Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More
Here’s a pretty cool little DIY idea from some guy on the Hacked Gadgets forum. For whatever reason, he has made a Morse Code Oscillator out of an Altoids can. It’s usefulness is questionable and it’s appearance is interesting, to put it nicely. The maker of the Oscillator says there is still problems he’s working out, such as an over heating issue, but he hopes to clear it up by changing some components with different materials. All in all, the Altoid Oscillator is Dangerously useless (couldn’t help ourselves, but to make an Altoids joke). Other then the fact that the main component is a container for a popular mint, it looks decently LoFi enough to pull off the DIY chic. — Andrew Dobrow
Altoids Can Morse Code Oscillator [Hacked Gadgets]
Hello,
Just wanted to let you know that the overheating issue was fixed. It was actually a small short that was producting the heat. Basically, the oscillator has no other use but to allow me to practice my morse code sending speed without having to disturb other ham radio operators that may not be willing to work with me on the other end.
On the note of using an Altoids tin: I actually use these tins a whole lot for project boxes that involve radio frequency, and also things that may need somewhat of a precise Crystal reference, because the metal does a very good job of shielding the circuit from stray RF, which can get kind of nasty when you work with microwave technology (or, more importantly, keeping out all of the 2.4GHz signals in the neighborhood from getting into a tiny High Frequency mixer, etc).
You get the drift, and I will admit that the appearance this go around was somewhat crude, but definitely not “Dangerously useless” 🙂
Thanks for the update! Good luck with your Morse code endeavors