FullForce Applications™

You have seen them in the movies and on TV. Every kid wants one, heck, every adult wants one. What am I talking about? A book that doubles as a low tech safe! Yes, you heard me, I finally got around to putting together a short tutorial for making one of these sneaky buggers; now you can hide important things from your housemates, like a stash of Cream Cheese and Chive crackers!

From Book Safe

When using a laser diode it isn't advisable to hook up a power source and run your delicate diode directly (see what I did there?). Though it is possible to drive the laser diode using a pair of AA batteries and a resistor, you are asking for trouble down the line; and the same goes for an unregulated power supply, even if it is the right voltage. With a diode you must both regulate the voltage and restrict the current. Diodes are notoriously current hungry, unlike most electronic devices, which leaves us with two options: go to ebay and order one that is neatly soldered to a breadboard and sealed in a package (while paying significantly more, waiting 'x' amount of time for shipping, and not having fun with a 700 degree torture device), or make a quick trip to Radioshack and build one with ease. I obviously chose the second option, hence this article. Lets begin.

Several years ago while browsing LED based projects on Instructables and Hack-A-Day I stumbled upon the holy grail of geeky projects. At the time, not knowing anything about the Arduino I brushed it off as "over my head". In early November as my Programming Language Concepts class was switching from Racket (a lisp based programming language) to Occam we were instructed to design a simple project using the Arduino and program it in said language. Thus this project was born.

From Tutisduino Build