Monday, May 21, 2012

Where was that?

Its a joke.



This is my bookmark list.
I hope it inspires you! 
Posted by at 0 comments

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Siren Synth: Calling you to your demise.


I went to my local Dollar Tree, on the lookout for noise making toys. Im not sure if you know this, but everything at a dollar tree is one dollar or less. I got four of these guys.


They are advertised as walkie talkies, and also make mention of awesome sounds... this is no walkie talkie, nor does it even make more than one sound..... Just one siren swinging in and out.... kinda like a police siren...
I had recently broken a vintage analog kids keyboard and was very bummed about it. I realized what i could make when i bent the first siren.....

 As you can see from the photo above, bending it was pretty simple. There is one more bend that is not labeled. its on the top of the unlabled resistor on the left. It adds more pitch down. the other resistor, the one thats labeled, gives you the smaller range of pitch change.

 This guy caught a heck of a striper! lol! 


 This is a nice general overview of the brains of the sirens. ^^
 Theres a 47uf cap on the pot that gives the bend some teeth. i bridged the output with a 1m resistor, not really sure why.
 This is the switch (on the left) that turns on and off both of the sirens... as you can see i have a second switch right next to it to turn on and off the second siren. i basically interrupt the signal from the first switch to the second sirens power.
 Touch contacts are where its at! I use furniture nails, but you can use anything! Drawer pulls, spoons, nuts and blots... any thing that you can affix to your toy and can conduct electricity! 


^^this^^ was VERY interesting to me, a series of resistors
that change the pitch?! There's a bus wire attached to the other side of this white plastic thing
and there are small reed switches underneath... each end of the resistors you see soldered in place here
are connected to one of the reeds. Totally a design worth trying to recreate. 

See the bus wire?


These are the touch contacts. They were painted black and wouldnt conduct electricity very well like that.
I took my fishing hemostats and scraped the teeth over each one a few times, producing nifty stripes.
 This Is it complete! I've painted it put it all together and it works! I was very excited!
Wanna hear what it sounds like? See how it plays? Check it out here!
Posted by at 0 comments

Spaced out circuit bent Barbie Keyboard!


BARBIE?! (lol sorry!)
yes, that's right, I got myself a barbie keyboard!


So I frequent this place off interstate 35 that shall remain nameless, they have lots of good toys there to bend. Usually the price is right, and when i saw this keyboard for 1.99 i jumped on it! It was pretty cool as it was, it has cool drum beats, cool instruments, a pretty generic set of demo songs but a nifty record/playback feature. All and all not a bad grab for two bucks! See that brown tray? Having one of these trays makes it sooo easy to keep track of all your parts especially if you wanna sit in a more comfortable place than the lab! You could probably find one at a goodwill or someplace like that... people donate all kinds of stuff you can re-use!

check it out, this is where i wired all the stuff, you wont see it here but the center wire goes to a switch that turns on and off the pot.

look at the photo above^
The center of the pot goes to the red wire attached to the resistor in the top right of this photo
The one attached to the trimpot goes to one of the outside lugs.
Both of the wires in the photo above go to either outside terminal of the pot. See the trimpot again? One side makes the pitch lower gradually the other side raises the pitch then drops it quickly. Its interesting. 
 
I decided to paint it, As you can see im a big fan of splattering paint around!
Usually when i paint my projects i use that special kind of paint that bonds to plastics. When i need to paint buttons, i stick toothpicks through the cardboard of a soda box still in its box form. It makes for a nice little stand to paint on. Be sure to wear some kind of protective gear on your eyes! I wear glasses and spraypaint is really a pain to get off lenses. Maybe some goggles would do? Also, its always a good idea to paint outside... With some kind of rag on your face so you arent breathing in paint droplets..... 


I brought it inside to dry, probably not the smartest thing to do, but hey, live life on the edge.


This is it complete! Painting projects can really enrich the overall quality of the piece.
Wanna see it in action? Check it out here! GO BARBIE!
Posted by at 0 comments

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Alphabet Zoo 2


So yesterday i posted about the alphabet zoo toy i bent, gave you a nice little story about where it came from, now im gonna show you its guts.
Im not really sure how any of my toys actually work, but i just try stuff i know works and every once in a while, i find something cool.
Check it out!

notice the trimpot. It keeps the toy from crashing when you turn the pot all the way down.
also check out that resistor, i heard somewhere that adding them in certain spots will make your circuit more stable
i dont remember how though...... 

The pitch resistor!

Sometimes you gotta snip the battery wires and extend them
That way you can still have power!

Lots of folks will put a switch in here, i dont usually. I bet they work better for making music if you do....

i always forget how to wire these things! In the pic below,
you can see the red wire is on the negative and the black  is on the positive.  The color of the wires is irrelevant. 


If i ever decide to paint this, ill need to wash it well first.

Posted by at 0 comments

Monday, May 14, 2012

Alphabet Zoo!




This is the Alphabet Zoo. A friends dad was going to throw it away cause apparently it had been sitting in dudes backyard for about 3 years. I took the old battery's out and cleaned the terminals which were very corroded. Put in some new batts and fired it up. It sounded great! I took it apart and inspected it to the best of my ability, sure enough i found its pitch resistor!

This one has a 100k pot attached to either side of the pitch resistor I have two switches, one to turn on the pot and another to extend the range of the pitch.




heres a video of it in action! :D

Posted by at 2 comments

Sunday, May 13, 2012

HappyRock Pacman Drum Toy

50 cents at goodwill

so I had this happy rock drum kit that i had bent a while ago as seen >HERE< (just ignore the monotron delay)


I decided to case it in something a bit more playable. I found this plug into the tv style pacman game, four switches on the joystick one on the side, space for a 100k pot and the spst switch to turn the pot on and off, theres even a cool ghost pilot light on the front! Later I decided to put a Photoresistor in it so that it could be a bit more playable, with a switch to turn it on and off!   Check out its sweet action!

All and all its a very complete project, the only thing i goofed was the power switch... When it says its off, its on and vica versa... DOH!

Posted by at 0 comments

YourFaceWhen

If this is your face when you first learned about circuit bending then 
we have something in common.......



 This pic came from here. Some of the things Ill post here will be from some other place, but dont worry, credit will be given where it is due. Ill be posting things I've bent, with photos of how I did it and etc... forgive my poor grammer and stuff, im not big on formality. I learned about bending 9 months ago and have been continuously learning ever since. Electronics can be fun if you have the mind for it or the patience to learn it and circuit bending is a great place to start. If you ever have any questions, you can ask me here, or find me on Facebook.
Posted by at 0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)