3 314 package, light toy, sk-5

A package if new components came in the mail today from Tayda Electronics. It contained a a stock of resisters and capacitors and a large range of all sorts of things.

Enough capacitors and resistors to last a lifetime.

 Greencaps for Stanes' Sovtek Bigmuff fuzz.

 Here are two kinds of knobs from Tayda Electronics (Left the right): Packaged Boss Style Silver Top (Like it was when packaged, these were 39c each), The same knob again unpackaged, The right two knobs are Davies 1510 Clones, Cream and Black.

 1/4'' Jacks for the mixer project.

386 and LED driver chips in their respective spongeys.

Potentiometers for the mixer.

3DPT foot-switch for the Sovtek Muff. Quite nice quality.

Various switches for different things.
I got to making Bel a little light toy on request, The circuit is simple; A battery that charges two capacitors in parallel, then is discharged when a button is pressed. Depending on which button is pressed the RGB LED changed colour. Different combinations of pressing buttons give different effects. (the RGB LED is common Cathode)

Here's a little nokiadoc of the toy in operation.


Here's a little jam from a while back, with Bill and Stanes'. Bill is using his Casio Sk-5 to sample chords I play on guitar.



Working on some pedals.

Yesterday I had a play round on the Sk-5 and figured out the record/play features. We might mod it sometime.


random painting by dad 2#

2 313 pocket synth idea

The image above is my guitar and mandolin.

 Last night I was working on some designs for a polyphonic square-wave pocket synthesizer. It should be an interesting project. The design uses 555 timer chips to create a square waveform, the pitch is defined by a variable voltage (a 2k trimpot) and a button that closes the circuit. Every two notes is linked to the same IC, so it's not completely polyphonic. I did this because it was unreasonable that someone would play both a C and C# together at the same time. The same applies for every other two linked keys. Because there are 13 keys used, from C to the octave above, 7 555 chips are used.

The image below shows a simple schematic layout of it.

A new shipment of electronics components from Tayda Electronics is destined to come in the next few days. I strongly recommend this site for electronics projects. The package includes parts to build an EHX Sovtek Big Muff for a friend, and two passive mixer boxes with LED VU meter, for me and a friend.
I hope to fit the pocket synth circuit on one of these 120x80mm prototyping boards.

 Some images of electronics components and some projects. Also making Bel a light toy.


Little jam by myself.

random painting by dad 1#

1 312

I've got a couple of things to say.

I'm making this blog to document upcoming and past projects. This will also include anything else I feel is necessary to write and publish. 

Recently, I was thinking about the cycle of things in the internet. I figured that I was taking more from it than giving back to it, and being a growing and diverse form of information distribution network, I believe it to be important for me to give back for once.

First blog posts are notoriously hard to write.

I have a wide range of interests that I will cover in this blog, and they change from time to time. Mainly they reside in the realms of Music, Visual mediums and technology.

I couldn't find a name, so I used my little book. A collation of words, small snippets of text and quotes from friends and strangers on the bus. They all mean something to me personally, so that's why they exist in a textual form.

Poppii suggests, in an effort to find something to write about in this post,  I write about the importance of music for me. I've played music for a while now, and I've listened to music for longer. It's an important aspect of my life, it helps me gather feelings, and express them. In some cases I am interested in the technology behind the artists and instruments that create these sounds, and I wish to explore this in this blog.