Music

Home Dock For Car Stereo Faceplates

Categories Cars, Electronics, Gadgets, Music, Transportation1 Comment on Home Dock For Car Stereo Faceplates

Home dock for car stereo faceplates by Dave Delisle davesgeekyideas

Once upon a time I carried around a car stereo faceplate when I wasn’t on the road. I often thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have a home stereo system where I can attach the faceplate to? Now that we live in an era where many people dock their phones and iPods while at home, this idea doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

Unfortunately there are no universal connectors for faceplates, so a home dock would need to be tailor made for a specific brand (Alpine, Bose, Sony, etc.). Despite that drawback, this is an untapped market in my opinion.

K.I.T.T. Car Stereo Deck

Categories Cars, Electronics, Music2 Comments on K.I.T.T. Car Stereo Deck

K.I.T.T. car stereo deck design by Dave Delisle davesgeekyideas

Every once in awhile I’ll post a design that strikes me as a no-brainer, like this or this. I’m very surprised there hasn’t been any K.I.T.T. car stereo decks made commercially or as fanmade/homebrew projects even.

This design would be encapsulating the K.I.T.T. dashboard into a stereo deck which would feature its namesake as a music visualizer - pretty straightforward. Originally I had a normal volume dial, but for fun I used the steering wheel instead, something that wouldn’t be too practical for an actual stereo deck.

Just like the last stereo deck I designed, this design discards the CD slot on the front, so if you want to load a disc the face will have to flip down (if CD capability were included to begin with).

One touch I’d like to include are voice greetings from K.I.T.T. when powering on and off the stereo (“Hello, Michael.”), and the Knight Rider theme on command.

Spy Hunter Car Stereo Deck

Categories Cars, Electronics, Music, Transportation, Video Games6 Comments on Spy Hunter Car Stereo Deck

Spy Hunter car stereo deck design by Dave Delisle 2012 davesgeekyideas

I thought I’d address the complete lack of geeky car stereo decks with this Spy Hunter design. For the most part it would be your standard stereo, save for a neat cosmetic touch: the back-lit weapons dash that adorned the original arcade cabinet.

These five icons would randomly illuminate (at a slow non-distracting rate) for a bit of a light show. Other touches include 3 buttons found on the steering wheel of the arcade cabinet: the ‘Source’ button disguised as the Weapons Van button, and the play/stop buttons use the same red push-buttons used to fire weapons.

Not only would this deck help recreate the feel of playing the arcade game while behind the wheel of your car, but also grant you delusions of being a badass spy (even if you’re driving a station wagon).

Notes:

You can check out the arcade cabinet in-depth here. This design was based on this Alpine model. The icons would not allow for a CD slot on the face, so if you want CD functionality you would need to pop the face down to load discs. I suppose you could program this sucker to play the Peter Gun Theme upon start-up. Sound effects from the game could be enlisted for button presses.

Comic Book Rack Blu-Ray Display

Categories Films, Furniture, Gadgets, Music, TV, Video Games3 Comments on Comic Book Rack Blu-Ray Display

comic book rack blu-ray display design by Dave Delisle davesgeekyideas

Now that superhero movies are becoming a regular fixture, I thought it would be fun to create a DVD rack that looked like a comic book display. I recall seeing racks like this in grocery stores and pharmacies, usually covered in Archie and Richie Rich titles.

The top of the rack would feature a backlit sign, which could double as a lamp in your living space.

Autobot Blaster Mini Bookshelf Stereo System

Categories Computers, Electronics, Music, Robots6 Comments on Autobot Blaster Mini Bookshelf Stereo System

transformers-stereo-bookshelf-blaster-autobot-2011-dave-delisle-davesgeekyideas

A few years ago they released an MP3 player based on Soundwave, but personally I wish they offered a stereo system based on his Autobot counterpart, Blaster. He would just look at home on the bookshelf or entertainment unit.

The only fancy thing I did was to embed a display in the negative space of the carrying handle.

Portal Turrets Music Speakers

Categories Computers, Gadgets, Music, Robots2 Comments on Portal Turrets Music Speakers

Portal Turret Speakers by Dave Delisle

Here’s a pair of Portal-themed speakers that would flank your gaming PC. The red eyes would pulse to the audio of the music. In all likelihood these would be static speakers to avoid noisy motors, but if possible these guys would “dance” just like in the game (when they sang at the end of Portal 2).