Pocket Synth

Components

1 × CD40106BE Logic ICs / Gates and Inverters

3 × CdS photocells Light-dependent resistors

3 × 100kΩ resistors These are for mixing the oscillator outputs together

1 × .68μF capacitor .68uF, .1uF, 1uF

1 × .1μF capacitor

Project Logs

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Ta-da!
kristina panos • 03/05/2015 at 23:06 • 0 comments

As you can see from the gallery and the YouTube video, this is finished and working. I edited the components list to show the capacitor values I decided on.
Spitballin'
kristina panos • 02/28/2015 at 19:47 • 0 comments
Design circuit with the enclosure in mind.
- Inputs are LDRs, so they must be accessible to the user.
- Enclosure is metal. Must not short things together.
- Oh yeah, I have some tiny heart-shaped foam stickers. I'll poke the LDR legs through them and stick them to the top of the box.
- I can use wire insulation as leg warmers on the LDRs, since I'm running out of really skinny heat-shrink tubing.
- LDR legs must be lengthened so that the user can replace the battery without destroying the circuit.
- Okay, cool. If I wire-wrap the legs once I stick them through the lid, they'll have nice, flexible extensions to the board. Plus, I get to wire-wrap.
Find the most appealing capacitor values.
Sure, this is an extremely lo-fi synth. But it might as well be as appealing to play as possible. I have three sizes of LDRs, so it's worth experimenting with capacitors to find pleasing frequency ranges.

Build Instructions

Step 1

Step 2

Discussions

davedarko wrote 03/01/2015 at 23:45

I've been searching a while for this link: http://makezine.com/projects/make-33/optical-tremolo-box/ - I wonder if it is possible to make a (polyphonic) melody combining this with your box.

Are you sure? yes | no

kristina panos wrote 03/02/2015 at 16:41

Oh, that is awesome. I have something else in mind for the immediate future, but maybe I'll give this a go after.

Are you sure? yes | no