Hand Scanner

Some friends and I just threw a huge party with a Dystopian future theme. I wanted to have a hand scanner at the door because biometrics scare the hell out of me. I started out with grand plans involving laptops and real scanners and all sorts of things like that, but as time drew short I resorted to trickery.

We ended up with a stainless steel cylinder (trash can). Atop it was supposed to be a black glass sheet against which palms could be pressed, but I accidentally shattered that while working on it the night before the party. I ended up using some black foam core board with a white palm on it that looked okay.

When someone pressed their palm against it the 'accept' light glowed and a pleasant ding noise was heard. If, however, we were pressing the hidden, remote button they'd be denied. Denial just meant a different bulb and an unpleasant buzzer.

What's funny is I didn't use use any electronics knowledge past what I learned reading The Gadget Book by Harvey Weiss when I was in the second grade. Since then I took three years of electrical engineering, but none of it had half the impact of that silly little book.

I don't know if anyone took a picture of the finished scanner, but I snagged the schematics as penciled on my mimio white board.