Every now and then a project comes into the Hackaday feed that has so many levels of wrong about it that you really shouldn’t do it at home, but is amusing enough to feature anyway with a warning. So it is with [ArcaEge]’s Capacitor Alarm Clock, which wakes up its unfortunate owner by blowing up electrolytic capacitors with reverse voltage. If you survive, you’ll certainly be awake!
It’s inspired unsurprisingly by an [ElectroBoom] video, and the premise is simple enough. An ESP32 serves as the clock, and triggers a relay for the alarm, which in turn overloads a suitably low-voltage electrolytic capacitor in a socket. The resulting explosion which appears in a video we’ve placed below the break, wakes the slumberer.
We don’t have to tell you that this is not the safest of hacks, and is presented here only for your entertainment. But it does provide a few points of interest, for example in identifying the difference between capacitors with a vent, and those without.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a project based around exploding capacitors, and that one maybe was a don’t-do-this-at-home too.
I think this project would actually be safer if it fired .22 rifle blanks instead.
and don’t get me wrong– given that the whole project is supposed to be dangerous and stupid, that’s essentially a compliment.
I love the smell of Rifas in the morning.
With a big enough capacitor/charge you also can clean the entire room, see the next/previous article with the gripper on wire.
Years ago, I retrofitted a Tazmanian Devil alarm clock with a Lazer Tag target so that I could “shoot” the alarm clock when it went off to activate the snooze. Combine that with this and you could have a shoot out first thing every morning! 🤠 🤣