cmos-lizard

I made this cmos 40106 based noisemaker as a dubsiren or something. It has 1 oscillator and 2 LFOs. I didn´t have any plans when i started just a 40106 chip and some components. First i built a simple squarewave osc from 1/6 of the chip ran it through pulsewidht modulator (again 1/6 of 40106) with Lfo (1/6)

Then i added second lfo with led and ldr for pitch modulation. The best part was "starve" pot ->just a 10k pot in series with battery + to ic pin 14. Some really crazy sounds can be made with playing with this pot. Here is a schematic of the oscs and lfos

The component values are what i happened to have so try different values for the results you like. Add more buttons, switches etc. for more playability (only 1 button in the schematic for output) for example i did a powercut button (normally closed) with cap in parallel (47 uF)

work in progress videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Obpgbwqqg0 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lUz9t-jzKM and a video of the finished piece http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF3NOiu0AUY

here is a picture of the finished piece.

Cardboard pcb and recycled parts

Cardboard pcb and recycled components

The idea for making electronic projects on cardboard came from Ciat Lonbardes paper circuits. I had used veroboard previously. But it was a bit difficult to change more complicated designs to work on veroboard. Also making pcb:s at home seemed complicated with all chemicals, UV-lamps etc. Cardboard may not be the most sturdy material, but it is cheap, always available, environment friendly and it works. I also have a pretty good collection of circuit boards from broken equipment. A lot of components (resistors, caps, transistors etc.) can be recycled from these. So using cardboard pcb and recycled components you can build electronic projects at home more environment friendly and you don’t need to spend any money on the parts. (Of course some parts are a bit difficult to find from random broken equipment.)

1. you can print picture of the pcb you want on paper and then glue it on a piece of cardboard. Or design your own circuit by drawing it. Postcards can easily be used as material.

2.poke holes for the components with a needle or other sharp object.

Top wiew of my wp-20 board.

3. insert the components and solder them according your pcb design. In most cases components reach each other with no jumper wire. But when using recycled components the pin are often cut bit too short so you might need jumper with them.
Bottom wiew of my wp-20 board

4. because device made on cardboard may be damaged easily. Protect it with proper housing.

WP-20 sound effects synthesizer

I have been building some noisemakers using cardboard as pcb. It´s a nice material for building electronic projects at home because: 1. everybody may not have the needed equipment to make "real" pcb:s 2. every one has a piece of cardboard laying around. 3. It is cheap and easy. This is my latest creation on cardboard pcb. It´s wp-20 sound effects synth. It was very nice to do on cardboard because there was enough spce between components in the original pcb design.

I did´t use the original noise source with 18v but i built a simple 9v noise generator. I left q1, r1, c3 unconnected to the board. here is the noise circuit.

output of the noise generator was connected to r3 through 50k resistor.

Testing wp-20 video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEDE96ycAec

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dol7MjE7g8M

link to music from outer space wp-20 page:

http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth/WP20/WP20_PG1.html

I made a sub oscillator for my wp-20. It is based on cd4040 ripple counter it uses the vco squarewave (before the 100k resistor marked R8 in the original wp20 schematics) as clock input and divides it. Six switches (from 1 octave down to 6 octave down) select the harmonics to vcf-vca. The circuit is quite simple the component values may be tweaked to get better performance. I used components that I happened to have so some different values might work better but these seem to work ok. (sub osc out is connected to ic 2b pin 6 through a 100k resistor like the vco) here is a picture of the circuit

Stereo tapedeck oscillator

This is a easy and quick way to make a feedback oscillator from old tapedeck. You just need to connect the rec input with output.

You can do it by soldering wires between the in and out lines (r in to r ou and l in to l out) Most homestereo tape players use rca connectors and you can use them as your outputs. You can also do this without soldering if you have proper wires to do the connections ( few rca wires and Y shaped rca adaptor for output from feedbackloop). Press rec/play to get it working. Frequency of the oscillator is adjusted by turning the tapedecks rec level knobs. The singnal is quite strong so I do not recommend you to plug this to your most expensive or fragile sound gear.

Mobile experimental electronics laboratorium

This is a work in progress, we are just starting. For years we have been talking about a mobile experimental electronics platform, that we could drive anywhere. Now we have a solid base for that.

We were just given an electric car, Elcat. Our aim is to integrate mobile experimeltal electronics laboratory and facilities to play electronic sounds straight from the van. Idea is to integrate all essential features inside the van, so we just drive it anywhere we want to show our stuff.



Project will propably advance quite slowly. The first obstacle on our way are the batteryes. The ones we have are in a pretty bad shape, and new set will cost us about 1000-4000 euros. Beside that we will have to pay quite a lot of money to get the car registered. Among other things we will have to pay DIESELL TAX for not using gas.

well project is advancing slowly, we should be getting the car toed to Vallila in couple of days, and after that we will start measuring, planning and of course we must start to gather money for this financially disasterous project.

Mc-7 progress

I´ve been working with my MC-7 for some time now and here is picture of it now

From left to right:

Pulse outputs module with led indicators: Four rhythm pulses (hi-hat, bassdm, snare, extra pulse : mirror to accomp Two from keypress : 1 note and second note: pulse depends on the chosen instrument. Second note output also follows accompaniment line when accompaniments are on.

Simple Low-pass Filter circuit (same as in music from outer space wsg)

36 point patch bay: made from amphenol connectors ( it is really easy to use with alligatorclips.)

Switch panel for cutting or connecting some original features: nice to redirect some signals in there.

Still plenty of work to be done. Next module will be some bending controls that are just too good to be left only for the patch bay. Also every time i open the keyboard and do some testing with the circuit board I end up soldering new wires to new points on the board... maybe i should add one 12 point amphenol to the patch bay.

MC-7 keyboard

I found a nice keyboard from flea market yesterday. It was not in very good condition-> the drum section was completely silent. I opened it and found that some components were loose because of bad soldering work. After soldering these properly the drums started working.
The sounds of this keyboard are simple but very nice. All keyboard instruments are quite raw sounding squarewave. Drum sounds are short noise (hi-hat), smooth click (bass drum), and sharper click (snare).

Original features:
2 notes polyphony (monophonic if accompaniments are on)

Cotrol panel from left to right:

-power on/off switch
-accomp volume 4 way switch – this controls only volume of the drums not the accompaniment bass line
-master volume 4 way switch

Rhythm section:
-8 preset rhythms: disco, march, rock, waltz, pops, 16 beat, rhumba, bossanova
-accomp on/off button: the accompaniments are very simple and funny
-tempo buttons: slow and fast
-synchro button
-start button
-stop button

Orchestra section:
-8 preset instruments: clarinet, violin, oboe, piano, elec guitar, xylophone, harpsichord, mandolin
-sustain button
-vibrato button
-demo button

record section:
-record button: 28 notes
-play/stop button

Custom drummer section:
-3 drum pads: bass drum, snare, hi-hat
-program button: 16 steps
-play/space button

After some testing I found out that each of the three drum sounds are triggered from individual pins from the ic. There is also a fourth trigger pulse witch was unused in this model. I soldered wires from all 4 pins. Now I have 4 trigger output lines that follow the preset rhythms and three of them (bass drum, hi-hat and snare trigger signals) are programmable for 16 step sequences. These wires can be connected to various points on the pcb, when 1 or more of them are routed to the pins that read the buttons/keyboard you get many strange rhythmical bleeps and other crazy features like “bouncing” tempo and “random” notes and chords played.
I also found the output pins for keyboard sounds and the accompaniment sounds, these can be connected to various points on the pcb to change and modulate the sounds in many ways.Because the many possibilities of expanding the features of this keyboard I decided to build an extension case to fit the new controls, outputs, patch bay etc. So many ideas: adding a low pass filter circuit, new drum sound circuits to use with the trigger signals, joystick controller for some features, new buttons, switches and a patch bay…. a lot of decisions to make.

Well now I addad few wires (30 and counting) to different points on the pcb. All of these will be going to a patch bay so there is quite many possibilities to change the sounds and functions of the keyboard. Here is a picture.

The new wires from the pcb are soldered to a piece of stripboard so it will be easier to direct them to different controls and patch bay.

After some thinking and going through materials at our studio. I found the perfect extension case. It seems that I´m going for a modular design with this one. :)

Here is mc-7 posing with the extension case. I cut some new panels from red plastic. The alumnium panels were on the case.