Here’s a brilliant rube goldberg security camera made out of a camera phone, some homebrew circuits and solenoid relays. When the phone is called, it activates the relays, which tap out the “take picture/send picture” sequence on the phone-keypad, which then takes the pic and sends it off. Added bonus: this thing actually looks sinister. If I were god-emperor of the world, all CCTVs would look this alarming, so every time you were in their scrutiny, you’d get that atavistic taste of being surveilled.
The idea is to replace your fingers with the relays and your brain with a microcontroller. Depending on how complex your phone is, i.e. number of different keys to press in order to send a picture, choose your microcontroller accordingly.My setup uses four outputs (four different keys on the phone) and one input on the microcontroller. It allows me to send a SMS text message (or call) to my hacked phone and it then cycles through the code, clicking its way through the menus, taking photos and returning them to me.
(via Geekologie)