We’ve been frankly mystified at the popularity of fidget spinners. After all, we can flip an ink pen around just fine. However, [MakersBox] just sold us on what he calls the geek spinner. The fact that the spinner is actually a PCB and has parts on it, would probably have been cool enough. However, the spinner also has a persistence of vision LED set up and can display 12 characters of text as it spins. Because the board is simple and uses through hole components, it would be a great project for a budding young hacker.

Geek Spinner
http://www.instructables.com/id/Geek-Spinner/

Fidget spinners are fun, and you can find one at about any check-out counter for just a few bucks these days, but what if you could build your own? And it had LEDs? And you could program it to say or show whatever you wanted? If that sounds geeky cool, THIS IS THE PROJECT FOR YOU.

This project uses a programmable 8-bit microcontroller, eight LEDs, and a coin cell. It spins using a standard skateboard bearing, and uses a Hall-effect sensor and a magnet to determine rotation. It is made using beginner-friendly through-hole parts and can be programmed using the Arduino programming environment. Enough talking, let’s get making . . .

Fidget spinners have exploded onto the gadget scene over the past few months — not just in the growth sense of the word, but quite literally. That’s why the US Consumer Product Safety Commission today released guidelines for both manufacturers and consumers on how to have a safe time around fidget spinners, particularly ones that contain metal and / or batteries.

For consumers, the CPSC recommends that fidget spinner users avoid playing with them around their faces or putting them in their mouths. It also recommends not letting children under the age of three play with a fidget spinner. When it comes to battery-operated fidget spinners, the CPSC suggests users should be monitoring the device when it’s charging, specifically noting that one should not charge the toy overnight while they’re sleeping. To be extra safe, the Commission adds that a smoke alarm should be installed, just in case.

Statement from Acting Chairman Ann Marie Buerkle Regarding Fidget Spinners
https://cpsc.gov/about-cpsc/chairman/ann-marie-buerkle/statements/statement-from-acting-chairman-ann-marie-buerkle-1

Hackaday continues to embrace our implacable spinning overlords-of-the-heart.

[zazzazzero] posted a YouTube video showing him fidgeting one of those spinners that had been hooked up to a bass guitar pickup. It makes a rather awesome rumbling sound as the pickup registers the bearings rolling around, and when hooked up to a Digidelay effects pedal he moved it beyond the rumble to more of an industrial growl like a factory hum. He also got interesting sounds by tapping on the spinner with a screwdriver.

Then he switched up to using an iPad audio app called Shaper to modify the resulting sound far beyond what he had before,

Fidget Spinner Drone Music test…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVabxzF_qFk

Three Magnets Make Fidget Spinners Amazing And Only Engineers Will Appreciate This Hack!
http://hackaday.com/2017/06/29/three-magnets-make-fidget-spinners-amazing-and-only-engineers-will-appreciate-this-hack/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Electromagnetic-Fidget-Spinner-Accelerator/