Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
The Doomsday Device
Deploy like there's no tomorrow!
It's an extremely elaborate way to press Enter.
You flip the two switches, turn the key, lift the lid and push the red button. A red light starts to flash, and once it stops, it goes… [Enter]
Perfect for deploying code.
See also the project page on Hackaday.
What?
The device is actually a USB hub that I bought from Japan. But all it did was play a sound effect. So I modded it to register as a USB keyboard and hit Enter instead of playing the sound. Much better!
How?
Teensy is how. Inside the device, I cut the wire to the built-in speaker (it was red, so it felt a bit like defusing a bomb) and attached it to one of Teensy's analog inputs. I then wrote a simple Arduino sketch that reads the input value (basically the sound sent to the speaker) and hits [Enter] at what would've been the end of the explosion. That's also right when the light stops flashing. Makes for good suspense.
Why?
I could't think of a single reason not to.
Where can I…
They're unfortunately sold out and very hard to find. They were made by Taro Shooten, two Japanese guys who make handmade toys. I got hold of mine from the Japanese Amazon, but it was the last one they had, and I haven't seen it anywhere else. Maybe try Ebay?
The publisher of the thing is Cube Works. They have more information and a slick video of the device on this page (select Taro Shooten and scroll down).