I've not had time to get the PCBs made yet, but here's a more clear schematic for the Vixer Volca Mixer. Not confirmed working (the previous hand-drawn schematic certainly does), but I've tripled checked it, so fingers crossed it should do. Will confirm once the PCBs are made up, or let me know if you make it Just right click and save. Enjoy & have happy new year!
This has taken FAR longer than expected to complete, but finally the prototype of the Volca Mixer is ready. I've settled on the following features; 3 Inputs Aux effects send/return, with each channel having an amount pot, plus an overall amount pot Switchable Global Delay Switchable Headphone Amp The mixer has the ability to run without batteries (bypassing Delay and Amp) Here's a quick video of it in action;
Make a small mixer for use with things like the Korg Volcas and other tiny synths. I wanted something I could just grab and use on the sofa with minimal hassle setting up. Ideally it should contain;
Spec
A compact mixer with between 3 to 6 inputs Fits in a 1590BB guitar pedal enclosure Possible Effects section Not be too expensive Keep reading to see the prototypes...
I'm working on a mixer at the moment with built in delay and possibly reverb. The PT2399 datasheet example 'surround / delay' circuit has been changed around to create this plate style reverb. It still needs a bit of work as it's quite noisy, but as a start I guess it's getting there... Hear it for yourself;
Being a massively picky individual I found the colour scheme on the SH01a with the keyboard attachment didn't quite look correct, so decided to build some new wooden side panels for it. Luckily an old box from a Lidl packet of frozen prawns managed to fit perfectly = a Lidl & Roland collaboration perhaps? If you ever read any youtube comments about the Boutiques you might think the whole range was already co-designed by Lidl. I really like them for what it's worth! Watch the video for the full guide;
For a while there the weather in Europe was going mental. Being British, anything above 15 degrees results in me becoming a sweaty mess. The answer was to build a DIY air cooler. It's literally a pc fan sucking air into a lunch box, passing over some ice cubes, and then blowing out of some old camera film canisters. For safety I added a fuse should the ice and psu unexpectedly meet.
Technics SL-d30 Ground Wire Installation After building an amp for our house record player, you could only play-back record with an annoyingly loud hum; a grounding problem, in that it wasn't grounded from the player to the amp. A quick search online found someone else who'd had the exact same problem; https://audio44.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/ground-wire-for-technics-turntable/ It was also a good time to clean out some of the 30 year old dust that had accumulated.
Something I found quite satisfying was repairing a batch lot of broken game boys brought cheaply from ebay. All were in grubby condition so everything was stripped down and cleaned before any repairs could begin.
Old Cases Being Washed
Repairs were mostly simple, replacing broken cases where the hinge had snapped. This meant ordering new cases and transferring them over, something that does require a bit of patience but is not impossible. Of the 13 ordered, I was able to repair 10, with the parts of the other 3 being donated to make the others usable.
A common fault: Faded Screen
Faded Screens
For faded screens I found re-soldering the brightness trimmer pot usually worked, if not replacing the pot entirely with a spare.
Broken Screen Underneath
Screen Not Working
A few models I brought the screen was no longer working, confirming the unit worked using another gameboys screen, I choose the best working parts to make a frankenstein gameboy, with the less reliable ones becoming doner machines. You could also order a replacement screen from the internet if you don't have the space machines.
Parts Harvesting
Cartridges Not Being Read
The card reader: A pain, but not impossible.
When game cartridges could not be read, first I'd try re-flowing the solder, and cleaning the pins with alcohol. If this didn't work, then you'd have to de-solder the whole thing and replace it with a new part.
Mutilated Board with working Vol Slider Pot removed
Broken Volume Pots
When some people try and replace the cases to their Nintendo Ds's, they end breaking the volume slider when forcing the case back on (I didn't do this I promise you! - be sure to check the alignment). The only way I found to fix this was by using a spare from a doner machine.
The most common problem: A broken Hinge
What I gone Learnt
Repairing these was a good lesson in fault finding, as well as the art of patience (Nintendo really over-complicated the design of these things). It's also pretty good to have rescued some broken machines from the rubbish dump. So if you're thinking about trying to repair some old Gameboys, I'd say go for it.
A selection of Repaired Gameboys
With new cases and screen protectors they looked as good as new.
A battery had gone rotten and melted one of the battery connectors on my Dan Electro spring king. It was a very simple repair, simply cutting off the old battery connector and replacing it with a new one, using some heat shrink tubing to shield the join. Opening up the unit, you can see how simple a design is needed to make a good-sounding spring reverb. Some people also mod this pedal with a PT2399 delay giving you a poor mans RE-201 space echo. Perhaps one day this could be a nice little project...
I made an instructable of how to build a Dodow sleep meditation machine clone here; https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Dodow-Clone-Arduino-Sleep-Meditation-Machine/ Below details how you'd select which resistors to use with the circuit... I think I'd drank to much coffee that day so be warned, it's pretty long-winded & boring.
The Finished Dodow Clone
You have been warned!
Resistance is Futile: A brief Introduction to Ohm's Law
Suggested music to learn Ohm's Law: Steve Moore 'Pangaea Ultima' album
Very Important Rule
You'll need an LED, resistor, wire and a breadboard. How to tell which resistor to use? For this we can use Ohm's Law, which can be remembered as a Very Important Rule aka VIR.
V = Voltage
I = Current (don't worry that it doesn't begin with an 'I' as that was already taken)
R = Resistance
Ohm's law allows us to figure out one of the above, if we already know two of the others. E.g If you knew the current and the resistance of something, you could work out the voltage needed.
So what do we know, and what do we need to know. We're trying to work out which value of resistor we need, so we're trying to figure out the resistance (R). So let's see if we can work out the other two parts of Ohm's law, voltage (V) and Current (I).
So lets try voltage first, how much voltage does an Arduino Uno pin output? Well lets try putting that into google;
5 volts. So now our problem looks like this;
V = 5 Volts
I = ???
R = ???
So lets see the current needed that will pass through an LED. For this I'll google 'LED Datasheet' which should give us all the possible info on LEDs. The second result looks simple, so I'll click that;
This is a very basic 5mm LED with a red lens. It has a typical forward voltage of 2.0V and a rated forward current of 20mA.
If you want to get little more dirty and actually open the datasheet you'll see the full specs;
Ok, so we can learn two things from this, that to power these LEDs takes about 2 volts (max of 2.2 before she'll blow up), and a current of around 20mA. But hang about our Arduino pin supplies a max of 5 volts and these LEDs require 2 volts to run, won't we risk blowing up the LED? Yes! That's why we're working out the value of the resistor to protect it...
Now our VIR looks like this;
V = 5v minus the 2v that we need to run the LED. This leaves us with 3 volts.
I = 20mA, which to be able to use in ohm's law we need to convert to amps.
R = ????
Now lets convert the 20mA into Amps, you could work this out by moving the decimal place, but come on, lets just use an online tool;
We're nearly there (All this for a resistor value ffs!), but now we just need to now the calculation to use to get the resistance, for this let's take a look at the Ohm's Law Triangle;
Not only does it look cool (think band logo or over priced bagel shop) it's actually showing us which rules to use depending on what information you have. If you knew Current (I) & Resistance (R) you would multiply to get Voltage (V), see here;
Whereas if you knew voltage (V) and one of the others you'd divide, like this;
So let's try that;
V = 3 volts
I = 0.02 Amps
R = ???
3 / 0.02 = 150
150 Ohms! Anything under that and there's a chance the LED will be fried, infact it's good practise to go by the 1/3 rule... give yourself an extra 1/3 than the minimum needed. so 1/3 of of 150 is 50, so to be safe from any power fluctuations etc we'll use a 200 Ohm resistor (150 + 50)... except I'll actually use 220 Ohm resistor as it's a lot more of a standard value.
So that's how we come up with the resistor value. It's a little long winded but you'll eventually get there pretty quickly with practise. Or just use a 1k Ohm resistor like lots of other people generally default to ;-)
Before we leave this section, we can double check our maths with the Ohm's Law pyramid, substituting differing known quantities;
V = 3 volts
I = 0.02 Amps
R = 150 Ohms
If you knew V and R but not I, according to the pyramid you'd do the following;
V / R = I
which is;
3 / 150 = 0.02 amps
And ff you knew R and I but not V, according to the pyramid you'd do the following;
R x I = V
which is;
150 x 0.02 = 3 Volts
So you can see how the Very Important Rule can be used in different ways if you only have certain information to hand. This may be of some use to you one day. Or maybe not.
I was once told every man should do three things in his life; father a child, build a house, plant a tree. I have done none of those things. I did however build a very under-powered audio amp. We were given an old Technics record player, and me being economically self-reliable (cheap) I thought I'd build the amp to go with it. What follows is a description of a descent into madness; This is the amp, model version 1. Rather than order parts to make a monster amp, I used what I had; an LM386 op amp chip. This chip is not designed to power large stereos, but why let that stop me? Using the schematic from; http://www.circuitbasics.com/build-a-great-sounding-audio-amplifier-with-bass-boost-from-the-lm386/ I built two amps into one device, one for each speaker, effectively doubling the power, from 1 to 2 watts of power. It was never going to blast down the walls or anything, but for home use it should do. I spent ages neatly soldering everything into place, arranging the wires so they looked smart in their new home. I added a switch so you could choose between the record player or a jack input, a power indicator LED, and an on/off switch. Everything had gone well during the build, everything was looking good. A thing of beauty you might say. Then it was time to try it. A very faint sound from the record came through the speakers, like a spirit communicating from the netherworld. Also a digital 'tapping' could be heard. I then spent the next 3 days trying to figure out what was going wrong. The digital noise, I finally deduced was coming from the power supply capacitor being too close to the input jack. I'd have to re-make the board and move that away from any inputs, and to be safe, keep the amp circuit away from the power supply as well. With much sadness I started desoldering all the parts on my beautiful circuit. Parts stubbornly refused to come out, and as time went on it was thrown in the bin in anger. To save time on the V2 I decided just to build the amp with one LM386.
This is the new version of the amp. Gone is the selector switch (if you want to listen to music through your phone you can damn well unplug at the back and connect in). It's also now in mono. Basically it's a regression from all the features in the first version. I'm not sure that's how subsequent models are supposed to work, but whatever.
Everything inside was given distance from any parts that might cause interference. Ground connections also had an individual ground cable, again to minimise interference. It came time to switch it on. My trembling finger started to push down on the power switch, all the while remembering the many hours spent finding the causes to the problems. With a click the power light came on... AND THEN THE SAME BLOODY THING HAPPENED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To say I was annoyed would be an understatement. Swear words echoed down the nearby streets, neighbours cowered behind curtains, dogs yelped. Anyway, I mostly laugh about it now. Especially when I realised the record player needed to have a shared ground to the amp. When I connected this it made a click and then it worked fine. Oh how I laughed. Laughed through tears. Then I was told we were being given a decent technics amp anyway. RIP old amp. .
Tron Club is a monthly electronics club where you're sent all the parts required to completed various experiments. It comes in two varieties... beginners electronics and advanced programming of micro controllers. You can cancel any time and it's very reasonably priced at £22/€25/$25 including shipping per month.
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This is the amp, model version 1. Rather than order parts to make a monster amp, I used what I had; an LM386 op amp chip. This chip is not designed to power large stereos, but why let that stop me? Using the schematic from;
arranging the wires so they looked smart in their new home. I added a switch so you could choose between the record player or a jack input, a power indicator LED, and an on/off switch. Everything had gone well during the build, everything was looking good. A thing of beauty you might say. Then it was time to try it. A very faint sound from the record came through the speakers, like a spirit communicating from the netherworld. Also a digital 'tapping' could be heard. I then spent the next 3 days trying to figure out what was going wrong. The digital noise, I finally deduced was coming from the power supply capacitor being too close to the input jack. I'd have to re-make the board and move that away from any inputs, and to be safe, keep the amp circuit away from the power supply as well. With much sadness I started desoldering all the parts on my beautiful circuit. Parts stubbornly refused to come out, and as time went on it was thrown in the bin in anger. To save time on the V2 I decided just to build the amp with one LM386.
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