The most fun part of DIY home electronics
projects is how they can actually serve a purpose once you’ve completed them,
or they can be a novel gimmick you can use to brag about your electronics
prowess to your friends - the only thing that really matters is that you have a
fun time building them. You can even get your kids involved in many of the home
electronics projects you can find online. They’re often cheap and can often
take just a few hours to build using common electronic components available at
most electronics’ hobby shops. Here are five fun examples of DIY electronics
projects you can do at home.
A Clap Light Switch
The goodold classic clap-clap light switch, a staple of the show of wealth in 90s
movies, is not at all difficult to construct yourself – the circuit is not much
bigger than a square inch of prototyping board and a few electronic components like
a 5v regulator, an electret microphone, a handful of resistors and acouple of ceramic capacitors. It also makes use of the classic PIC10F222 IC,
so you’ll need an IC programmer to build this one.
A Laser Based Tripwire Alarm
If your home security doesn’t have lasers,
it’s simply not complete. This home DIY laser tripwire alarm is a fun way of
being notified when people pass through a doorway and is actually quite simple
to build. This is a great introduction to making your own PCB if you haven’t
yet, but you can also buy the PCB required for this project if you prefer. This project makes use of a light sensor to do the heavy lifting.
An Automatic Hand Washing Timer
If 2020 has done nothing else for us, it’s
made us more aware of how often we should wash our hands and for how long – and
that’s where you need an automatic handwashing timer in your bathroom. For just
a couple of dollars, you can buildan automatic hand washing timer at home using the NE555 timer and an
infrared sensor.
An Automatic LED Staircase Light
This project is especially useful for those
with kids who like to ascend and descend the stairs in the middle of the night. It’s
a circuit that will automatically turn on a small LED light when it senses
movement and keep it on for a few minutes.
An Emergency Light Powered by Fire
No list of this nature would be complete
without something completely ridiculous, and that’s why the firepowered emergency light finds its way onto this list. It’s actually a very well-designed
piece of electronics and it’s a really fun project to build, so if you like
fire and want an emergency light with far more steps to use than is practical,
then this one is for you.
These are really simply, easy to build
projects, but there’s no ceiling for the complexity of these home DIY electronics
projects. From the genuinely useful automatic hand washing timer to the utterly
superfluous fire powered emergency light, there are hundreds upon hundreds of
electronics projects you can build at home.