51 High Tech Practical Jokes for the Evil Genius

This book was written for anyone who feels the irresistible urge to break open the case to see what makes that appliance or electronic device work. “There are no user serviceable parts inside”, or “disassembly will void the warranty” are phrases that simply fuel the fire for us hardware hacking evil geniuses. The ability to make an electronic or mechanical device do things that it was not intended for is a skill that is easily learned by anyone who is not afraid to put his or her crazy ideas to the test and possibly blow a few fuses or fry a few circuits along the way.

You do not need an engineering degree or a room full of sophisticated tools to become a successful hardware hacker, just the desire to create, a good imagination and a pile of parts to experiment with.

Using a mix of salvaged mechanical bits and some basic electronic components, you will have huge spiders jumping across the room, hairy beasts running at your guests from under furniture, and many other critters and beasties that are guaranteed to have your victims jumping out of their boots! There is also a full chapter dedicated to creating "Fluffy", a caged critter who springs out at unsuspecting onlookers with explosive force when a flashlight beam triggers the hidden light sensor. Click below for a video.

Are your pals not afraid of lurching beasties or critters of the night? Do they laugh at you evil tricks and mind games? Well nothing says "gotcha" like the angry rush of a few hundred volts across the fingers, so when all else fails, shock 'em silly! Several zappers are presented in the book, and they range in power level from mildly painful to all out hair raising, eye-popping, hand from the ceiling nasty. Several methods of disguising the zappers are presented, so you can get your pals when they least expect it. Of course, none of the zappers are life threatening - well, unless you you zap the wrong person that is.

You can build a rigged lie detector, a fake radiation counter, a biohazard container that sits there hissing like it is releasing pressurized gas, a device that appears to look through walls, and many more convincingly realistic machine hoaxes designed to raise a few eyebrows are send your victims running scared. All the gadgets can be mixed and matched to create all new gags, so you can have hours of entertainment at someone else's expense!

A book of pranks must include a chapter dedicated to evil and the netherworld, so you will learn how to make knocks by remote control, send things flying across the room, receive voices form the grave, and even control a doll using some remote control parts for that perfect rigged séance. Provoking fear in the superstitious is almost like child's play when you put your evil mind to work with a soldering iron and a box full of junk parts.

You will learn how to use the parts you have on hand to create evil deeds and pranks, recycling old appliances, electronic devices and parts most people would throw away. It is very easy to conceal many of these evil pranks in everyday objects so they are difficult to locate, and many of these prank devices can be installed directly into a working appliance to make it misbehave or seem somehow broken. There are projects to jam radio stations, fuzz up TV reception, make annoying dripping or high pitch beeps that are almost impossible to locate, and there is even a device that will make you buddies car seem like it has engine problems.

A brain in a jar kept alive by a computer, a pair of goggles that can be used to help hypnosis, a device that allows you to perform telekinesis tricks with a friend. This is just a small sample of the fun and games you can have using some of the projects presented in this book. If you add your own evil twist to these easily modifiable projects, who knows what kind of mind twisting, awe inspiring gadgetry you might come up with!

Halloween night is always a fun time for the evil genius experimenter as you have a full night to try out new gags and pranks on victims who are actually willing participants. Maybe you want to entertain the kiddies, or have the adults running for cover as they are chased from your yard by your evil mechanical minions. Either way, there are plenty of ideas presented here that will help you achieve your goals. Learn how to turn car parts into large animatronics, send bats and critters flying across your yard, add an interactive magic mirror to your house of horrors, or go all they way to create your own haunted house and yard using a mix and match of various projects. Maybe this year you can keep all that candy for yourself!

Since all of the projects are made using commonly available junk parts and basic electronics, there is plenty of room for modification, and you will not have to search for difficult to find or obsolete parts. The focus of this book is to use your imagination and hacking skills to build your ideas from what you have on hand, so a basic electronics section is included to help you get started. All of the projects presented in this book were built by recycling old electronic appliances and mechanical bits from various sources, so you should have no trouble building any of these projects. A soldering iron and a few basic hand tools is all that is needed once you put your Evil Genius imagination to work!