Almost Working.....

......everything is put together and it works, but I forgot to solder back the diode.

Now it doesn't work. Here i the schematic.

Tieing componenets together

..with solder and wire.

Adding Components

The start of the Light Organ

Resisters, capacitor and Diodes

Post-Failure Thoughts

There was a certain wire, that seemed to bridge the roll off and the attenuator, which was not on the schematic. I left it loose. Next quarter I hope to spend time figuring out where that wire is supposed to connect to. I may contact Aurycle to ask them to update their schematics, circuit board layout, and photographs.

I was right.

After relentless attempts to make this microphone work, I have failed. The components were installed, the mic looks like a mic, and the schematic mostly matches the final product. When I say "mostly" I mean that the microphone was updated, while the schematic and circuit board layout weren't. There are wires on the mic that do not exist on the schematic. I cannot find out where these connect to, and when the microphone didn't work at all, I didn't take it well.

Here is the schematic:

Here is the circuit board layout:

Here is the kit I had been sent (more or less):

Here's a photo illustrating how useful it is after I built it:

The box which holds my microphone, which began as a container of hope, has since become a coffin for my failed experiment. Frankenstein's creature, but without the life. I plan on coming back next quarter to work on it until I will be able to scream, "It's alive!"

Until then.

Aurycle: The Final Countdown

My microphone arrived a couple days ago. I have begun to assemble it. There is a missing capacitor, yet I push on.

To much solder

I guess I am heavy handed at solder so some of the components were solder together and didn't work.

Here is the start of the new project:

Clean board starting with the audio signal with the battery on the end.

The start of a board

Connecting the parts together.

I don't know, it looks like a whole lot of solder.

We will see if this works.

It looks like it will work. ........

To much sauder. Trying again.

In the end, the only ones who fail are those who give up

Unfortunately, the final outcome of week 11 is a non-working final circuit board. However, I do have a successful breadboard circuit. I believe I made the mistake of using too small of a circuit board for my final soldering. My board of choice was a 1" diameter circular board that barley left any room for error, let alone space in general for components. 

Conclusion: Use a larger rectangular board and complete this microphone! I understand how it works,  I built the body, I just now need to make sure to follow the schematic and breadboard closely.

Audio Elec. 3 - Stereo tubed amplifier

So this is the schematic to my stereo tubed amplifier. I can honestly only explain what a few of these components are doing to the signal because i am not familiar enough with working on analog electronic devices. I have noticed a slight bass roll off on some of the bass heavy songs that i have played through it. But most of the professionally mixed songs I have have come through with a fairly flat response.

The Zener Diode

A Zener diode is a diode which allows current to flow in the forward direction in the same manner as an ideal diode, but also permits it to flow in the reverse direction when the voltage is above a certain value known as the breakdown voltage, "Zener knee voltage", "Zener voltage", "avalanche point", or "peak inverse voltage". My DIY microphone obtains a 12V Zener Diode.

The device was named after Clarence Zener, who discovered this electrical property. Strictly speaking, a Zener diode is one in which the reverse breakdown is due to electron quantum tunneling under high electric field strength—the Zener effect. However, many diodes described as "Zener" diodes rely instead on avalanche breakdown as the mechanism. Both types are used with the Zener effect predominating under 5.6 V and avalanche breakdown above. Common applications include providing a reference voltage for voltage regulators, or to protect other semiconductor devices from momentary voltage pulses.

So last monday I finished the pedal and had to wait until I got home to try it out. When I did, I found that the pedal would turn on however there was hardly any functionality to the pedal at all. When  activated, all I would get was a thin, highly compressed fuzz sound (similar to a fuzz factory), and none of the parameters worked. I then emailed the company and asked what was up and they said they may have instructed me to to put in the 4013 IC the wrong way. I'll be coming in soon to try and fix the issue otherwise I have a pretty much functionless pedal on my hands.

Aurycle: The Final Post About the Final Project That Will Never Reach the Final Stage of Developement

My Aurycle experience has made me dislike Aurycle. Passionately. My A460 microphone has gone through most of the steps to completion, although the schematic and diagrams do not match the kit I received. I'm assuming Aurycle updated the circuit, but never got around to updating the paperwork. Some of the wiring is only labeled by color; color that doesn't match the wires in my kit. This is the only way they are labeled, so even if I try to go off the picture, they don't match.

This is what I got in the mail.

Here are a few photos of the build process.

This is where I am right now.

I'm basically stuck due to the fact that I do not want to make a wrong move and destroy this $90 microphone.

In between staring at the schematic and attempting to make sense of the project, I poked Sammy's final circuit, primarily because he told me not to.

There's Sammy. Completely unaware.------>

I plan to work on it until the final minutes of class tonight, until it's done.

Surface Mount Technology

It all depends on the type of circuit you are going to design, but if you want the final result to look really professional and up-to-date, I recommend using surface mount technology. I accidentally received a few of SM transistors when ordering my components for my microphone build, which needless to say I won't be using. (see below)

As you can see from the photo above just how small these guys are. You don't have to make the whole project SM. You can combine SM with through-hole components, as some items are not available (or not suitable) in SM form. You may want to use chips that can be inserted and removed (such as microcontroller chips) or air spaced coils (for high frequency oscillators) or a potentiometer with a knob.

Week 10: First Blood: Final Fight 2K14 - Electric Avenue Edition

Since My circut didn't have the amplitude I wanted, I decided to revisit the idea of putting an amp in after my filters.

I connected it with some wiring that tapped into the signal input and ground or my circuit. I was eventually getting sound out of both speakers but ran into the same problem of not having enough volume. 

 I tried making some more adjustments to the amp, then some adjustments to the connection between it and the filters. Unfortunately it didn't seem to do much.

 I decided that my best course of action was to get rid of the speaker entirely and replace it with a 1/4 inch jack so that I could use a mixer preamp. This turned out to be better anyway because it now gives me more control over the output volume.

Tada!

Week 10: First Blood: Final Fight 2K14

Soldering day, I connected both of my filters in series and went to work transferring them on to a circuit board. Other than my problem of finding an 1/8th inch jack, which I ended up needing to make, and an 1/8th to 1/8th inch aux cable, the soldering went well. 

It ain't purdy but it works

Thanks to Jon S. Ganzmann I was able to get an aux cable and test out my finished circuit which worked, although quietly. I decided to come back in on wednesday and see what I could do about getting the volume up.

Week 9: Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

When you are filtering out frequencies from a signal, you naturally lose amplitude in the output as well. so I spent today trying to make a simple power amp to put after my two filters.

 I say trying because even though I did eventually get sound out of the speaker, I didn't get any noticeable increase in volume. I tried switching out the capacitor and the resistors and event the battery but just couldn't get it to be louder. 

Week 8: High on Electricty

Since my microphone kit didn't ship I decided to make a bandpass filter for that authentic telephone sound. So I started work on this Highpass filter.

The final breadboard looks pretty nice too

Week 7: Low Pass Filtration

This week I did some bread boarding. I tried out a couple different configurations of this passive low pass filter and ended up using this version of it. 

Very Nice

Week 5: Schematic Fanatic

Today I tried out a few of these schematics to see if they would be worth making into my full on senior project. 

FET Guitar Preamp

Week 4: Operation

When we last saw our hero, he'd just fought tooth and nail to remove the hard outer shell of his MagSafe™ charger. His next trial would be to peel back the protective shielding that surrounds the electronic core of the transformer.

Dat Shielding

Success! After pulling back the shielding, I desoldered the two wires that connected the power and ground the to the laptop side of the transformer.

looks complicated

Desoldering stuff sucks, it seems like it takes me forever, it's possible that I just suck at it and I have gotten a little better since working on this project but it's seriously, brutally, horrendously tedious. 

Pretty cleanly desoldered in my amateurish opinion =)

After I soldered on the new power cord, which I took a picture of but can't seem to access on this slow Wisconsin internet, I tested the power cable to make sure everything worked before putting together the jigsaw-puzzle of a casing that Apple decided to super glue around their charging cables. 

Orange means it's working, right?

Week 3: Breaking stuff

Since my Macbook Pro™  MagSafe™ charger broke last quarter, I figured this was a good way to alleviate my worries of another one breaking (and costing me $70+) by fixing my old one so I have a spare lying around. My first big obstacle was finding a schematic to tell me what wires specifically needed to be desoldered, which didn't exist. 

Luckily, this guy had step by step instructions for me to follow. He was one of many blogs I'd found online, but what was nice about his approach was that it allowed for me to reglue the casing back together once the operation was completed. 

(Dramatization of Procedure)

Using needle nose plyers and a bit of leverage, I was able to crack the casing apart in a way that didn't do too much damage. After a little work, I finally got the casing off and could view the MagSafe™ charger in all it's glory

Close up on the affected area 

Dirty ;)

From bread board to circuit board

This first photo is of the first part of the scematic. I wanted to show what the beginning would look like of this color organ.

The 2nd photo is a drawing of what the circuit would look like on the board. My instructor realizes I am a very visual person and so he drew out how the circuit would look. Below is the circuit framed and the drawing of it.

Electronics III: Week 10

As the quarter comes to an end I am glad to say I am very close to finishing my speaker. The construction of my speaker went very well. I based the design on the Yamaha NS10. Everything from the speakers specs to the dimensions of the speaker box and the crossover match the original design of the NS10. Unfortunately last week the Salen-Key Active crossover I built did not work. This led me to the conclusion that I should just buy a better quality crossover to enhance the overall quality of my speaker. I ended up finding a crossover from XKitz that i am going to use.

My completed box:

The crossover I chose to buy: