Category Archives: Electronics

$50 electronics test bench

Posted on March 18, 2015 by

I’ve been having a hard time finding oscilloscopes and adjustable power supplies in the “hobbyist” price range, but I think I have cobbled together a solution.

A few key components:

  • Power supply from old PC
    • Make sure to short the correct pins to trick the power supply into turning on.  This is usually green to black.
    • yellow-black is 12 V
    • red-black is 5 V
    • orange-black is 3.3 V
    • If you want other voltages, well..  time to built a buck-boost circuit!
  • Gabotronics Xprotolab mini oscilloscope
    • 2MHz sampling
    • 8 bits resolution
    • $50 (the best part)

test_bench_1 Continue reading →

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Pitch to Color

Posted on March 16, 2014 by

Here is the color wheel used by my electronic instrument, Abella. When the music box is playing “C”, the pitch display appears yellow. Middle “C” is set at 262 Hz, high “C” at 523, and low “C” at 131 Hz, and each is displayed yellow. The remaining notes occupy a RGB-CMY color space.

DSC02514 Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Music | 2 Comments

Shift registers and Voltage display

Posted on March 2, 2014 by

I’ve been having great fun with the Arduino Uno microcontroller board.  Here I’ve got the Arduino using a shift register to light up a 7-segment display output.

20130706_143236 Continue reading →

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Introducing Abella

Posted on June 26, 2013 by

Sound and light!

abella1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccJRsY-8vOs

Here is some footage from early hardware development of “Abella,” my Arduino-powered electronic instrument. Yes, it is in a shoebox, and yes, the control knobs are popped through the cardboard. Continue reading →

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USB car charger, 2A

Posted on June 24, 2013 by

The more I’ve learned about switch-mode power supplies, the more amazing it seems to me.  So a voltage source across a wide range of values can be converted into another voltage, just by pulsing current though an inductor.  Of course, switch-mode power supplies are even easier to set up with ICs like this one:

IC REG BUCK BOOST, 296-17764-5-ND

20130624_165324 20130624_180055 Continue reading →

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Cree XM-L Color

Posted on May 14, 2013 by

This one is truly a beauty.  Here is the new RGBW high-power LED from Cree.

XLAMP XM-L COLOR LED RGBW (XMLCTW-A0-0000-00C3ABB02CT-ND)

20130514_212054 Continue reading →

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Flea market wafer

Posted on April 13, 2013 by

I even got to play the rube and ended up paying $20 for a 8″ silicon IC wafer.  I think this one was the most beautiful one the vendor had in stock:

20131117_170205 Continue reading →

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