Arduino prank ideas - please post your ideas!

DuaneB:
I had a freind that got gloriously drunk at a work christmas party. Someone had decided to hand out disposable cameras at the same party.

Cut a long story short i wrote a windows service that set a different picture of him getting plastered as his wallpaper everyday, I hid the pictures inside the executable and gave it a credible name. If that machine is still running, I sure the slide show is still going to this day.

Duane B

This is an awesome idea!! You don't still happen to have the code, do you? I don't have pictures of him drunk because he left the last office party early, but another co-worker is house sitting for him so maybe we could take pics of us doing fun things in his house and then randomly display those as his wallpaper.

Another idea along those lines is an opposite ad-block extension for his browser. The idea is that it would replace pictures on webpages with fake ads that we would make.

I know the Arduino Leonardo can send keystrokes but can it recieve them? I was thinking about putting an arduino leonardo between his keyboard and the computer so it could essentially do text replacements. like if he typed "you're" the arduino would detect it, hit the delete key 3 times then type an r. So every time he types "you're" it's replaced with "your" which would be very annoying.

Hmm I just had another idea. I have a tiny 3v vibrating motor from an old project, I wonder if I could fit it into his mouse and make his mouse shake periodically. The vibrating motor would definitely fit but squeezing an arduino into a mouse is a bit tough. But I could probably fit just an Atmega 328 or something. Then I'd just need an oscillating crystal and I could use the mouse's 5v power. Thoughts?

Hi,
The service ran on Window NT 3.1 but I am sure you can still write one for whatever his OS is.

If its windows another prank I have done is use 'hooks' to intercept keystrokes and randomly replace some keys with a double strike and others with no strike the last sentence may have been something like -

f its windowss ....

But only do it for a minute or so and then resume normal behavior for an hour or so, this one can gone on for years - 'I am sure its the ********* computer, this is the second keyboard I have used in six months' etc etc.

Duane B

You could do something like the project Sparkfun did when they added 12VDC automobile horns to their inventory. As shown in the video below, they created an arduino controlled box that sounds the horns when you pick it up.

The box/horn is a pretty cool idea.

Duane B

go with the horn idea maybe set it off when a certain word is typed or a certain action happens such as opening an internet browser.

I'm working on my first project and kinda new. But I'm using a mosfet chip (transistor) to dim my led lights. Couldn't you put one in line on the mouse and keyboard. It would make the curser move extreamly slow and glitchy would it not? And some keys would miss and then hit right?

arduinoPi:
go get a fog machine and hook it up to the Arduino and put it to a sensor for example microphone to detect noise or PIR motion sensor. once you get a reading wait 5 min and activate smoke machine. place behind computer. They think computer is blowing up.

This is a great idea, but you don't need to go to the expense of buying a fog machine, you can build your own in a bottle cap. All you do is put a high value resistor in a bottle cap or other small bowl-shaped container, connect one end to a diode to keep the power from flowing back into the Arduino, and connect the diode to a digital pin and the other end of the resistor to ground. You can then put smoke machine fluid, e-cig juice, or food grade Propeline Glycol (Liquid Smoke) in the cap and program your Arduino to deliver voltage to the circuit when you want smoke.

You'll have to experiment with resistor values, and it can take a while for the resistor to get hot enough to produce smoke, so you'll want to work on the timing too. If you want things to happen a little quicker you can use a 9 volt battery and a relay triggered by the Arduino.

WARNING: Do not connect the high value resitor directly to a digital pin without some way to keep the current from backing up on you, unless you want the smoke to come directly from the Arduino.

Better rethink that. Electrons are not like water. Or are they?

You should use the Leonardo to remap his keyboard change the backspace key to the spacebar and (vice versa).
Or everytime he presses Enter, it would delete one word at a time of whatever he types.

Do they have a tv? With a simple IR LED you can control their tv, so you could randomly turn their volume up and down, change the channel, etc.

Edit: I just realized how old this thread is. Why was it bumped?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0zC3J5u8FE

Sparkfun has 120+db car horns for $5

There is a kit that has a michrophone and when you speak to it ,it convert your voice to robot voice or another voice(I don't remember but has two or trhee options) Go to this link: http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/surv/ck211.htm
You can hide the speaker somewhere to his desk and speek with diferent voices or something else.....Good luck and please let me know what you've done!!!!

Wire up micro switches in random places, when opened/closed have a sound go off in a totally different place, and not immediately repeatable, to disguise what caused it.

Oooh - add random delay too! And same sound triggerable from different places.

chazrich:

arduinoPi:
go get a fog machine and hook it up to the Arduino and put it to a sensor for example microphone to detect noise or PIR motion sensor. once you get a reading wait 5 min and activate smoke machine. place behind computer. They think computer is blowing up.

This is a great idea, but you don't need to go to the expense of buying a fog machine, you can build your own in a bottle cap. All you do is put a high value resistor in a bottle cap or other small bowl-shaped container, connect one end to a diode to keep the power from flowing back into the Arduino, and connect the diode to a digital pin and the other end of the resistor to ground.
WARNING: Do not connect the high value resitor directly to a digital pin without some way to keep the current from backing up on you, unless you want the smoke to come directly from the Arduino.

  1. You shouldn't be putting out more than about 20mA from an Arduino pin, or 40mA max for a short time. So you'll need a driver transistor of some kind.

  2. Current doesn't "back up", power doesn't "flow back" from a resistor.

If you can have the smoke appear from the back of the monitor, so much the better. It could trigger from something as simple as a capacitive proximity detector or IR proximity detector under the desk.

Hmm... of course, a big problem with anything involving smoke is that they may be fooled a bit too well. Fire alarms may be pulled, or smoke detectors may be set off. Next thing you know, you are explaining to the boss why the fire dept. was called and the company has lost large amounts of money over a prank.

I like the idea of the mouse (or keyboard) intermittently vibrating or messing up. Does his computer have speakers? You could have very quiet voices randomly play over the speakers.

Wire the Arduino to make the smoke detector go off whenever there is a certain noise frequency... maybe have it power the test button and bump it a second time once the smoke detector has been going off for a certain amount of time...

http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/projects.html

As a prank, the Keyboard Redneckifier intercepts words as they're typed and turns them in to "redneck" before your eyes. Made in USB, PS/2, and "embedded" (photo 6-8) versions.

I think anything involving setting off safety alarms is a tremendously bad idea.

How about a hypersonic sound device? It will only be audible when he's in the path of the beam, and the sound will appear to come from himself. Or from a surface in the path of the beam.