He's Dead, Jim...

Damnit, Jim! I'm a Doctor, not a radio man!

Tonight, while trying to take apart my FM/AM switch, I have apparently killed my radio. Everything seemed fine as I was soldering tyhe wires back, checking every four wires for functionality, but when I finished up, my radio no longer produced sound in the AM band, and there are no radio stations coming in on the FM band. I'm sure it can be fixed, but it's most discouraging, to say the least.

I haven't blogged in a little while, so I guess I should say what I've been up to these days.




I finally managed to get my hands on a soldering pump, so I was able to get those knobs off the top of the radio. It was a gigantic pain in the ass, however, but I did manage to get it done after much longer than I had anticipated. Here are some pictures of the offenders.










These little buggers were lots of fun, and took a long time to
wrangle into place, but I eventually got it done. The whole thing looks like an even bigger mess than it was before, but the whole thing still worked.




There's the whole rig in all its glory.

Now, after I finished this, I got a little sidetracked. One of the projects I've been meaning to try out is the AM Transmitter I found on Instructables a little while ago. The problem with that transmitter was that it had no style, so I decided to fix that.

When I was at Active Tech in the morning, I found, along with my sold-a-pult, an extensive selection of Crystal oscillators. This meant that I might have some luck in making a little AM transmitter, and so I picked it up. When I got back to the U of M, I went to the bookstore and grabbed a tin of cinnamon mints and a small pair of cheap headphones for an audio jack.

With all my gear ready to go, I set to work creating my AM transmitter. I soon found out, however, that my oscillator was at too high a frequency to be picked up by any radio. My 2.574 MHz oscillator was no good. It's OK, though, I found a 1 MHz oscillator in the Digikey book, which I'll order on Friday, and hopefully pick it up on Monday. In the mean time, I mocked it up to show what it'd look like.
Sexy, no? The headphone jack will plug into an iPod or other music device and the crystal will generate an amplification modulated signal at 1.ooo MHz, so I can listen to my iPod in my car. Or other places. It's going to be sweet.

The day after I played with my AM transmitter, I tackled, and ultimately buggered up, my AM/FM switch.

Both of these crazy things had to be connected together, and apparently it didn't go so well. Everything seemed to be working until the last four wires that were soldered, but I just couldn't seem to isolate the problem tonight. Tomorrow morning I'll give it another go, so hopefully I'll get things back in gear.

A Day Wasted?

Well, I certainly hope not. Most of my day was spent waiting for an incoming paycheque, which would enable me to go to Princess Auto and pick up a desoldering kit and a few other knick-knacks. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't find a desoldering kit, so I was kinda screwed. Since I can't really move forward very much in terms of my vivisection, I decided to do some research instead.

During my crit session with Patrick, he showed me some alternate plans for making a crystal radio.

Simple Crystal Radio

FM Crystal Radio

The FM Crystal radio is intriguing because I thought, as the blog says in the intro, that and FM crystal radio was impossible to make. The fact that it can be made is interesting because it means that I can use both AM and FM radio waves to construct my radio wave power system. Well, hopefully anyway.

Fancy Crystal Radio

This is the original crystal radio that I found. I think it looks really amazing, and I still want to build one. I think that I will, but I might make the one that's simpler first, so that I can learn a bit more before I rush headlong into building a complex radio set. However, if I do make this kind of radio, I want to use a clear panel on the front instead of a black one so that you can see all the guts while it's working. Really, isn't it just more interesting that way?

Short Wave Radio Kit

After reading the Shortwave Uberthread on the General Bullshit forums on Something Awful, I am very interested in what I can find scanning around the short wave radio frequencies. For only 30 bucks, it's not a bad deal, so I think I'll be ordering one up right away.

AM Transmitter for Your i-Pod

This one is really cool because I am also very interested in creating radio waves. This one can be made to transmit AM radio waves to about a block away, which is fairly decent for such a small unit. I think I'd like to make something like this and then stick it in an Altoids tin and carry it around with me, or use it in the car. Illegal? Yes. Fun? Definitely.

Vivisection Mk. II: Radiola

The patient is alive once again!

After disconnecting the solder joints I made yesterday and breaking out my jumper wires, I was able to determine the reason for my short that I was having trouble with yesterday. There were originally three black wires going to the power supply, and even though I had made a drawing detailing where they should connect, I still managed to switch two around, resulting in my short. Once I figured out where the sticky wicket was, I fixed the power supply and my radio came back to life.



The next step, then was to crack open the case a little further so that I could get at the speaker. That was simple enough, and the speaker came out pretty easily. A couple of snips and cuts later and I had splayed out the speaker from the rest of the radio.











Now that I had the speaker out, it was time for some other fun. I decided that I would tackle the main piece of hardware: the tuner. On the front of the circuit board, I pried off the metal dial and was then able to get the tuner loose.
This is a view of the tuner with the metal dial taken off. The phillips head screw in the center connects to the actual resistor responsible for getting a signal. When you turn the tuning knob at the top of the radio, all it does is wind or unwind a string that was connected to this mechanism, causing it to turn and tune in on your station. It's pretty ingenious, I think, and very simple, too.

The tuner mechanism, pictured above, was tough to remove, since it was connected to seven different things, including wires and resistors, but once it was loose, it was pretty simple to extend from the main body of the radio. It still works fine, but you lose quite a bit of fine control when you use your fingers instead of the actual tuner.

The odd thing about this tuner is that there are four screws on the top, which I assumed would enable me to open it up, but after playing with them for a bit, I found that they don't unscrew at all. If the radio is on, you can adjust the signal using these four screws. It was kind of disappointing that I never got into it, because I am curious, but I'm also glad because I'm sure if I did get in there it would end in disaster somehow.

And now for a little before and after!

Before: A sleek, elegant radio...
After: A crazy-ass concoction of wires and weirdness...

And Now For Something Completely Different!

I found this a long time ago, but after our viewing of Motorhead's "Ace of Spades", I was reminded of this video. It's made by an electrical engineer who rigged up his house to flash his Christmas lights along to the tune of the Trans Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards of Winter". Awesome stuff, but it makes me wonder what his neighbours think of all of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqExHV99iPQ
Enjoy the show!

Vivisection Day 1

My lovely, extra old-school, 1950's-ish, 11 transistor TobiSonic radio is now in the midst of its vivisection operation. After making careful drawings of all its elevations, I finally was able to crack open this crazy thing and take a peek inside. I was shocked, but in a good way.

Inside my new radio was a veritable cornucopia of craziness. Transistors, capacitors, and thingamajiggers everywhere! Not to mention the silica packet and paper insert detailing how to put 4 AA batteries in series in order to create a proper 6 volt power source. The guts of this radio amaze me. It's not even a printed circuit board, it's a breadboard. You can even see small holes that haven't been used up. I'm pretty excited to get even further in there, but for now I'll have to wait.



After I finished being in awe of the craziness contained in our TobiSonic, I decided to take out the antenna and the power supply. The antenna came out fairly easily, and works with a simple gator clip attached to it. It seems like all you need is a piece of metal connected to the base of the antenna stand, because when I had only the gator clip attached, you could wave it around and have a distinct affect of the radio signal. Minutes of fun!

The next step was to fiddle with the power supply. First, I simply elongated the wires that hooked into the 9V battery supply. This worked well enough, so I decided to take apart the AC adapter/headphone jack piece and move that way from the main body.

The AC Adapter has proved to be a bit of a quandry. As it stands right now, the patient is flatlining. When I attach the battery to the power source, nothing in the radio works, but the battery gets extremely hot. It's just a short in the wire somewhere, but it's a fairly complex assembly, and there are 7 wires total going to it, so I have to suss out which one is the sticky wicket tomorrow morning, I suppose. It might not be working right now, but it'll be better tomorrow. It can't get any worse, I suppose.



Anyway, here's a fun picture of the whole things spread apart. Tomorrow I plan on tackling the speaker and tuning aparatuses.

And the winner is...

The radios! Well, the old school radio in particular will be my subject for vivisection, which will commence tomorrow morning. My interest with the radios doesn't lie in simply receiving or transmitting the radio waves, but in generating power using radio waves.

I first became interested in the idea of harvesting radio waves when I was watching an old episode of Mythbusters(Number 24, to be exact). In the episode, Jamie and Adam, the protagonists of the show, were testing myths involving free energy. Most of the free energy devices claimed to be perpetual motion machines of some kind, but the one that harvested radio waves was the only one that was even remotely successful, although a little disappointing. Using a 100' antenna, Jamie and Adam were only able to get enough energy to be able to power a small watch LED screen.

I had some problems with this test when they did it, but I refuse to be one of those people who writes letters to TV shows expressing my nerdy disgust. The main problem was that they never made more than one device. If you made several of them and tuned them to various channels, you could hook them up in series and hopefully get a little bit more energy. They also never experimented with different kinds of antennae, instead opting to use a 100' insulated wire. Perhaps a smaller, more efficient antenna could be used. I don't know all about it yet, but I do have some ideas for experiments I'd like to try.

I do, however, have some resources to draw on in my quest for radio knowledge.

Something Awful Shortwave Radio Uberthread
An amazing post by a short wave radio enthusiast and dealer. It explains all kinds of things, from how to use a short wave radio to number stations. Very interesting, and probably worth checking out.

Radio Module
A project I found in Good Magazine by a designer named Carolina Pino. Her project is a homeless shelter made of cardboard and based on origami. The shelter can be folded up when the person wants to move, but the thing I found interesting was that the project included plans for a $30 two-way radio. The plans are located on this site, but I don't think I'll be using them, because you have to send the micro-controller to Pino's team to be programmed, and I think I can make something a little bit simpler.

Something a Little Bit Simpler
These are plans for an antique style crystal radio on instructables.com. The interesting thing about a crystal radio? No power source. The entire thing is powered solely by the radio waves it receives, and it's this type of device that I want to start my research with later on.

Interesting stuff for sure... For me, anyway.

It Begins!

Studio begins today, and what have I got to show for it? Why crazy electronics and odd toys, of course. But what exactly do I have to vivisect?


Item number one is actually three in one! It's three clock radios, ranging from contemporary junk to stone age. The bottom clock radio is probably my best bet, since it only uses a nine volt power source, but the others might have some interesting gears and such to play with later.







The second item in my parade of oddity is a Fischer Price "CD Player". It runs on two double A batteries, plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ad nauseum when turned on, and when you try to eject the "CD" it sounds like pure death. This one will at the very least be filled with some cool gears and motors to play with.





The DJ Play Station is for the aspiring scratcher of the family. It plays four different beats at the touch of a button as well as four cheesy sound effects. The scratching functionality doesn't seem to work, but it does have two Piezo speakers and a volume control to mess around with.






This Polaroid camera was a bit of a heart-breaker, I have to say. I would have kept it for my greedy self if polaroid papers didn't cost so much money, but since they do, it's the vivisection table for this old camera. With an autofocus mechanism, as well as gears and other fun innards to shoot out polaroid pictures, this will certainly suffice. Plus, whoever heard of a size "J" battery?





This is probably the coolest of all of my finds at the Village of Value. This helicopter lights up, plays two sound effects (sirens and helicopter blades spinning), and records and plays a short sound clip. It's all kinds of fun, and it looks bad ass.




So, that's what I've got to rip apart, destroy, and otherwise play with on my first day of the Dedale Studio. Wish me luck...