5 Unexpected Uses For Your Old DVD Or CD Player

These days, a movie night usually involves cuddling up on the couch, turning on Netflix, and picking another rom-com movie from its list of never-ending shows. However, before the age of streaming services, movie nights usually meant gathering in front of the DVD player and physically sorting through your stack of DVDs to choose one that sounded good enough for that evening. It's arguably a whole other experience. 

Unfortunately, CD/DVD players are a rare sight in living rooms these days. Your parents likely removed them when the DVD player had trouble reading Blu-ray discs or when the CD player started skipping tracks. But while they may no longer be reliable for their original purposes, you can actually reuse these old pieces of electronics for something else instead of letting them collect dust in the attic. We'll share with you five cool things you can make out of old CD/DVD players.

If you make and etch your own PCB at home, then you know the struggle of having to constantly shake the board while in the etching solution. It's arguably one of the most boring tasks in the entire etching process, and you wish you could do something more productive than agitating the solution. With a CD/DVD player, however, you won't have to do the agitation yourself — you can just build a PCB shaker from your old player.

The PCB shaker is made out of the CD/DVD player's disc tray (with its motor ejection mechanism still attached). Just as its name suggests, the PCB shaker continuously shakes the PCB back and forth to agitate the solution and wash off the unwanted copper from your board. It does this with the help of an Arduino Uno and motor shield. The Uno microcontroller unit is programmed to simply run the disc tray's motor forward and backward repeatedly. This then retracts and ejects the tray, mimicking the shaking motion. A right-sized container for the etching solution is placed on the tray, where you can drop your PCB.

To make this project yourself, you'll need any old CD/DVD player, an Arduino Uno board, Adafruit motor shield, 5V power supply, etching solution container, and some wood for the base of the disc tray.

As a crafter, one of the tools you'll definitely want in your craft room is a CNC laser engraver. This will let you engrave custom designs on wooden coasters, leather wallets, acrylic keychains, and other projects. A CNC laser engraver, however, isn't exactly the cheapest thing around, and you'll be looking at spending at least $150. But if you have two old CD/DVD players, you can build a mini CNC laser engraver for your craft room instead.

This DIY mini CNC engraver uses the stepper motors extracted from the CD/DVD players' laser assembly. These motors are then turned into the CNC engraver's work bed motor, which moves the work bed back and forth. Then the laser motor slides the laser to and fro. The motors are paired with three other main components: an off-the-shelf 250 mW laser module, an Arduino Uno, and an Arduino-compatible CNC shield. 

The laser module, as you've probably already guessed, is the laser that cuts through the materials and engraves your designs. The Uno and CNC shield, on the other hand, serves as the brain of the system. An open-source CNC milling controller software made for Arduino, called the Grlb, is uploaded to the microcontroller unit and runs the motor controls. To send the design to the Arduino, you'll also need a companion software on your PC, LaserGRBL. Simply import your image of choice to LaserGRBL, adjust the size, and let your Arduino handle the rest.

When you think about it, reusing a CD/DVD player as photography equipment seems pretty strange. However, if you understand how CD/DVD players work and what their primary parts are, you'll know they have a specific component that's actually perfect for taking photos: the lens in the laser assembly. It's designed in a way that makes it a handy macro lens for your mobile phones.

To extract the lens from your old CD/DVD player, carefully dismantle the housing using a screwdriver. Once you have the housing removed, you'll immediately see the lens. It typically sits in a black casing positioned near the center of the disc tray. Take apart the laser assembly until you can remove the lens. Make sure to be delicate with the lens when scraping off the glue surrounding it.

With the lens on hand, it's time to stick it over your phone camera. First, wipe off both your camera lens and the CD/DVD player lens. Then, use a Blu Tack or adhesion painter's tape with a hole punched into it to attach the CD/DVD player lens to your smartphone. If you have multiple cameras on your phone, open your camera app and try blocking each of the cameras to see which is your main one. Stick the macro lens there. Finally, go up close to your subjects and take some cool photos.

CD/DVD players can do more than just provide entertainment — they can provide electricity, too. These players come equipped with some handy DC motors, and if you know a thing or two about DC motors, it's that they can generate a small amount of power when continuously spun. This makes them a great source of power for small electronics you may have lying around.

To build this project, first disassemble your old CD/DVD player, focusing specifically on the circuitry in the disc drive. You'll see two motors here. Use the one with the gears attached to it. Then, with some pieces of screws, metal plates, and small plastic tubes, create a hand crank for the gear. This will make it easier to rotate the motor than using your bare hands to spin the gears. Now, test out your generator by connecting an LED to the wires of the motor and then spinning the hand crank as fast as you can. You'll immediately notice the LED blinking, meaning it's drawing power from the motor.

You can try powering other electronics as well. For instance, connect another motor to your motor-turned-generator and watch the other motor spin. If you have some cell batteries, you can also try charging them with this generator. To really up the practicality of your hand crank generator, use a USB connector and have the motor charge a small cellphone.

If you're a biology geek who enjoys looking at things through a microscope, then you'll be glad to know you can easily build a DIY microscope with an old CD/DVD player and compact camera. The eyepiece that you look through and the lens that magnifies the subject both come from the compact camera. The old CD/DVD player, on the other hand, provides the disk drive assembly, which then becomes the coarse adjustment mechanism (the part of the microscope that brings the body tube up and down). 

A plastic pipe can be used for the body tube connecting the eyepiece and the magnifying lens. You'll also need a transparent box to serve as the platform for the specimen and a flashlight to illuminate it. Zip ties can be used to secure the body tube to the disk drive assembly. You might also want a lens holder for the eyepiece and black sandpaper to remove the glare inside the body tube.

To operate the DIY microscope, simply shine the flashlight at the bottom of the transparent box, place your specimen on the stage, and twist the threaded rod in the disk drive assembly to raise or lower the body tube. Then, go ahead and check out your subject through the eyepiece. Since you'll be doing a lot of disassembling in this project, it's a good idea to come prepared with some Milwaukee tools for DIY projects, especially the precision screwdrivers and mini grinder.