What Can You Do With $100?

An anonymous reader asks "I was recently gifted with $100 and thought, 'What's the coolest geektoy--new, used, cobbled together, hacked--that one hundred clams could buy?' Home automation? Older PDA streaming client? Bathtub ROV? Basic stamp robotic kit? Something fun, something useful, something educational, something that says 'Look what I put together for $100.' Lemme know!"

Comments

512MB iPod Shuffle

[objekt]

http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/ doubles as a flash drive.

Three year subscription to

[Anonymous Cowdog]

Keyhole.com

Brew your own beer!

[warpSpeed]

Get a complete kit to start brewing beer at home here

It is only $70, you can use the other $30 for a Brew ingredients Kit

Nothing beats home made beer.

Re:Brew your own beer!

[pclminion]

I strongly agree. Brewing beer is kind of like biological hacking -- can you learn to use living organisms (and not those big ones that think, that's cheating) as a tool to accomplish what you want?

The number of variables and parameters that can be tweaked throughout the beer brewing process is a hacker's dream come true.

Plus, it helps to relieve some of the general ignorance that most people have about what beer actually IS. I actually read here on Slashdot once that different beers are achieved by, get this, roasting the hops in various ways. My gawd.

wifi detector, the canary

[way2trivial]

with SSID detection
http://www.canarywireless.com/
leaves half your cash in pocket.

For about $100...

[cr0sh]

You can build a video rocket camera.

What I mean by this, is that you can buy the rocket (D thru F engine model), launch kit (launch pad, controller, engines, igniters, batteries), and wireless video camera - and do something that while it has been done before by others, is still a cool thing to do for yourself.

First - the camera: For about $30.00 (approx. $10-20.00 for the camera, and $10-15.00 shipping, depending on seller), you can buy off of ebay drop-shipped from hong-kong a miniature 900MHz-1.2GHz wireless "sugar-cube" camera and receiver combo, which runs off of 9 volt batteries. The camera is designed to transmit a few hundred feet thru walls in a security setup - but outdoors up in a rocket you can expect around 1000 ft or so. This is the cheapest way of getting these cameras - don't bother with an american dealer, they will charge you $80.00 minimum, plus s/h - not a good deal at all.

The rest of your money will go into the rocket and launch needs - a larger scale Estes rocket will be perfect - you might even be able to get away with one of the egg lofters if you want (you might want to try a different/lighter battery tech for the 9V camera, though). Anyhow - you won't spend anywhere near $70.00 on everything - the rocket kit will be about $20-30.00, everything else will fill (or not) the rest of the cash.

Then - spend your time to build the thing. Remember to pad/protect the camera, and mount it securely (but make it airodynamic, too!). Mount the battery securely as well, so it won't rattle around and change your C/G mid-flight. You are going to want a rocket made for payload lifting or similar - something designed for the extra weight (unless you want to experiment!).

Take it to a field, set it up, check your camera feed (heh - maybe some extra cash could be thrown to a 12VDC video recorder - you want to record your first flight, right?), install the engine and igniter, begin your countdown - and get ready to enter an interesting aerial photography hobby!