LEAP#460 The CANary
Wilf’s Bird is a pretty famous “bird chirp” sound effect by Wilf Rigter. I last saw it used in Kelly Heaton’s wonderful bird sculpture, a Hackaday Circuit Sculpture contest winner.
The CANary is my little experiment with the sound effect.
As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub
read more and comment..
LEAP#456 Pease-out Audio Voltage Probe
The Boldport Pease-out is another tribute to Bob Pease and the classic LM331. As the last of the “classic series” monthly projects, it fittingly takes us full circle to compare and contrast with first project - “Pease”.
the Boldport Club continues - just not at the harrowing pace of 1 a month for the past few years (I seriously don’t know how Saar does it!).
The standard circuit in this kit demonstrates a stable frequency circuit and is adjustable with a variable resistor. I decided to hack it around a bit and convert it into an audio voltage probe:
- cut the voltage lock and add a voltage probe
- replace the LED visual indicator with a piezoelectric audio output
- switch some capacitors to tune the frequencies for an audio range
The probe runs on 5V USB and does a decent little job of providing an audible indication of voltage - with frquency corresponding to voltage level.
As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub
Here’s a quick demo..
read more and comment..
LEAP#451 Arc Lighter
A “High Voltage Arc Kit” perhaps attracts the kind of person liable to make it go up in smoke, which is probably why this kit ships with redundant parts.
The circuit is an interesting demonstration of a step-up transformer using a feedback winding to control the main power circuit. It is the same circuit used in commercial “plasma lighters”, confirmed by another great teardown by bigclivedotcom.
As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub
A quick demo.. aside from learning more about the circuit, I’ve yet to come up with a practical use for this;-)
read more and comment..
LEAP#449 Parrot Sound Effects
The Parrot is a reproduction of a “bird chirp” circuit I found referenced in background research materials for Kelly Heaton’s amazing bird that was one of the Hackaday Circuit Sculpture contest winners.
This circuit is an interesting combination of two LC elements - one modulating the other - around a single transistor.
As always, all notes, schematics and code are in the Little Electronics & Arduino Projects repo on GitHub
Here’s a clip from the workbench, demonstrating some of the sounds that can be produced:
read more and comment..