School is back in session shortly for most college students.  While you could be an average Joe and and buy all your back to school goods, you’ll be far better off building your own DIY projects to pimp your bland dorm room.  These fantastic tutorials will walk you through creating custom, outstanding dorm rooms to show off your DIY skill.

Incredible Lighting:

1. The Emergency Party Button will help make friends quickly.
2. How to Display Audio as Light (Make LEDs Flash to Music)
3. Make Custom RGB Mood Lights
4. DIY Abilight for your PC, TV and more
5. Need more inspiration? See all of our LED and Light projects.

DIY Security:

1. How to Use RFID to Protect your Beer, Valuables
2. DIY Motion Sensing Laptop Security Cam
3. Build your own Laser Security System
4. RFID Door Lock Mechanism
5. All of our security projects

Save Money:

1. DIY Continuous Ink Printer = Unlimited Free Printing
2. Get Free Internet by Making a Wifi Repeater
3. Build Your Own Open-Source DVR

Gaming Hacks:

1. Rapid Fire Mods Make you the Halo King
2. Burn copies of PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360
3. Play all your favorite NES games online, and emulate the Wii and other consoles.
4. Select a console from the categories on the right for more.

Custom Transport:

1. For the outgoing types:  Setup and make your own custom transportation like the Enicycle and iShoes.
2. Video Tutorial: Build your own Self-Balancing Segway
3. Build a Speedy Motorized Shopping Cart

DIY Entertainment:

1. Make your own HD Projector (another version)
2. Stylish High Quality DIY iPod and iPhone Speakers
3. Stream any Video to your PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii
4. DIY Wireless Music Remote

Extra Awesome!

If you’re ready to go all out and stand out you need to go the extra mile:

• Beer Launching Fridge
• iPhone Controlled USB Missile Launcher
• Shut Down your PC with a Cell Phone

Helpful Tips:

1. Hack College always has plenty of great tips to help you survive the year.
2. Check out this fantastic dorm layout and use of space for inspiration
3. Put all those extra beer bottles to good use. (another option)
4. Access your PC from Anywhere on Campus for Free

As always, be sure to subscribe for free to receive our hacks for daily.  Be sure to send in your projects and earn cash too!

This is a fantastic, unique project which uses RFID tagged pictures to select and play album. The system utilizes the easy to use arduino microcontroller platform along with an RFID reader and is also ethernet enabled. See more pics and details:

When a tag (album picture) is placed over the tag, a signal is processed by the arduino and sent over ethernet to a database. This database then looks up the tag and matches it with the corresponding album and begins to play the selected music.

The author has posted a nice write up for the Arduino mp3 build on his site where he goes into further detail about the project specs. Check out our entire database of audio and arduino projects for your next build and project inspiration.

Learn how to create your own RFID locking mechanism using the Parallax RFID module.  If you’re unfamiliar with RFID, don’t miss our comprehensive RFID tutorial.  The project uses the rather old school Basic Stamp instead of the Arduino but it gets the job done.  When it’s completed, the door looks stock on the outside but a high tech lock is mounted inside.

• Use RFID to Protect your Beer, Valuables
• DIY Keypad Security System using Arduino
• DIY Dorm Project – Beer Launching Fridge