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Making the Friendstrument

For instrument, this is a musical instrument that two friends play together it's an electronic project and it makes noise and it incorporates the player as part of the electronic circuit you actually have electricity flowing through your body while you play this project. Fortunately, the electricity is such a low voltage that you won't feel it it's completely harmless and it's a lot of fun and especially when you have two people completing the circuit so this is a pretty involved project it could be a little bit challenging, but don't worry I'm going to be here with jane to take you every step through the process so that you will be able t to successfully build one of these for instruments I think what we're going to do is we're going to start just getting right into making the electronic circuit itself and then after that we'll work on the wooden enclosure that all the circuitry fits inside because the important part really is getting the circuit down pat and then once we get the circ...

uit running, not making the cases is almost an optional thing and you can come up with any kind of case that you wanted to be cardboard would weigh use a coconut shell wants to make the case, which was really a lot of fun, so I'm going to sit down here because we have some some and I'm actually going to pull out my my glasses here too, because we have some tiny components, the first thing and kind of that basis for everything is this white plastic thing here called the sod earless bread board. This is a way to connect electronic components together very easily without having to use sauder that's. Why it's called the sod earless bread board, and as you can see, we've got numbers, numbers and letters exactly. Thanks, jane. And so it is, it's goes, we have rose one all the way down to roh sixty four so there's sixty four rose. And then there are columns center a, b, c, d, e f, g h I j, right? And so I'm going to be saying things like put one wire, end into, for example, the eleven and then the other wire end into g fourteen, and you'll know exactly which hole to place your component. And you also notice that we have some some columns of dots are holes that have less or a nineties and read, and the red and negative those air culture power rails and ready with negative, positive and that's what you used to power the that's, what you used to power the circuit, so we'll go into that in more detail, but one of the interesting, so the interesting thing to note is that all the dots along the plus and all the dots along the minus are connected so all the dots long the plus or connected to each other, all the dots along the minus or connected to each other. But then the rose those numbered rose are connected to each other. So holes a long row one from a through e are connected and then roll rose f through jr columns that through j a long row one or connected to and so on those are your connection points and you can kind of think those is as the places where you would sought earthy components that are connected by columns. The columns are not connected they're all separate from each other. And so if you have one of these at home, if you were to peel off this this backing here you could see how the metal when we see if I can scrape a little bit of it off so you can see how it's how it's connected back here because it's kind of interesting if you can see there you see these rails here that the columns of connected we have these long metal strips and then here along the rows a little hard to see because all the sticky stuff is on there the rose air connected along that way, and so when you put components in there there's like a clip a long clip that pinches those things together so it's a very useful thing they have they cost about five dollars and if you are doing prototyping for electronics and trying different projects this is kind of an essential thing to have because you can quickly move components around of components break or something you could swap new ones in its much faster than sauntering but it's not usually a permanent solution because they things could shake loose especially if you like walking around with it or anything so it's really kind of a temporary solution we're using this just to show you how the circuit works and then once you figure out how the circuit works if you want the next step would be actually sauder the components together and that would be something that that you could work on on your own if elektronik is something that you are really interested in, it would take a look at some of the components here we have here we would let's take a look at the transistors first transistors are kind of like switches there their ways to turn a turn a circuit on or off by applying electrical component to it and you can see that there are three leads on a transistor and so you could have kind of going through two of those leads depending on whether or not current is being applied to the third lead and if this is like not if this is something that you're not understanding easily or are not interested in don't worry about it we'll make this thing work whether or not you know but I just think for background it's interesting to know that transistors are basically they connect the switches and they can also act as amplifiers and in this case we're using them basically is amplifiers to amplify electrical signals is this a resisting that's a resistor and we're going to get to that and so there are they're really there are two kinds of basic transistors n p n and p m p and we're actually going to use one of each and so you should have they're clearly marked transistors that say n p nn pnp there really that they look exactly the same if you were tio look if you have good eyesight or or glasses you can see that there's numbers on them and if you look closely you can see pnp and np end and I see that the's pnp I'm not sure I actually I'm going to grab some of the pnp resistors here that I know what work for sure you want to say I'm not positive I'm going to work when we just take a look I don't need to go work because the number on them is one that I'm not familiar with so I'm going to give you guys mp mp just make sure we got everything right, okay I'm going to give you guys some pnp resistors just because I want to make sure that when we're in the trouble shooting stage that this is something that lee have already dealt with, so why don't you take those no kitchen and give two to each group and why don't you just take the ones that say pnp right now and just set them aside so you don't get confused and I'll do the same with my set up here? And we just checked the mp ends to make sure that now if you are, if you want to buy some of these on your own, what you can do is just go teo on amazon, I bought tons of these transistors for on amazon, pnp an mp in general purpose transistors, that's what you need to look up, you can get them for a little as a penny each they're very inexpensive or two cents maybe so there's, they're really cheap, so don't worry about it turning these things out but you which you might do okay, so thanks jane for for distributing those so what we're going to do first and I'm actually referring to my book here about the circuit layout because this is just something that really would be hard to memorize exactly how to set these things up we're going to use the one of the npm resistors right now and we're going to put it in the bread board and we're going to put it into holes twenty seven c twenty six c and twenty five c but what you want to do is you want to have the the flat part of the transistor facing this middle rail here, so I so as long as the flat part goes in the middle of rail, then just insert them into twenty seven c twenty six c and twenty five c and you might need to separate the leads a little bit to get them to fit there and then press them in until you feel them actually get seated into that hole that will press all the way down and then you feel them stop don't don't like keep on jamming it in there so that you've been the needs that yes ok pokes through I mean, that looks good we have it in twenty five twenty six in twenty seven okay, it looks really good and I am just going to check with you guys here and see how how it looks twenty five twenty six, twenty seven excellent looks really good. Good job. Okay, this is there an age range that is really ideal for these kind of elektronik. Yeah, I think with with adult guidance you know, jane was doing stuff like around eight years old putting things in and so as I think really good and trade should be nine nine and up and if someone a nine or ten year old war to follow this book that could probably do it but you do it remember the suffering of god coming up they should have parental yeah vision yeah definitely ex otter is really hot and you could get burned and uh this one also calls for a glue gun which is in an electron president but that could really get hot absolutely. And uh qassem bad burns okay, so that was great you guys it sounds it looks like you all have the hang of how to do this so we're going to run through this at a pretty good a man got a pretty good clip so ok did you get the other one here so the other one is the thehe pnp transistor and we want to put that in like a mirror image into into, uh column age into twenty five, twenty six and twenty seven again with the flat part facing the the middle rail so it looks like they're they're having a face off. Okay, now what we get to do is uh you some of our jumper wire which is right here this spool of jumper wire and we're going to make a little we're going to make a little connection and it doesn't need to be very long when we see what the gauges on this you's a liar cutter to know I don't see a gauge okay, this is twenty two gauge and so luckily strippers have the right gauge and let me just demo this first one jane and you can do the other so what will start is by trimming off about a quarter inch and you can see the twenty two marking on the on the wire strippers and just pinch hold the wire with one hand and then just pull up on the other one and you should get getsem stripped and if you look here you don't actually have the book so so this is this is short you just you just need like an inch or so uh why longer yes so what you want to do is once you strip it go ahead and cut the other ended about an inch just like james doing here yeah and then go ahead and stripped the wire off the opposite end another about a quarter inches. So total wire just an inch or so at most this is the shortest wire in the universe and the project I did it. Okay, great wait just wait just talk a little bit about this, okay? So so you should end up with a wire that that looks like this and how are you guys doing with it? Okay, I got it, I got it great I'm sorry okay, so um okay, just see her. Jane has has been this down, so you kind of have a u shape now to the wire and what we're going to do now is put one of the wires into column, eh? Hole number twenty seven and it's not marked, but you just count twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven and then the other one into any of the blue railed holes and if you have trouble with this wire, we're going to have some needle nose pliers to help you push it into the holes. Thank you. S o u c it could be it could be even a lot shorter because you could go right over to that hole there, but so it could feed the shortest fire in the universe. It could be so what? What? What we have here is everything here in row twenty seven is connected, so this terminal of the transistor is connected to that wire electrically and then this wire then in turn connects that terminal to this this long column of blue lines. So this is where the negative power is going to be. So this this transistor is now connected to the negative terminal of the battery. Once we connect the battery that's, how if he's saw derlis bread boards work pretty cool and a great way to do your your prototyping okay, so once you've taking care of that one, we're going to grab a resistor, and so let me talk a little bit about resistors, this one's a one million resister, one hundred carries his general one right, cystic, and so we're using four resisters in this project, and the first one we're going to use it is a one hundred k resistance, so I you might not be familiar with what resisters are, but if you think of electricity like water running through a garden hose, a resistor is like taking that garden hose in qingqing, it putting a kink in it, you're restricting the flow of water in a resistor restricts the flow of electricity, and so the higher the value of a resistor and more of a kink. So a for example, I resist with one hundred homes, has allowing quite a bit of current is just kind of like bending the garden hose a little bit if you have, like, a one mega home or one million own resisted that's, like, really cranking on that wire, or I mean, on the on the hose so that just water is coming out at at a dribble, and so you use resistors and circuits to restrict the flow of electricity, and one thing that they do is one thing that they do is, uh, protect more delicate components from getting too much electricity and too much current and extremely damaged they can explode. Actually, capacitors can pop sometimes. Okay, so what we want to do with this resistor as we want, tio put it into holes a twenty two in a twenty six the one that says one hundred kids, one hundred kids and then take off the little tack things you have removed the terror twenty two and twenty seven twenty two in a twenty six and then the one thing to keep in mind when you insert these components is that the thie leads on the components, the wires sticking out of the components don't have insulation on them, their bare you don't want those to touch other component wires. Component leads because if that happens, you'll get what's called a short circuit and yes, yes, kevin, you could cut them shorter. Sure. That's fine. Just make sure that their long enough that you can actually get them into the er if if they can get where they need to go. Okay, jane, that looks that looks really good. One hundred one hundred k one hundred killer home one hundred so it's one hundred thousand homes of resistance, the one that has tags I looked like this, stephen, that you cannot see it from there, okay, so how's everybody going with that was it the twenty it's it's eight twenty two eight, twenty six, twenty two and twenty six good gin and if you see resistors have a little colored bands on them that tells you how many homes there right you can figure out the value of a resistor by the color bands on them and you can look up the color codes online to figure out twenty two and twenty six twenty two to twenty six so one of them you and you could use the needle nose to push them into the holes that it make sure that they're well seated in there okay so we'll move on to the next one in this one we want a one mega own resistor jane why don't you grab a one mega own resister out of there okay and we're putting that into whole b twenty six and this is one where you'll have to be careful because it's going to go between two components and you want to make sure that it's not shorting touching b twenty six be nice if there was some insulation on here twenty six okay and then the other end don't do anything with it just let it dangle and I want to just run down there and see how things were going just let it dangle yeah and you'll see why eventually that free and will be attached to a penny this project costs two cents because you're using two pennies ok, that looks it looks great you guys great. Okay, the reason I just want to check is because almost any time you make a circuit your we will have to trouble shoot it's not going to work the first time and it could be putting a component in the wrong hole component not being pushed all the way far enough into the lead the polarity component is put in the wrong way or many other things there's lots of other things power being supplied the runway not not enough power lots of ways things can go wrong they will go wrong is nothing to be ashamed about or or there is no reason to be discouraged. It's it's a bug and it's just part of designing and it's part of the learning experience even experienced electrical engineers and experience hobbyist troubleshoot their circuits and so I think it is part of the fun and the feeling of successes is even better once you finally get it well, you can say so you should have just used the resister that looks like on the tag it says I'm one mega own okay so so no way want tio insert a one killer own resistor into holes d twenty five and g twenty six and you'll note that this one is going to span the middle channel that devised the two sides of the bread board which is exactly what we want do you have the one killing was this to jean okay and it goes into the twenty five and g twenty six and again be mindful of the exposed leads and you might need to bend a resistors so that it's like almost laying flat to keep it away from the leeds that's fine don't worry about it you could bend bend them to your heart's content until they break yeah we'll keep your hands give me twenty five n g twenty six ok that looks a really good chance ok how are you guys doing ok okay so we have another one mega own resister jean do do you have that and let's put the other one make own resister into whole I twenty five the other I'm resister right and don't answer the other end of the resister into the bread board because that's the end that will be attached to the penny okay looking good over here are you guys doing do we need to wait up for anyone have a question how come days over sister right there but no one right there because that's just the way the circuit a circuit works so say that again the one the one k goes the goes into it's a one make own resister actually uh huh and it goes in tow I twenty five twenty five ok ok so now we need to make another wire as short as the first one that you made or even shorter it could be really short so let's make another one just like we made by stripping off the ends of insulation and kevin I noticed that you are this is a common thing you're kind of having trouble pulling the insulation off when you have the freeway you can use the needle nose pliers toe hold and that will help you pull the insulation off a lot easier if you grip onto it with a needle nose pliers they didn't go ahead and strip some of that off twenty two right what's twenty two gauge wire so use the corresponding stripper location sometimes it helps to hold the needle nose pliers and then gives you a better crypt great and hold it with the needle nose pliers and yeah, keep on goin it's hard because they're so close that they almost players hold them down closer to in there and then pull you got it that okay good job but it's accomplished so once you have this wire stripped it goes into whole j twenty five and then into any hole along the red power rail that's to the right of it and that's going to be supplying the positive voltage supplying so if you're looking so so taking a look at this circuit you'll see we have positive voltage being supplied on one side negative voltage being supplied on the other side then we have these two exposed wires when you and your friend touched these wires. The current is going to be going through your body. Is there a battery that we need? We're going to touch the better yet the currents going to be going through your body is going to be going through your body, and that will complete the circuit. Ok, so now we're going to use a capacitor, and so you'll see a capacitor is a different kind of a component are either one either one is fine, I think we have to just in case one of them, uh, one of them breaks so capacitors kind of like a battery in a way in that its stores elect electrons and releases an electron so store's electricity and releases electricity, but unlike a battery, it charges and discharges very quickly almost instantaneously, and so they they're they're two kinds of capacities. There are kinds that that are ceramic, and there are electrolytic ones and these air ceramic ones so they don't have polarity by what that means is it doesn't matter which and goes into which hole, how you connect them there's no plus or minus, like a battery has polarity if you put it in backwards, it's not going to work electrolytic capacitors, you do have to be mindful of which side's positron, which cites negative this one you don't have to so so this is going to be easier for us so the capacitor we're going to put into holes be twenty two and g twenty seven and this is a pretty tight fit here so take your time with it use your needle nose pliers if you need help getting in there and make sure that none of the leads are accidentally touching each other and g twenty seven yet be twenty two and g twenty seven and so this one is uh hard yeah it's not it's not easy to get it in there but just work on it you might it might help to bend the ladies a little bit with your pliers just to get the right positioning just work on it you'll get them in there how are things going online? It's really interesting people are following along and that they're actually sharing stories of other things that they've been working on different using electronics et cetera s noise is saying actually I've got a tape although it's coming up when we start the suffering ball for english speaking viewers that soldering saying if you want something more permanent than a bread board but safer for little fingers when you get the soldering I get a wire wrapping tool and some thirty eight wg wire yeah a little bit safer for us very yeah very young kids sure why wrapping tool is useful in what you do is you have a piece of that it's called perfect perfect board it's it's like a circuit board that just has a bunch of little holes you stick your component leads through those holes and then the wire wrapping tool looks like a screw driver, but it holds a very fine wire in it and you just turn thiss kind of screwdriver anything over that leading and wraps a very thin piece of wire over that lead that completely then you could go over to the other component lead wrap and it's a great way to connect things and if you take a look at the original apple one computer, you'll see that steve ozzy x spent hundreds and hundreds of hours why rapping that apple one computer and people still use why rap now? It's another good option let's see looking past I need to put on my other glasses here and I said up for the capacitor b twenty two in g twenty seven, b twenty two and she twenty seven good chance I'm glad you're doing this because I'm sure I would make a mistake how are you guys doing over there pretty ableto figure it out and get it in there it's good for everything, okay, great so now we have our battery holders, so we're going to go ahead and insert the battery holders um let's uh these don't have switches on them so let's not put the batteries in quite yet just because I don't want tio supply electricity to it until we're completely finished with the circuit so to see it as much as possible so you'll see that the batter there's one battery wire this red and one that's black and the red wire corresponds to the red rail in the black one corresponds to the blue and that's right and so put thie red wire into the red rail any way you want and anywhere you want but put it there's there's two red rails and the one to put it in is the one that detective jay yes good gene that's next to the j and then the blue the black wire goes into the blue rail next to the matter a good ok so someone's we have that we can just set that down we're good with that and then we should have a speaker in here and for the speaker we are going tio we are going to cut some more wired lee it's for the speakers and so in this case let's give us let's let's take about six inches of wire per speaker lead so that we have room to move the speaker around when you when you mounted into your into your project so jane and you cut one and then let's do another one cut that one and we'll take about again a quarter inch of insulation off of each end of these two wires. Go ahead and strip off the insulation on those on both ends of all four wires. Yeah, two. Two of them. Seems like everybody is using a different color. Yeah, pretty good.