A TV-B-Gone is a small device that turns off most televisions. It’s handy for dining out, except everyone gives you funny looks while you use it, so I decided to embed it in a hooded sweatshirt. I made a switch by using the metal zipper pull. When it bridges the space between the two pads of conductive thread, the device is activated. Essentially all I have to do is zip my hoodie up or down to turn TVs around me off. I made an instructable so you can see how I worked with the conductive thread.
18 thoughts on “TV-B-Gone Hoodie and Zipper Switch”
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I’m sorry, but this isn’t cool and doesn’t sit well with me. If you don’t want to eat at a restaurant with the TV on, don’t go to a restaurant with a TV! If you can’t ask for them to turn it off then you don’t have the right to secretly turn it off yourself. I can’t imagine a scenario where it’s appropriate or justified to go around secretly turning off other people’s TV’s. If you’re in a store where they sell TV’s, then people interested in buying one are going to need to know what they look and sound like. Seriously, get over it or go eat at a different restaurant. For the record, I don’t like eating at places where there’s a TV blaring either – so I don’t go there!
From a purely design standpoint, the stitches look out of place (maybe placing dummy stitches on the other side would make them blend in?) and I wouldn’t be wild about my boob flashing every time I zipped up my sweatshirt.
I think there might be a much less annoying and more clever use of conductive thread…
I agree with the first commenter. This seems unethical, sneaky, subversive, and mean. Why don’t you use your creativity and brainpower for something productive? I don’t think ideas like this belong on Craftzine.
I think its genius! I never would’ve thought of hiding it like that. The world needs less TVs, thats for sure.
i think this is a brilliant idea and that more of us should be shutting off the tvs around us. SO many restaurants have them now-adays, even high class restaurants and they are so frustrating!
Asking staff to turn them off is not an option, these places seem to think that shutting off an idiot box is an insult and ruins their ‘ambiance’. How a television is ‘ambiance’ is beyond me!
I think your hoodie looks great and you have a very clever idea!
I agree with the comment that projects like this don’t belong on Craftzine. It’s obnoxious and rude and there are many, MANY ways you can avoid eating in a restaurant with a TV if it bothers you so much and you can’t get over it. I subscribe to Craft and I really enjoy it, but I hope nothing like this ever makes it into the magazine.
I think this belongs in craftzine because it is a craft. However, I absolutely disagree with using it to turn off televisions that aren’t yours. I can’t think of anything more pretentious than deciding you know best for everyone in the restaurant and turning off the tvs for them. For the last time: television is just a form of technology. Opposing it is like opposing the telephone or email or the internet or electricity. It just makes it look like you don’t know how to use it in a way that is acceptable to you.
Oh, yes. Turn them off. Turn them ALL off. This is a brilliant idea.
There is no bigger waste of time and electricity than the television. Restaurants put TVs in their establishments for three reasons that I can think of: To draw in people who have no imaginations, to draw in people who want to anesthetize their children during the meal, and to encourage people to eat mindlessly, so that they are less likely to notice the mediocrity of what they’re eating, and so that they sit longer and eat more. LOOK around at the people (yourself included) watching TV in a resturant sometime.
And, for the record, I generally do NOT go to resturants with TVs, but the choice of resturants is not always mine. I also don’t use my TV-B-Gone on EVERY resturant television I encounter, and usually, I just lower the volume a bit so that my family can still have a conversation.
TV sucks. Just face it.
How about this gets tested on any televisions that happen to be showing MAKE TV?
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