coil.
And if you jig the VR sensor up in the right place and your oscilloscope got a logging feature, you can even capture those pesky intermittent faults. Even better if you are using two identical VR sensors, where one of them are positioned on another ignition coil as reference.
But man hours are expensive, so often the parts cannon are loaded instead and set to “fire at will”
The Badge culture has popularized many new uses for PCB materials other than “be backplane, hold traces, hold components”. Be an actual packaging, be a lightguide, be a heater, be a manual, be a piece of art, to name a few.
My wife gave me a lampshade made from 4 upcycled fibreglass pcbs. I looked at the silk screen layer and it seemed to be from some sort of power supply. They glow a nice green when the light is on.
You know how old Dewars were made a lot like Thermos bottles: The bright aluminum deposited on glass makes an excellent reflector for LEDs. And liquid nitrogen makes a great heatsink. Back when I have ready access to a plentiful supply of the stuff…
You can put 2 amps into a normal T1-3/4 “high intensity red” LED when it’s immersed in a 77 Kelvin liquid, and it gets really really bright. It will do that indefinitely, until the nitrogen boils off. That’s 100x its normal rated current. With the added voltage drop it’s more like 2-300x its rated power dissipation.
I doubt a modern 10 W COB LED would survive that treatment, but it would be fun to try to push 100x normal current into one.
i have drowned some blue leds in LN2, and they basically stop working (dim to nothing and cease conducting). I don’t know why, but it could be due to carriers being recaptured into their doping sites, and being unable to liberate due to temperature being too low. The fact that it works with red leds is very interesting, maybe it also works with infrareds then, which might be useful for me.
Every diode is a light-emitting diode if you try hard enough!
In college I would use the hinge side of my bedroom door to crimp 40 pin IDE cables. Not sure it counts as an abuse of the door though.
As a kid I used to put electrolytic capacitors across a welder, awesome firecracker.
But seriously, would reusing recycled parts count in this challenge? I’m reusing an old kettle PCB for its +5v PSU and relay by adding an ESP32, for tank water monitor.
Does running 264 addressable 2812BbLEDs in three strips of 88 with a single Arduino Nano and a 3.7v lipo count as abuse?
Just an inspiration for somebody – transistors in TO-220 are good heating elements for small amount of heat as they have ready made easy to use heat transfer interface. Saw that multiple times in configuration, where 2 transistors was bolted on single heatsink, one acting as heater, for measuring temperature response of the second one.
even better use something like an LM317, then you also have thermal protection
I was once in a band where we used a microphone made out of a broken pair of headphones and half a guitar cable. I taped it to the side of my amp because I didn’t have a mic stand. It sounded terrible, but that was actually the point of that band.
50 years ago when I was in my first steps of electronics doing some experiments at home. I used a Germanium PNP transistor as a light detector. The OC71 and also the OC81, scrapping the black paint on the glass package and exposing the germanium element to light. Making it act as a phototransistor.
How good would an led be as a voltage reference?
A power supply with built in on indicator?