Sunday, December 12, 2010

DIY Projects I : The Beginning

I bought my first prototyping board (or breadboard) and some jumper-wires last week, it's time for me to start learning about electronics and electonic circuits.

The board i got was of the Velleman brand, and to be sure i had enough room on it i bought one of the bigger boards, still for under 20 Euro's.
I also bought a small Velleman Voice Changer Kit (MK171 - 9,95 Euro) , the only audio-related DIY-project i could find to experiment with. Like i said earlier this stuff is quite new to me, and my first attempt will be the mounting of all the parts of the kit onto the breadboard. This seems like a good practice for me to learn more about the components and their functions.

I did learn a lot on YouTube last weeks about the basics of breadboarding and electonic components, and there are a few good (and free) tutorials on the MIT OpenCourseware site ( both video's from lecture 12 are highly interesting and deal with basic sound creation with electonics ) The 559 pages thick lecture notes PDF  that completes this course is also free available at the site, and features the whole course on paper.
The kit is a voice changing kit that can basicly changes your voice into a high, low or robotvoice. I haven't heard yet how it will sound, but the idea and basic modification possibilities are looking great.

I see this as a sort of a side-project, that will hopefully merge into my A-100 system at one point and i'm looking forward on how it will sound. I'll keep you updated.

3 comments:

  1. Very cool again, interested how it'll work out (and sound, of course).

    Marc JX8P

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  2. @Marc It does look familiar, with the electronic components as modules, wired together with tiny patchcables. But it is a bit more complicated with all the different diodes,resistors and capacitors.

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  3. Great place to start Pierre. I use a similar breadboard for my early development. It will be worth getting a dual power supply, scope and a reasonably good DMM if you don't already have them. If you want any help with selection then let me know. Have fun Pierre!!

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