Save Money with DIY Gadgets

Posted by Guest on December 14, 2009

Gadgets can be expensive, and with the world moving at an alarming pace into the digital and information age, many of the new technologies that capitalize on this can run hundreds of dollars. But there is no need to spend thousands on regular gadgets as many of them can be created by you. Did you know that you can create your own speakers for your home theater that are more powerful then those found in Sony and Bose systems and for a lot less? You can also create your own Wi-Fi signal extender as well.

There are many options to save money with DIY (do-it-yourself) gadgets, but we will list some of the best ways that you can complete this. Take a look at the ones listed below for some ideas.

Capacitative screen friendly gloves. Unlike resistive touchscreen devices that can incorporate touch input from many different mediums such as a stylus, pen or finger, capacitative screens require the human touch to work, meaning styluses will not work on your iPhone, Palm Pre or Blackberry Storm2. However there are special styluses that will do the trick.

But what if its winter you have on your gloves and get a call on your iPhone? You don’t want to take off your gloves in freezing weather to answer a call or reply to a text do you? You can buy expensive gloves that promise to do this for $15-45, or you could save some money and buy some conductive tape which performs the same task and costs only $20 for a huge roll of the thread. Buying it in small quantities can cost you between $5-10 and you will have enough to add capacitative touch support to your gloves, but those of your friends and family. Of course, you could just buy a huge roll have enough to do an entire army of gloves all iPod Touch and iPhone friendly.

Wi-Fi signal extender. Wi-Fi signal seems to be a problem especially when your Wi-Fi router is in a large house. Well believe it or not, you can use a dish and some foil to nearly double the range of your Wi-Fi signal.

Just by creating a “satellite” device from a bowl or pot which is lined with foil you can bounce the Wi-Fi signals to parts of the house where you previously did not have any connection. It’s easy and cost effective and can save you up to $300 versus buying a new router.

Speakers. A sound system from Sony, Bose or any of the other brands of audio equipment can easily run up to $800-2,000 and that is not top of the line. If you’re building a home theater or wiring your house with music, you might want to consider building the speakers yourself.

Building a speaker from scratch is not as hard as you think and simply requires some plywood, speakers and wires as well as some carpet styled material to do the trick. If you want to get real technical you can make them wireless by installing Bluetooth or Wi-Fi units in them and thus eliminate the possibility of tripping over wires. Best of all, you can build them into any form factor you want which makes it easier to put them in places conventional speakers couldn’t go.

This makes a great weekend project and is very easy to implement. There are hundreds of resources around that deals with this and many of them are free.

How much can you save by doing this? Between $500-1500

Video Monitoring System. Who said you need to spend hundreds or thousands on a video monitoring system for your house? Believe it or not, you can make your own monitoring system that can be viewed from the office, while on vacation or anywhere that has an internet connection. Not only can you view information but you can also record for archive. A great way to keep check to see if that baby sitter is doing her job or not, this is an inexpensive way to keep your mind at ease.

All you need are a few webcams, some wires and some freeware (software) as well as a wireless router that will link all the systems to the Internet. The project can run as little as $50 depending on what you have already and shouldn’t cost anything above $200. How much can you save with this project? Between $200-2,000. Remember, a dollar saved is a dollar earned.

Those are just some of the possibilities of do it yourself gadgets. Of course there are thousands more and you can always make up your own. Just remember that you don’t always need to buy. Sometimes you can make it yourself and not only will you save money, but it’s fun and something the entire family can work on.

The guest post is by Jessy Troy, a social media user, blogger and DIY gadgets amateur!