April fools prank payback help?

Projects General Guidance
1

One of the guys at work tried, unsuccesfully, to pull a April fools "dit dot" bomb prank on me and now I am looking for a much more technologically advanced solution for payback. I have been wanting to get started with an arduino for a while now but haven't had the reason to yet.

What I am looking to do is setup a small hidden deskfan controlled by the arduino which I can turn on via bluetooth from my android phone at will. Is this something that is even possible? If so can some one please give me a hand with the finer points. Thanks.

2

yeah. you would need a Bluetooth module(RN42?) for the arduino, a relay(http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1291165136/all), the arduino, http://www.amarino-toolkit.net/ to control it via android.

what sort mischief are you going to cause with this? why not a really high pitched noise maker, or a super loud fan? or are you going to put a pile of paper scraps in front of the fan and then turn it on?

3

I was planning on doing the paper shreds/hole punch dots trick.

Which arduino should I use? I didn't realize how many there were when I first started looking into this.

4

Arduino UNO or any of its clones which u can find in ebay( Its cheaper :wink: ). Chk out Amarino as sirbow2 said. It should fit your use...
Happy Pranking... XD

5

Would you recommend the uno rev3 or the mega2560?

Which bluetooth module would you recommend?

I downloaded amarino for my phone, now I just need to get the rest of the stuff.

6

For that kind of stuff Id just buy a cheap 10$ bluetooth serial module off ebay, and used the sena bterm app to send commands serially
An arduino nano is all you need in a nice small package,
my suggestion tho is hook up a speaker and play random noises from the arduino until they get frustrated and turn around looking for the source and look the fan in the face, then wham lol

7

yeah, so, you can either get a arduino with bluetooth built in(Arduino BT) or one without it. for your use, if you get a Arduino without bluetooth built in, i would go with a Arduino UNO rev3 or a smaller Arduino nano as winner10920 said.

if you were to buy from sparkfun.com, be careful, they sell a ready to go BT module for ~50$(http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9358) when you can get the 15$(http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10253) not built one and add a few wires and resistors (Digitalduino: Arduino RN-42 Bluetooth Module) and have the same functionality.

sena bterm app to send commands serially

true, this is a good idea. would be much easier(maybe?, i havent used amarino), you wouldn't have to use armarino and it works just as well for this purpose.

8

And most people know how to control something over serial with simple if statements, so the bluetooth part is almost transparent

9

borrow his car keys and fill the interior air vents with confetti.

10

Or purple drink powder mix, makes for a tasty( or painful in the eyes) surprise to the face

11

any of its clones which u can find in ebay( Its cheaper smiley-wink )

Really? 'Cause $30 is unreasonable? C'mon... if you're gonna be cheap, at least buy one of the higher-quality minimal offerings from Sparkfun or whomever. The eBay knock-offs are just poor imitations lending no respect to the innovators that brought us such a cool platform. For free.