NICEST Car Horn Ever- DIY

Oh, here we go... [courtesy horn] Yes! Thats what I call the courtesy honk I just pushed this custom button And it's two super quick chirps of the horn that are not only friendly sounding but it's intentionally not as loud as a normal horn, so I'm gonna show you how and why I did this and in the process I will explain what this red button does But first I'm gonna pull over. 1.3 million people die in car crashes per year so you really wanna be able to communicate with other drivers if you wanna stay safe but if you think about it, cars only have two built in ways to communicate with each other: you got your turn signal and your horn...[normal horn] and the turn signal is fine but the problem with the horn is that it is so one dimentional is like, if your only tool is a hammer, it is really good at one thing, but it sucks at everything else and I don't know about you, but now that pretty much everybody owns a smartphone, 99% of the time I use my horn I'm not trying to avoid a crash, I'm trying to let the person in front of me know: It's time to stop reading that text they just received And that's the issue. I'm not upset. I just wanna be like: Hey, dude, the light is green. No big deal And that might come as a surprise, because I drive a Jetta But i'm not some hardcore angry road rage tough guy but even this Jetta which has just about the most emasculating horn possible sounds angry when you honk it at a light and if you try to do a nice quick honk it doesn't usually register because it bottoms out too quick so I just push my custom-made courtesy honk button and because it's so non confrontational this will never happen to me and this works for communicating in a lot of situations not just at stoplights like if someone is just sort of drifting in your lane you're not sure if they see you or not but you don't want to use your big horn or if you just want to get someone's attention to tell them something if someone needs to move forward in traffic or in a drive-thru it's nice because you don't want to seem like a jerk as they can look right at you in their rear view mirror You can even use it as a way to say thank you and I kind of feel like there should be a standard feature on all cars so you still have your big horn that you can't miss in the case of an emergency but there should be a smaller button right over here for the courtesy honk but the good news is that as an engineer if something isn't exactly how you want it you just make it exactly how you want it so I've been on Amazon and got one of these Adafruit sound boards for 27 bucks where you can upload sound effects via USB with no programming required and then I got three of these cool horn buttons to trigger the sound effects for seven bucks each so i started on this side by wiring this to my cigarette lighter for power and then I used a 12 to 5 volt power inverter to get me to the right voltage for the sound board which is connected to these buttons to trigger the horn sound effects I dragged and dropped onto there and then coming out of the board we have a 3.5 millimeter audio cable that plugs into a $13 amp to make it loud enough which connects to a 13 dollar PA speaker now that we have all the components my buddy Bob from the YouTube channel I Like To Make Stuff came over and we got to work soldering actually I did all the work while Bob just stroked that magnificent beard of his he also made a video about making a custom horn like this that goes into way more detail so definitely check his out if you're actually planning on doing this. This is intentionally more of a temporary setup but I wanted mine to be a bit more permanent in the dash so with the help of my talented buddy Howard we went to town installing this thing now the buttons were in place we connected them through the dash to the PA speaker rebounder to the frame under the hood. We also installed this beast which is the same type of horn system used on trains and semi-trucks basically there's a compressor that fills an air tank to 120 psi which powers the horn but more on this later and the buttons also light up which makes them look really cool at night. I also added one more sound effect that's powered by this button This is designed to be even one knotch nicer than the courtesy honk if you want to be super chill and grab the attention of a pedestrian who isn't even in a car So that's my pitch to make our roads more pleasant by increasing the vocabulary of the standard car horn and now you can do it yourself which leads me to this final button which is only to be use in extreme situations like when two teenagers are taking their sweet time to cross the street in front of you while fidget spinning I wanna thank audible for their support on this video not only are they the best when it comes to audio books but they've been working with me and supporting my channel for a couple of years now while making this video I listen to the book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and I loved it" Richard Feynman was a genius Nobel Prize winning physicist who chilled with Einstein and helped discover atomic energy but that's not what makes him so interesting this collection of stories from his life made me laugh out loud a bunch of time it starts when he was a kid and used to take apart radios to make homemade burglar alarm and then in college at MIT he used his engineering skills to pull pranks and then he eventually taught himself how to break into safes and use science to pick up on women he had this lifelong fascination with learning but in a practical sense not in a memorize facts from the textbook sense he's just such an intelligent colorful human being so if you want to listen to "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" or any other audio book for free all you have to do is use the link in the description or go to audible.com/markrober Thanks for watching

Channel: Mark Rober

Views: 21,207,953

Rating: 4.81566 out of 5

Keywords: horn, car, car horn, diy, maker, make, custom, pimp my ride, courtesy honk, mark rober, nasa, watermelon, orbeez, nerf gun, i like to make stuff, bob, richard feynman, audible, train horn, semi truck horn, fidget spinner, jetta, car mod, jalopnick

Id: lv8wqnk_TsA

Length: 5min 50sec (350 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ImNotThatIntoYou]

That's a great idea, love the R2D2 sound effect

[u/[deleted]]

It's a nice thought, and I've wanted something like this for years. Too bad I'm lazy

[u/pblood40]

I’m here fighting for my right to beep

[u/Kyanche]

Great! His car has a city horn, and a country horn!

https://youtu.be/vK9mvkRUasI?t=45

[u/Drzhivago138]

I'm more interested in the train horn.

[u/wuZheng]

Nah, full body weight on the horn for texting scum. Light tap for someone who's clearly fallen asleep at the light.

[u/Tdhutchi]

I Miss the pedestrian horn on my ‘14 Volt. Was perfect as a courtesy horn and was in the turn signal stalk.

[u/JermanDomesticMarket]

surely you could also stick your head out the window and say "beep beep" and it would be just as polite

[u/WinchestersFTW]

In Bolivia they had all kinds of horns, it was funny. One made a wolf whistle, and the bus drivers would use it when couples were making out in public near the road.