The NYC Resistor hackers have installed an MP3 player in a decommissioned training hand-grenade, because they could, and because it is the kind of deliciously bad idea that is hard to resist. Receipt of the grenade in its shipping box occasioned something of a stir at NYC Resistor, it appears.
mp3 grenade in it's final design glory (via Make)
There was much fear and freak out. But cooler heads prevailed and a phone call was made. "Hey Matt, did you order metal objects of a dubious nature?" "Yes, yes I did." There was a great deal of internal strife over this particular event as ordering munitions to the space is strictly forbidden. Upon review and discussion it was decided that while purchasing decommissioned training grenades was not in fact illegal in NYC (as far as we know), it was not something we would ever do again. That being said. I immediately set forth on a childhood dream project. I put an 1/8th inch jack into the pin hole for the gr3nade. It looked GOOD. Totally flush... very pretty. So I decided to run with it. I ran the cabling into the gr3nade... hacksawed it open. Inserted a Sansa 2 GB mp3 player. And then tried to SMD rework it. This ended poorly as the first sansa basically got burned by the rework station and died. The second I avoided using the rework station and instead recruited bre and his arms for a session of intense soldering onto very tiny solder points.
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Seems the perfect MP3 player for my next flight...
Not sure I like it, the push button switches used do not suit it, but guess it does look like a modified grenade akin to an IED.
When I was a teen Wales in the 80's a classmate took decommission millbomb hand grenade into school at end of term. He rolled it across the class room floor to scare teacher as a joke... 5 minutes later 300 pupils where standing outside in the rain whilst school was evacuated and police arrived to establish if the grenade was a truly a dummy or not. Didn't even make the local paper. I imagine if that happened today it would be national news.
nb the blue handle indicates that it is a practice munition.
The nature of news has not changed.
"Student does not bring bomb to school, school does not blow up," is still not news.
But now the non-story would be on TV.
You know where people like to take their MP3 players? Airplanes. You know where people should never, ever take anything even resembling a grenade, up to and including an unripened pineapple? Airplanes.
Somewhere a Dalek is wondering where its tunes went.
Lobster:
I'm not sure people should really be taking anything looking THAT much like a grenade (what with actually BEING one) anywhere.
"There was much fear and freak-out".. Exactly. There's a line between 'cool' and 'simply scary', and I believe this crosses it.
(For the record: I did military service in the infantry. Grenades don't scare me - in the _proper context_. This scares me. Especially considering that when doing guard duty, the specific example given to me of when you were supposed to shoot without warning, was: "If someone comes at you holding a grenade")
Good luck not getting shot listening to mp3 outside the house...
You could get fit more batteries in one resembling a dynamite vest.
You gotta be kidding me. Who here thinks this is a good idea?
If I carried that into a meeting at my local village hall,I would be leaving-in a box feet first.
I did this when I was twelve with a tin replica! Mine had the screen and a joy-stick like interface taking the place of the old small nubbin used to control it.
In fact, I still have it.
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ah, air travel
listen to some tunes
play some games with the family...
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http://www.gibsonsgames.co.uk/images/product/large/029_G989-Travel-Pass-the-Bomb.jpg
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good times!
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I'm a fan of military-themed arts and crafts. I just embroidered a hand grenade. http://meetmeinthedayroom.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/pretend-i-blocked-this/ You might like it.
What would be much cooler would be a hand grenade shaped like an ipod.
Well you've figured out what the CIA is giving Castro for Christmas.
Haha.
Not only have I figured it out but I've stolen the top secret photos.