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Monthly Archives: July 2008
Summer of Synth-DIY: week 8
No major Sound Lab progress this week – I’ll have to make a Kinko’s run to get a front panel laminated.
Decent Arduino Sequencer progress- Front panel for what I’ll call “Arduino Sequencer V1.5″ is basically done. 1.5 will be a better version of the original that I attempted to debut at Notacon, but with fewer of the hardware bugs that kept it from working during the presentation (it even worked during setup! I swear!). The “2.0″ additions (start/stop switch, LEDs, external clock out, etc.) will be done a little later. I also tossed together the RBBB that will be the brains of the sequencer last night (note to anyone reading – the two resistors in an RBBB rev B are different. Place them carefully or suffer my fate – I mixed them up and it turned into a minor fiasco.
At Electronoize Playshop this week we worked on 40106-based oscillators. Here’s some video of that:
Tagged synthDIY
A quick word on parts suppliers
In the post from this weeks playshop, bbob was looking for supplier suggestions. Here are a few of the lesser-known ones I’ve bought from:
- Electronic Goldmine – They’ve got all sorts of odd things, like the giant photocells I had this week. Shipping takes about a week usually, though if something is temporarily out of stock, they won’t actually tell you. When I hadn’t received a tracking number after a week or so, I called the company and was told that a part was out of stock but that more would be available in a day or two, and that they regretted the wording on the web site, but there wasn’t much they could do about it.
- ESI – obviously I’ll toss in a mention of our (semi-)local store. Prices are hit-or-miss, but the fact that they’re a short drive away in Mentor is great. They’re still in the process of unpacking after their move last year, so it may help to call ahead if you’re looking for something on the esoteric side.
- Electronix Express – On some items they’re good. Others not so much. If you like the little Radio shack 276-159 prototype boards, they have an equivalent for about 1/3 the cost (Note that I haven’t tested these yet. I am about to order some, though.)
- Futurlec – 55 cents for pots, and as little as a quarter for knobs. Generally good prices on everything, though it takes about two or more weeks to receive your order (their warehouse is in Thailand). My one order did have an item missing, and when I wrote the company they promptly sent it out, and it arrived (another) two weeks later. They do seem to have a number of rare parts that I can’t seem to find anywhere else (like LF444 quad op-amps).
- MECI/Mendelsons – I’ve used them for years (though mostly through their sprawling tent at the Dayton Hamvention). Selection is limited, but the prices are pretty good on the items they have (apparently they have 100k pots for 35 cents right now!)
Press The Button Podcast for July 9, 2008
A look at the Tunguska event, 100 years (and 9 days) after it happened. Meteor? Comet? UFO? Evenki thunder god? Nikola Tesla’s death ray? To a lesser extent, the show also covered some other Soviet/Russian UFO events.
A large chunk of the backing music was 833-45′s Tunguska, which may be my favorite netlabel release so far this year. There were also some various other Tunguska-named netlabel songs played as well.
Tossed in some Tuvan throat singing as well. Why not? Tuva’s not horrifically far from the blast site, and Tuvans and Evenks are both Altaic peoples.
Came off pretty well for getting the idea for it about two hours before showtime.
And then, while driving home, I learned about the aliens that Richard Nixon took Jackie Gleason to see on Coast to Coast.
The Club Sandwich Synthesizer
I was poking around at some of N5ESE’s DIY ham radio projects, looking for potential things for my bizarre Recycled Rainbow theme camp, when I stumbled upon The Club Sandwich Project – a methodology for team construction of a piece of gear (such as a transceiver) out of smaller modular blocks each contributed by a team member.
I instantly saw this as a fun potential Synth-DIY activity. Perhaps this is something we can do at Electronoize Playshop in a few weeks/months - we’re still at kind of an early stage right now, seeing as how we’ll be doing oscillators this week.