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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30568 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 302 pages

From the Back Cover
SHOCK AND AMAZE! INEXPENSIVE PROJECTS YOU CAN BUILD!

INSIDE: PROJECTS THAT TOUCH THE LEADING EDGE OF ELECTRONICS

Electronics fans have waited a long time for this book. Not since 1983 has author Bob Iannini published a collection of his amazing projects -- all of them fun, easy, and inexpensive to make at home and, best of all, seriously exciting and impressive!

Iannini takes the stuff of science fiction and science future and brings it down to size for the home hobbyist. Full of easy-to-follow plans and clear diagrams and schematics, and respectful of your wallet, Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius gives you:

* Illustrated instructions and plans for amazing pretested projects advanced enough for sophisticated electronics enthusiasts but described in sufficient detail to be built easily by newcomers
* Explanations of the science and math behind each project (i.e., you can explore different methods of achieving acceleration)
* Frustration-free plans -- needed parts are listed, along with sources -- and most of these projects can be built for $100 or less

WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH---?
This book equips you with complete plans, instructions, parts lists, and sources for these wonderful projects:
* Infrared viewer
* Object levitation device
* Laser listening system
* Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generator
* Sonic phaser cannon
* Electromagnetic launcher
* Object projectort
* Traveling plasma wave generator
* Multivortex plasma tornado
* Laser beam cutter
* Ion ray projector
* Several Tesla coil projects
* Pyrotechnic blaster and shock wave pulser
* Lightning bolt generator
* Robotic circuit jamming EMP generator
* Ultrabright green laser
* Working light saber
* Magnetic pulse can crusher
* Mass driver and launcher
* Ultrasonic microphone
* Laser protection project
* Ultrasonic shock projector
* Electric fishing and worming machine

About the Author
Bob Iannini runs Information Unlimited, a firm dedicated to the experimenter and technology enthusiast. Founded in 1974, the company holds many patents, ranging from weapons advances to children's toys. Mr. Iannini's 1983 Build Your Own Laser, Phaser, Ion Ray Gun & Other Working Space-Age Projects, now out of print, remains a popular source for electronics hobbyists.

Customer Reviews

A caution for UK readers
While this book contains a lot of exciting projects, many of them involving very high voltages, very well described, UK readers should be aware that many or most of them require special components that would have to be imported from the USA, from a company associated with the author. You will NOT find them in the Radiospares or Maplin catalogues, and often their specifications are not given in enough detail to even guess at an acceptable substitute.
That said, the book was fun to read and some of the schematics could be useful in other applications.

Really not worth it.
This book is really a glorified advertisement for the services of Mr Iannini's company, which supplies many of the things they term "specialist components" It is rather like a Meccanno (Erector) instruction book, for which you discover you have fully 75% of the parts already, but the remaining 25% are not in the box. It may be that you are satisfied with building models from kits of bits, but the spirit once engendered in Scientific American's Amateur Scientist column, which told you, in quite sufficient detail, how to make your own CO2 laser, from SCRATCH, is missing from this book - why one just buys the magic bits from the authors company. What Evil Genius worth his salt is going to buy parts off the shelf, without understanding how they do what they do, and missing the fun of discovery ?

YMMV

Steve

Perhaps not for the evil genius but...
I think one star is a little harsh for this book to say the least; the simple fact is a true evil genius would not require a book to tell them how to conduct/build these experiments.

I had no prior knowledge of electronics beyond programming my video and found no problems following the instructions within the book and learned a great deal while doing it.

It's a lot of fun and can act as a stepping stone towards other things, most of the projects are quite cheap can be built for around £40-£50... and a lot cheaper if you have friends who do this sort of thing for a living, its also great way to get kids interested in electronics (far better than making a small radio or flickering light).