Circuit Bending 101 at Nottingham Hackspace

Circuit Bending 101 at Nottingham Hackspace

A4 poster (.pdf)

Learn how to add extra wiring to battery-operated toys to make them bleep with anticipation, howl with excitement and transcend their blinky light allowance at… Circuit Bending 101

Saturday November 6th, 12:30 -6
£30

Ticket price includes instruction, materials for three projects and some food.

Numbers are strictly limited. Sign up at
http://bit.ly/cb101Nott
to book your place.

Nottingham Hackspace
The Old Police Station
3 – 9 Station Street
[map]

Circuit bending basics: workshops in need of a home

Following on from The British Science Festival, I’ve been invited to give a circuit-bending workshop up at the Nottinghack hackspace. (Probably in November – stay tuned for further details…)

The workshop will be a day-long session covering loads of the circuit-bending basics.

The three projects we'll work on. Colours may vary. ...as will sounds!

Over three projects we will:

• Use potentiometers and light dependent resistors to change speed and pitch
• Add in blinky lights
• Use short circuits to distort sounds
• Add body contacts to distort sounds
• Loop sounds
• Add audio output sockets so you can make those distorted bleepy noises LOUDER

Here’s a quick video showing what you’ll make:

Circuit bending basics: workshops in need of a home from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

I’ve been really lucky in finding 3 toys that play nice and will allow me to cover all those techniques in some relatively simple builds, so I’ve stocked up and bought enough toys to run 3 workshops.

The workshops are intended for about ten people at a time and will last several hours, so are best suited to a Saturday or Sunday.

Nottinghack have bagsied the first workshop, who wants one of the others at their place? Contact me.

update: One workshop remaining – the other has gone to a secret location somewhere in Birmingham!

update: All gone – the third will be in Liverpool for How? Why? DIY!

Circuit-bending at It’s a Geek’s World

Yesterday I led some circuit-bending workshops as part of It’s a Geek’s World, in turn part of the British Science Festival.

Here’s what we were making:

Circuit bend for It’s a Geek’s World. from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

The hall soon filled up and Furby and Alphonso made lots of friends. I didn’t get much of a chance to take photos until Sam’s midi-octopus performance at the end…

Stand by for more circuit-bending workshops in the near future…

Sonar goggle detector

Since some friends went on a bat and moth walk (and I’d idly Googled bat detector kits) I’ve been curious about building my own bat detector.

A few things came together and we ended having a lot of fizzPOP conversation about bat detectors. Then I started work on a school project for which an ultrasound detector would be rather nice.

It was kind of inevitable that I’d make one then!

Working from Tony Messina’s Simple Bat Detector project, I gathered together the basic components and tonight managed to get a breadboarded prototype working.

It occurred to me that building something that reacts to ultrasound may not be the easiest of circuits to test… Fortunately, I had some sonar goggles to hand and the detector reacts to them!

Breadboarded circuit with sonar goggles looming overhead

sonar goggle detector from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

Mr Mabbett also suggested placing the detector near a TV set (which I don’t have) or some jangling keys (which I do!) to test it. There are some good clicks coming from the keys test too, so next step is to get the circuit soldered up onto stripboard and into an enclosure of some sort.

As well as the schools stuff – where we would be using the detector to reveal sounds beyond our hearing – I’m interested in running workshops for people to build their own detectors. I also have some crazy game ideas…

Map for something you cannot see

I’ll be using The Anticipator on Monday to try and locate the source of a mysterious noise, so over the last few days I’ve been dusting off the cardboard hardware and the (now defunct) mscape software.

The Anticipator: now with power indicator, LED bezels and several layers of what I hope will be waterproof spray...

I’ve tarted up The Anticipator a bit to hopefully improve its usability – bezels for the main series of LEDs and also a power indicator. We’ll be using it no matter the weather, so I’ve also given it a few coats of waterproofing. (Not that I’m feeling pessimistic at all, but I’ve also given myself a new waterproof coat too!)

I’ve put together a first draft of the GPS zones I’ll be using over the school field to represent the presence of our mysterious noise-making object and tomorrow I’ll be in Leicester giving it a test run.

School field with GPS zones overlaid

Oh, and we’ll also be testing the field with a metal detector, just to make sure we don’t get any derailing surprises on Wednesday next week when we do it with 50 kids watching!

Circuit-bending workshop at the British Science Festival

On Sunday the 19th of September I’m running three 1-hour circuit-bending workshops as part of the It’s a Geek’s World event, 10-4 at Aston University’s Students’ Guild Hall. (geeks_world on Twitter.)

Toy mp3 player, soon to be more with light and sound than the manufacturer anticipated!

We’ll be converting one of these toy mp3 players so that the sound it makes is controlled and distorted by light.

Circuit bend for It’s a Geek’s World. from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

The mod is pretty simple – so don’t worry if you’ve never soldered before – and as you can see from the video above the results are very engrossing. The kits come with earphones, so you can even play with them for as long as you like without risking familial discord! Alternatively… there’ll be another workshop where you can make your own audio amp. Yeah!

We'll switch over a couple of components to make the toy sensitive to light.

The workshop costs £3.50 and at the end of it you’ll have your very own bleepy chirpy tinkly thing to keep.
To reserve your place in advance you need to register on the It’s a Geek’s World website and then you can sign up for the different activities. There will also be a few places available to snap up on the day. My workshop runs at 10:15, 12:15 and 3:15.

The website is mostly booking system and doesn’t really show much of what will be going on, but take it from me: if you like gadgets, robots, and/or electronic noise then this is the place to be.

There are several workshops on offer throughout the day, ranging from learning to solder through to making a Beat Box sequencer with Mr Underwood. Something for everyone!

Nottinghack will be there with Drawdio kits. We had a fab evening when they came to fizzPOP for a Drawdio workshop, so that’s also tried, tested and approved!

We’re not neglecting the blinky light side of things either – there will be workshops for making these colour-changing boxes and a few other LED treats too.

Colour-changing light box

As well as the workshops there will be people from Curious Minds (they of the Star Wars Force Trainer), oomlout, RobotBits and others. Expect interesting things to see, touch and interact with.

Others from fizzPOP will of course be there too, so come along and say hi – we’ll say hi back if we can hear you over all the bleeping noises!

EMF detector

Again for the school-project-that-I-cannot-mention-explicitly-by-name-because-of-Google.

As an extra tool for us to use in our investigation into the unseen, I constructed an Arduino-based electromotive force (emf) detector. I’ve made breadboard versions of this before, but now it was time to build something a little more permanent.

barebones Arduino, 10 LEDs and a plastic case from a pound shop screw set

The LEDs light up in proportion to the strength of electromagnetic field detected. Since electrical currents are intrinsically linked with magnetic fields (can’t quite remember my A-level Physics) placing the antenna near to power sockets and electrical items light up some of the LEDs.

4-way gang lights 'em up

bing

The microwave seems reassuringly well shielded:

But my clock radio and bedside lamp are a tad alarming!

It’s very interesting hunting around the room for different effects. Orientation of the antenna changes the number of lit LEDs, as does switching things on and off. I’m curious to see how the detector responds to big classroom equipment such as smartboards and projectors, but of course the main point is observing how the children respond to being able to visualise things they wouldn’t otherwise be aware of.

glow bugs in a jar

Continuing my learning of electronics doodads, this week I have been introducing myself to the 555 timer and a display driver.

I’d rescued a load of the 555 chips out of some junked circuitboards, so when I saw this instructable for fireflies in a jar I thought I’d give it a go. (This page was also useful, as was this datasheet because I could only get a 4033 not a 4026 – pin 14 to ground people, pin 14 to ground.)

When the parts came the 1500uF capacitors were HUGE, so I thought I’d run with that rather than trying to make wires and parts invisible.

Here’s what I ended up with instead of fireflies:

Each glow bug is made out of - and only of - the components requred for that part of the circuit. All parts are functional.

After trawling some charity shops and finally finding a couple of glass jars, I squeezed in five bugs, the circuitry and some sand donated by a friend.

Making it really difficult to photograph in the process!

Battery and circuit embedded in the lid. Who wants a laser cutter? I want a laser cutter.

The capacitors are a nice way to get the LEDs to fade in and out. I’m using a 330 ohm resistor to get that fade time. (I’m also using a 220k resistor as R2 in the timer circuit to give an interval of about 14 seconds between changes.

Here’s some not great video that sort of shows the effect:

Untitled from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

Rest assured they’re pretty awesome when seen with your own eyes, ‘cos eyes are amazing.

British Science Festival

It's a Geek's World: Sunday 19th September, 10-4

As part of the British Science Festival this September, myself and several other fizzPOP types are contributing various activities as part of the It’s a Geek’s World event. Entrance is free, but I believe there will be small charges made for some of the kits that you can construct with us and then take home.

Organised by Dr Kate Sugden of Aston University’s Electronic Engineering department there will be plenty of opportunities for you to make things that go blink, beep or ping at the various workshops that run throughout the day. (Sunday 19th September, 10-4, in the Aston Uni Students’ Guild Hall at Gosta Green.)

Registration will get going over on the Geek’s World website in the coming weeks and there’s also a Twitter account to watch at @geeks_world.

Save the date and stand by for more details for what’s shaping up to be a cool day full of things to learn and make!

Moving forward with the secret knock in a box

A few months ago I made a box with a secret knock in it for an interview for a school project:

box with a secret knock in it. from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

It’s proved to be very popular, so it’s time to take it out of its prototyping stage and into something a bit more robust.

The version I’ve been using so far runs off a Real Bare Bones Board mounted on a breadboard. It’s OK, but I need to keep checking it all the time to make sure the wires haven’t come out. Not ideal if you’ve got a dozen young children clamouring around to try and guess the hidden knock!

I could move it to perfboard or something similar, but I suspect I’m going to be making several of these in the future, so I’m using it as a project to learn a bit about making Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs).

The first stage has been to eliminate the RBBB and move to a freestanding chip. I followed the approach on the Standalone Arduino / ATMega chip on breadboard Instructable.

I then combined this with the power supply from this ITP tutorial on breadboarding an Arduino. And finally added all the switches and gubbins from the original circuit.

Freestanding ATMEGA with additional project circuitry

It worked!

…and was a nice bit of learning too – I feel all empowered now!

Putting it all together. With arrows.

Having ascertained that it wasn’t all going to go fizz or POP, the next stage is to start arranging all the bits into a nice PCB layout.

…And for me to profusely thank Dr Sugden and the Eng Soc students at Aston University who are proving to be top notch fizzPOP collaborators and walked me through this afternoon’s learning. Much appreciated.

What’s next?!