Product Description: 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.
Electronic Gadget Book Although this book has excellent design features (schematics, pictures,notes and a numbered assembly list), however, I was not impressed with some of the items to build. such as Electrokinetic gun, fish stun gun, magnetic can crusher. This book would be geat as a science poject book, for kids! wb
Quite nice, if you go in with your eyes open At first I wasn't sure about the book, as it is a thinly veiled advertisement for Information Unlimited, and has many items you can only get from them to build the projects. But then I figured that is fine, because they *do* carry specialized parts for just this sort of project, and have for decades; this book just shows you what to do with those parts.
I've been a customer of InfoUnlimited for a long time anyway, and they do put out very cool stuff. So, if you are willing to do fabrication, electronic assembly/soldering, and troubleshooting, then this is an excellent book. Yes, you probably need at least average intelligence to fathom this book, but then, would you really want a stupid person to have a cutting laser? If you do have dreams of a secret lair where you can bring a doomsday machine to the world, then you will enjoy this book immensely, especially if you are actually handy. Even if you aren't, you can always put this on your bookshelf, and just make people wonder. If you like books like this, then my suggestion is to look for titles that have "gadgets" in them to get actual plans for things.
As for what is in it...it is a mixed bag, and pretty wide in interests. There are certainly lasers, but also several projects for ultrasonics (simple up to weapon-like), and also several projects on reasonably potent power supplies; something that many books leave out. In addition, you have EMP generators, and fun tesla projects.
I'll note it again: If you try these projects and do not know what you are doing, or do something stupid while building these, you will die. Likely in a bug-zapper like fashion, or perhaps with a nicely cauterized hole burned through something important. That aside, this is a nice collection of material you can find elsewhere, but it is all in one location, and with the actual part numbers for some of the more hard-to-find components, you won't have to guess or use somethign that "might" work, and risk the project (or you) burning up.
Arcane, overpriced parts with vague descriptions needed. "Information Limited" I got this book for my birthday, glancing through the pages it seemed full of exciting projects to build. My enthusiasm wore off once I started building the projects. Although most of the parts in the "Bill of Materials" are easy to obtain there are some _critical_ parts required for the completion of the project. The book contains vague descriptions of arcane parts that can only be obtained through the authors web site. Alas, overpriced in my opinion. A good book in my opinion wold list part numbers and various sources so the reader has a choice. I have found the cost "estimates" ridiculous, in a particular project just two of the "special" parts needed are more than the "estimate" for the full project. Not to mention that you can only get them through the authors website. In my opinion one of the reviewers that called this book "an infomercial" for the authors website was right on.
Thank you for reading.
Definitely worth buying This do it yourself book is great for anyone looking to gain greater knowledge of the very interesting world of electronics. the project are usually within budget, and always worth every penny.
Arcs, sparks, and blue flashes. This text has the best instructions for building a Tesla coil!
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
