Gadgetory

hello and welcome to see nuts the fix the show about do-it-yourself tech and how to's I'm Sharon Profis and i'm eric franklin and up ahead we have some great tips to help you get prepped for the holidays including a couple of DIYs for those of you who want to make a unique gift for someone or you know if you want to keep it yourself you can do that too but first we show you how to use your smartphone to send a personalized holiday greeting there are regular holiday cards and then there are nfc-enabled holiday cards with this DIY I'll show you how to create a holiday card that launches a video when you tap it with an Android smartphone the first thing we need to do is record that video greeting so to do that I'll launch a webcam recording program on my computer and record a short holiday greeting hey guys I just want to wish you happy holidays and a happy new year so now that I have my video recorded i'm going to upload it to my youtube account and make sure that it's unlisted that way only the people who receive this card can view the video it won't be searchable under regular youtube search and within a few minutes it should be uploaded to my channel and i should have a link to that video at this point what i need to do is program this NFC tag so that when it's tapped with an android phone that holiday greeting video launches immediately right now this only works for android phones since apple has locked the iphone 6 and 6 plus as NFC capability to only work with Apple pay so for this I'll use trigger which is a free app for Android I'll hit the plus sign to create a new task and select NFC hit next and then done now we'll create the task so we'll hit next again hit the plus sign to create a task and then choose open a URL hit next and in this window will type in the URL for the video that I just uploaded then I'll hit add to task hit next and now I'll grab my NFC tag and hold it to the back of my phone so that it writes that action to the tag and it's done the last thing we need to do is adhere the NFC tag to my greeting card and these are great because they're actually adhesive I got a pack of 12 for about fourteen dollars I'll just peel the back off and put it right on the greeting card just like that now in my recipient receives this card they'll see this little android logo and when they tag it they'll get a little video surprise hey guys I just want to wish you happy holidays and a happy new year if this is something you want to do with a lot of family and friends this year consider getting a pack of NFC tags happy holidays I really like that very unique and it's really geeky to all right it's time for a quick break and when we come back we've got a bright idea that'll only cost you 20 bucks to make you welcome back in our next segment we'll show you how to make the most of items already laying around your house and if you don't have them you can easily find them at your local hardware store donna bell has a DIY that'll show you how to add accent lighting for just about any place that needs it sometimes the most thoughtful gift is the one that you make yourself for a gift that anyone will enjoy but takes a bit of nerdy electronics skill to make I'm going to show you how to make your own candle flicker LED tilt lamp this is based off of David backers design for the dry lumpy ax from my version we're going to use a glass jar some copper wire some stranded wire a candle flicker LED cr2032 watch battery watch battery holder and a tilt switch this is the real secret ingredient hear these things are a lot of fun to use so from 20 bucks you can get enough of these supplies to make about three or four these lamps to start things off we're going to take a length of copper wire and we're going to mold it around into a u-shape around the back of the battery holder here the next step is we're going to solder the battery holder onto the wire finally we're going to flip it over and that negative terminal that's on the other side we're going to solder some stranded wire to that and then just leave it alone all right give it a little tug make sure it's nice and secure all right that looks good so that's going to get our power everywhere it needs to go next up we've got the tilt switch my favorite little switch we're going to take one leg we're going to bend it down we're in a wire this end so that the circuit will turn on when the jar is turned upside down find the place midway up on one of the copper wires and give it a snip now solder one of the two feet to the bottom of the clip section then take the other foot and solder it to the length of copper that you just clipped off alright it's working now we can solder on the LED take the longer the two leads from the LED and wrap it around the copper wire coming from the tilt switch that's going to be our positive side then wrap the other lead around the opposite side slaughter both of them in place and clip off any extra wire now that the LED is there to hold the shape well go back up to the battery holder and take the stranded wire from the negative terminal and use the exposed bit to wrap around the copper that's opposite from the tilt switch and then solder that down with that done clip away that copper that connects the negative side to the positive terminals and now you have a complete circuit now for the very last step we're going to mount it inside the jar to do that we're going to super glue it down to the jar lid now we're going to use a big heaping glob of superglue not just because it's going to hold it in place better because it's going to act as an insulator and keep the circuit from interacting with the metal the lid alright now that we've got everything glued in place you notice we have this extra length of copper here on the bottom we can either just clip that off so it'll fit in the jar or you can have some fun with it you can bend them around make some interesting designs just make sure the ends of those copper pieces don't touch each other all right now let's give it a test let's pop in a watch battery pay close attention to which size positive and which size negative all right let's screw this into the jar give it a test boom so there you go now you've made your very own LED tilt lamp a very simple design easy project for beginners I really like this got back candle flicker LED in there to give it a cool vibe nice gift for kids to makes a great night light or make a bunch of them to have around the house they're inexpensive to make have fun with it now depending on Alfie use those LED lamps you might get about five days of continuous use however if you use them off and on they might last for about a month nice yeah now if you plan on spending some time in the kitchen this holiday season cooking for friends and family we have a DIY accessory for your tablet that might make things a little bit easier hey guys you know what the holiday season right upon us you're probably gonna be doing a lot more cooking than you normally would you know when I cook I like to have a tablet nearby so I can see my recipes but not every tablet stand is really conducive to kitchen cooking you know there's flour flying everywhere there's spices going every which way who knows so what you can do is you can build your own DIY tablet stand for a low price and it's going to look a little bit more appropriate in the kitchen so here's what you're gonna need first you'll want a cutting board like so a kid's triangle shaped wooden block a wooden scrabble towel holder and some wood glue so here's what you're going to do first you're gonna take your cutting board now you can stain it you can paint your cutting board if you want I'm going to go for the raw natural look I really like the natural look and feel of this one also I'm a little lazy so you're going to take the board you're going to make sure first that your tablet will actually fit on the board you want it to be as why and as tall as your tablet so my tablet is about nine and a half inches tall and about seven and a half inches wide so my cutting board thankfully is eight and a half inches wide and it's about a foot tall you're gonna take your scrabble tile holder you want to make sure first that you know the size of the canals aren't blocked if they're block your tablet won't actually be able to fit in there so to make sure those aren't blocked the wooden older ones are better for that you're going to take that you can apply one stream to the back of the towel holder so we're going to apply that to the bottom of the cutting board when a center as best as possible and leave about a centimeter of space okay now that that's drive going to move on to the next step which is to use the basic kids building block you don't have either of those you can go to the hardware store and get a piece of wood cut for really cheap one thing you want to make sure is that it's at least at a 40-degree angle you know if you want this tablet to sit higher you might want to go higher than 50 or 60 also you want to make sure the block is at least three inches tall okay now we're going to apply one stream of wood glue to the longest side here right in the middle like this okay let's check to see if everything's dried feels pretty secure to me let's try it out there's a tablet stand right there that's less than twenty dollars you can pay more or less that's pretty good deal for a tablet Stan let's try it out alright there's a recipe right there you can put it horizontally of course of course you can put it vertically boom it's very simple way to build a tablet stand now you're gonna be cooking a lot this holiday season what better way to do that then with a tablet right at your fingertips and a nice appropriate looking stand awesome since you gave me my tablet stand I've been using it in the kitchen and it is super helpful it really is isn't it yes thank you I'm glad you like it that's it for this week's show thank you guys so much for watching if you want to reach out to us you can reach us at the fix at cnet com you can also reach me on twitter i'm at Lido pool and i'm at sharon propus see you next time guys right here on the fix you