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boolean263 — Networked fridge magnets
Published: 2006-10-13 01:43:13 +0000 UTC; Views: 695; Favourites: 0; Downloads: 4
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Description
The business of my employer is home networking. From time to time, we've had to try and plan out various home network topologies (ie, what's plugged into what), and our only tool was a whiteboard. It was a bit annoying to have to draw the various devices, particularly when we went to move them, and had to erase and re-draw them.Since one of our whiteboards is magnetic, I got the brilliant idea of creating magnets of the various networking devices, that we could pick up and move around at will. I started a few months ago with what you see here, planning on coming back later and making more devices (just the most important ones: the computers!), but I never got that far. The need for these hasn't resurfaced since I made them, so I'm just going to take them to work as fridge magnets instead. But I wanted to post them here first.
Clockwise from the left is one of our home server products, an ethernet camera, a router, a network-attached "digital media appliance" with TV and stereo system, and another ethernet camera. The antennas are pieces of paperclip, which should give a sense of scale. I didn't want to make them too big, because I didn't want to use up all my good Fimo on something for work. d: Of course, that brought me right back to the bane of my existence, my sausage-like fingers which are ill-suited for the detail work I continually try to coerce them into doing. I think things turned out well overall though. The dots are barely the size of a pin head, but I was able to get them fairly uniform in shape and size. The logo on the server was a challenge, especially the hair-thin circle on the outside, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Having said that, the scale of work is small enough that it's difficult to work on larger pieces without deforming them, as evidenced by warpage on the router and speakers.
The cameras are so tiny that the magnets on their backs are probably too small and weak to hold anything but themselves against the fridge. But the other three are plenty big enough to hold up a printout of an email joke or a pizza flyer, so they should serve their new purpose adequately.
Materials: Fimo Soft, Fimo Classic, pieces of #1 paper clips, strips of scissorable fridge magnet
Time: about 40 minutes, not counting curing time
Did I mention that I'm a geek?
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Comments: 10
That's quite a bit of detail! And they didn't take you long at all! How big's the TV? What did your colleagues think?
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It's a 35" flatscreen LCD TV. (: Seriously, the screen is about 5cm wide and three tall. My coworkers thought they were cute, but didn't really comment much on them that I heard. They like them, and that's the important part. (:
I'm happy with the little details overall, like how small I was able to get the indicator lights, and how recognizable I was able to make our logo (particularly since the outer ring is about as fine as a human hair). The effect is kind of ruined by having mooshed in the bottom of our server (you can't tell that from this picture, but it's deformed) and one of the speakers, but such is life. (:
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Hee, thanks (: I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it was an extension of something I saw before. My driving school had Matchbox cars on magnets, so they could show us various driving situations on their whiteboard.
It was still fun to make though. (:
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Hey, that's my router! 
That blue box hiding under my sister's bed that refused me internet for a day!
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Well, no wonder it didn't work! Fimo doesn't make a very good semiconductor. But rest assured that, stuck to our fridge, it can eat no more packets. (:
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