Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius : 28 Build-It-Yourself Projects
The do-it-yourself hobbyist market, particularly in the area of electronics, is hotter than ever. This books gives the “evil genius” loads of projects to delve into, from an ultrasonic microphone, to a body heat detector, and all the way to a Star Wars Light Saber. This book makes creating these devices fun, inexpensive, and easy.
Overview of Interesting Projects This book assumes alot. To start with, a back ground in electronic engineering. If you don’t have practical real world (or at least laboratory experience), you could get yourself, or worse, someone else, killed.I wouldn’t suggest this as a source book for high school science projects; it’s as likely to get you a term of 5 – 10 in a state run facility (not college) as an A grade. Given the current climate, using a high power laser pointer could land you in a fair bit of trouble (the book does point this out). This is also one of the better documented projects.The other factors that the book does not consider are:* Budget. These are not low cost projects.* Time. Plan on doing research outside this book.From the 28, there is one project I plan to try. Read the contents page before buying – unless there is at least one project you really want to do (and sink time and money into). I would pass. Some of the plans are more like overviews.
Very misleading, yet fascinating at the same time I was intrigued by the types of “gadgets” that could be built with the guidance of the book and decided to pick up a copy and start with the “Laser Window Bounce Listening Device”. The most important restrictive factor in building these projects, for me, happened to be the cost of each. Since the book claims on the back cover that “needed parts are listed, along with their sources – and most of these projects can be built for $100 or less.” Great, I thought! “$100 or less”. Not so! The book is very misleading in this respect. For example, there are a total of 28 different projects to build, of which only 15 are “$100 or less” (many are a few hundred dollars)! The book misleads you further by giving the total price for “basic parts” ONLY or “specialized parts” ONLY!!Let’s add insult to injury by mentioning that the book seems to be an advertising tool for the author’s company: Information Unlimited. This is the source for the “specialized parts”, such as the “printed circuit boards”…that is, IF you can find the part!So, getting back to the project I had wanted to build: the “Listening Device”. The book says that the project would cost “$100 for BASIC PARTS” (my emphasis). Really? And what about the other parts? The most important parts, such as the “image converter tube” for the “See in the dark” project or “the special prepared plasma tube” for the lightsaber project? Where on the website can I find these among many other “specialized parts”? Asking questions about parts from their company is just as tedious and a waste of time as you will be sent from one phone number to another to get a small piece of information. Not worth it.So, overall, the book may seem innocent and fun to learn from and exciting in its list of potential projects to build, but if you don’t have a lot of throw-away cash AND a lot of throw-away time, especially spent at their advertised company, then I highly advise staying away from this book.