mp3 belt buckle perfect for wrestlers, truck drivers

January 12th, 2009 comments (1) stumble it! digg it! by: technabob

What could say “I really know how to dress myself” more than a nice big brass belt buckle. You know – the type that’s so huge that you dare not try to bend at the waist, lest you puncture an internal organ? Well at least this one has an excuse for its size; there’s a fully-functional MP3 player built into it.

SparkFun Electronic’s mechanical engineer Casey came across this oversize belt buckle and said to himself: “self, I bet we can cram that new MP3 player development board we’re working on inside that massive brass buckle, because I really want to wear one, because after all, chicks really dig guys in huge brass belt buckles.”

Turns out that their MP3 player development board didn’t exactly fit, so the guys at SparkFun set to creating a custom circuit board with the similar componentry, and fit it perfectly to the rectangular opening in the face of the buckle. Now why the buckle has a huge opening in the middle, who knows? Maybe it’s so you can put an engraved name plate on the front. Sweet.

You’re probably asking yourself how you change tracks on this thing, right? Well thanks to an on-board accelerometer, you’ll just need to do a little pelvic thrust to jump to the next tune. And if you really get your groove on, a tri-color LED gets to blinking when you do your badass dance moves.

While you can’t find the belt buckle MP3 player in a store, you can make one for yourself. Just head on over to Spark Fun for the complete parts list, circuit schematic and source code.

filed under:  audio hacks + mods media players strange + wonderful

January 12th, 2009 comments (1): stumble it! digg it! by: technabob