That's Edgy Man

One of Eli's friends has adopted as his personal catch phrase "That's Edgy Man".  He really came into ownership of it at a church camp this summer.  So, when Eli was invited to his birthday party he knew just the gift to make for him, an Edgy Button.

So, on a Friday night when the girls were off at a church lock-in, we put on our Maker hats and got to work.

The first thought was that a Staples Easy Button would be the perfect starting point.  Wonder if anyone's managed to change the message it says.  Off to Instructables.com we go.  Doesn't look like it but there are several people who have replaced the internal guts so we went that route.


First stop, Staples to get an Easy Button to see how much room we had to work with.  If anyone's curious, this is what the inside of your Easy Button looks like.

 

The black dot in the top left is the "brain" of the whole operation and looks fairly impenetrable and unmodifiable.

I found the voice module we needed on Amazon.  Prime shipping could have it to me by Sunday, but we didn't have that kind of time.  Time to check and see if Radio Shack happens to have what we need.

Surprise surprise, they do (no seriously, I was shocked when we walked in, they asked if they could help, I told them what I was looking for and they said, we used to, yup, right here)..  For those not in the know, Radio Shack used to be a tinker's goto spot.  Emphasis on used to be.  Now they mostly sell popular electronics, phone accessories, etc.  Not so much for us tinkerers.  Tinkerers in Little Rock are pretty much in a black hole as far as sourcing stuff.  Honestly that's probably a good thing for my wallet.

Now it's time to break out the Dremal and soldering iron and so some adjusting.

I didn't take too many "in progress" pictures unfortunately.  But we had to (desolder the existing circuit board, enlarge the battery "cage" since the new voice module runs off of a 9 volt, adjust the button to allow the bigger internal button to be pushed, adjust the button to fit around the battery, grind off the raised "Easy" from the button).

Use a paint pen to add EDGY to the top and voila, you've got an Edgy Button.

Reports are that he loved it!