Category: Electronics
In January 2015, I finally got brave enough to tackle the Synth in a Box project that I picked up from Michael Victor at EM2014. This proved to be quite challenging because it was the most involved electronically, with lots of wires. I opted for solid wire because I generally ...
I’ve always been interested in brain/computer interfacing, but never knew much about the field. When the OpenBCI open source platform came out on Kickstarter, I supported the campaign and signed up for one of their first boards. I thought with my Arduino experience up to that point that it would be ...
Tayda Electronics (where I get many of my parts) calls this their “Super Hard On” circuit. I used a loose tea canister for the case. My brother helped me with the drilling since he has access to better tools. It looks nice, though in terms of practicality, it’s not exactly ...
This project was built from a kit that I got from fellow electro artist Michael Victor at EM2014’s swap meet. Michael had the unbuilt kit in the original shipping envelope, a special edition model from Steim’s 2011 run. The kit went together pretty quickly with few issues, but I do ...
At the end of August I built the SparkPunk Sound Kit, and used an EHX 8-Step to trigger the kit via control voltage. Not long after this, Sparkfun released their own sequencer, which I promptly ordered, hoping it would arrive before the next electro-music festival. The sequencer kit arrived well ...
It has been a while since I built something, so here’s a little project that was a lot of fun, and has opened up some new noise maker territory. Sparkfun is one of the top suppliers of parts and kits for the electronics hobbyist, and while I still prefer Adafruit ...
Moving on to smaller platforms, I tried out the Gemma device that Adafruit puts out, and built the inner workings of their Chirping Owl project. I wasn’t very interested in the owl part of this, and the sounds are not very owl-like to start with. It was more about testing ...
The SensorMote project was educational, but I found Zigbee to be a bit difficult to set up, and wanted to explore other wireless options. My search led me to a variety of CC3000 boards, in both shield and breakout form. At the time (April 2014) Xively.com was offering free Internet of ...
The TV B Gone can be used to turn off just about any screen from a distance. Lots of fun. This is a kit available from Adafruit and a number of suppliers. I’ve had a lot of luck with Adafruit products and service and their tutorials are really good, so that’s ...
My quest for an easy-to-use, high-quality audio board pretty much came to an end when Adafruit released their Audio FX Sound Board, available in both 8MB and 16MB versions, with and without a built in amp. Interestingly, this board uses the VS1000D codec chip, unlike many similar boards thast use ...
Next in my exploration of Arduino-compatible audio boards is Adafruit’s compact and multi-functional VS1053. This board came out earlier this year just as I was getting preoccupied with moving, and I only recently discovered it. I got this board for Christmas from my dad, and put it together as soon ...
After creating a more fully-outfitted workbench, I dove into a capacitive sensing noise maker, commonly known as a Theremin. Although, to be accurate, this is not a theremin in the truest sense. It beeps and makes a variety of ascending and descending tones in response to hand movement, but it doesn’t make ...