Technical problems can often be solved by creativity and resourcefulness.

In this story, a man received a call for help from his artist friend.

His friend couldn’t power critical equipment that was needed before the opening show that evening.

A frantic brainstorming session led to an unexpected and slightly ridiculous workaround.

Do you think it worked? Check out the full story below…

MacGyver support line, how can I help you?

My friend reminded me of this story today which I’d completely forgotten about.

But I think it’s pretty funny.

My friend does art installations for small regional towns.

They’ll go in and make artwork about the town that’s then projected into a local landmark or grain silo.

This man received a call from his friend, asking for help with a voltage problem.

He rings me one day in a bit of a pickle to see if I can help. He needs to run a device on 5v.

He only has 12v coming out of the devices and 240v mains power.

It’s a regional town late in the afternoon, and tonight is the opening show.

All the shops are shut, and he doesn’t have a charger.

He has USB cables, but nothing he can plug them into.

He started thinking of possible solutions.

He asks me if there’s a way to safely drop 12v to 5v to run the equipment.

I start thinking about resistor bridges, diodes to drop the voltage, and where he might salvage these things from.

I’m going all Apollo 13 in my head. Then, I ask him if he has a USB charger in his car.

He does!

He advised his friend to run the 12v into the charger of his car.

So I tell him to strip a couple of wires, run 12v from them into the charger.

He dismantles the charger and twists the wires to the contacts, covering then with electrical tape.

He turns it on and we now have 5v coming out the charger.

The show is saved and opening night goes ahead.

Everything worked out well that night!

He said that he eventually got the right bits and did the job properly.

But he was very tempted to leave it sure to how funny a hack it was.

MacGyver would have been very proud that day.

Let’s read the reactions of other people to this story.

Here’s a similar experience.

This one likes the MacGyver reference.

This user is quite confused about the local terms.

And finally, here’s another question.

The difference between disaster and success is a creative solution using the tools you have on hand.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.