The next door neighbor and I are going to make garage door openers out of 9th/10th Doctor era sonic screwdrivers. Any fellow Geek Engineers out there ever taken one of these puppies apart?
That is an awesome idea! I've taken a few sonics apart, mostly with an eye toward turning them into laser pointers, which are generally much simpler and smaller affairs than garage door openers.
The main barrier to installing anything into the sonic is the size restriction; any new components don't just have to be small enough to fit into the sonic, they've got to fit entirely inside the "head" section that pops out, and have to be powered by 4.5v or the voltage stepped down if you're using the same batteries. The only way around any of that would be to somehow permanently glue it open in extended mode, drilling out the battery end beforehand, and cramming more bits into the handle.
I've never played with garage door openers, and have no idea if it's possible to find ones small enough to work with.
Thank you, you're awesome! We were actually thinking about removing the clear plastic riser and fixing the screwdriver in the "closed" mode permanantly. Would that give us more room to work with?
That could give you a little more width to work with, not much more length. Plus you'll need to figure a way to keep it openable for when you have to replace the batteries.
The real question is whether or not you'll find a small enough opener to fit inside any sonic however it's prepared; if you get the smallest opener out there you can then sit down and play with it and the sonic to figure out a way to get the one into the other. however you might have to cut and hack things.
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The main barrier to installing anything into the sonic is the size restriction; any new components don't just have to be small enough to fit into the sonic, they've got to fit entirely inside the "head" section that pops out, and have to be powered by 4.5v or the voltage stepped down if you're using the same batteries. The only way around any of that would be to somehow permanently glue it open in extended mode, drilling out the battery end beforehand, and cramming more bits into the handle.
I've never played with garage door openers, and have no idea if it's possible to find ones small enough to work with.
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The real question is whether or not you'll find a small enough opener to fit inside any sonic however it's prepared; if you get the smallest opener out there you can then sit down and play with it and the sonic to figure out a way to get the one into the other. however you might have to cut and hack things.
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