Dude about to pull a fire alarm

Fire Alarm Disco Party

What should your first instinct be when the room catches on fire? Maybe get out of the room, pull an alarm, and have a disco party? Not your first instinct? Well, this seemed pretty obvious to [Flying-Toast], who retrofitted an old fire alarm to activate a personal disco party.

After finding a fire alarm being sold on eBay, [Flying-Toast] couldn’t resist the urge to purchase one to use for his own purposes. He immediately gutted the life-saving internals to fill the shell with his own concoction of ESP goodness to be activated by the usual fire alarm mechanism. This sends a signal to the next elements of the party system.

Every part of the party system receives this activation signal, including the most important part, the party lights. Using a generic crystal disco ball and its own ESP, the party lights are more than sufficient to create the proper panic party. Of course, what is a party without music? With another ESP board and salvaged speakers, the proper atmosphere can be set right before the venue burns to the ground. The final touch is the additional hacked WIFI relays to turn off the lights in the room.

Priorities are important in emergencies, and that is exactly what [Flying-Toast] gave us with this project. Learning from this expertise is important, but how about learning from the near misses? For some risky decision making, be sure to check out the near nuclear war that was almost caused by a false alarm!

Continue reading “Fire Alarm Disco Party”

A Cheap DIY Smoke Detector That Can Save Lives

2014-07-19-16.33.53 A faulty wire, a discarded burning cigarette, or a left-on curling iron can trigger sparks of fire to engulf everything nearby until all that’s left is brittle mounds of smoldering ash. Which is why smoke detectors are so important. They are life saving devices that can wake people up sleeping inside, well before the silent, but deadly carbon monoxide starts to kick in. But what happens if no one is home, and the alarm begins to blare? The place burns down into the ground without the owners knowing.

So when [Martin] purchased a battery-powered smoke detector and rigged it up to notify him exactly when the piezo siren is activated, the evolution of the automatic fire alarm continued into the realm of wireless internet-connected things.

His home automation system (a Raspberry Pi running Node-Red) links to a Funky ATTiny84-based sensor and transmits the data wirelessly, redirecting the information to his phone. SMS messages can be sent, as well as emails and pushbullet notifications. Once the piezo siren starts to sing, the system alerts him that smoke has been detected and that he should check on it as soon as possible.

The electronics fit perfectly inside the case waiting for any smoky disturbance in the room to light up. And what makes this project even better, besides the life saving capabilities and the instant push notifications, is that it was hooked up for the cheap. No need to buy a brand-new, expensive Nest protect, when all it takes it a sensor or two and a Raspberry Pi to hack the fire alarm that already sits in the house.

This video coming up after the break shows how simple it is to make. Continue reading “A Cheap DIY Smoke Detector That Can Save Lives”

Thwart Robbers With An Old Smoke Alarm.

[Anders] tipped us off about his hack that re-purposes a smoke alarm as a burglar alarm. Unfortunately, he came home in the middle of a burglary but wanted to be ready the next time someone tries to break in. By cleverly patching into the test button on an old smoke detector he created a circuit-trip alarm. One side of each piece of wire is secured to the frame and jam of a window. A paper clip completes the circuit by pinching the two bare conductors. If the window is opened the connection is lost and the alarm sounds.

We see a few problems with this system. First off, never hack your ONLY smoke detector, you are putting lives at risk by doing so. But [Anders] says he’ll have a replacement detector and since these things need to be replace every ten years or so, chances are you can find an old one kicking around. We’d recommend disguising the case so that people aren’t confused about it being a smoke detector. Secondly, he’s mounted the alarm right in the window frame so most likely an invader will just smash the thing to bits.

Anyway, it’s still an interesting reuse of these ubiquitous, and life-saving, devices.