On this page you will find some of the kits I have built. Not all of these I have photos for, but I may be able to add some more in soon. The kits are listed in rough chronological order, and each one has a small dossier on its function, problems I may have had with building it and how I fixed these problems, etc. I remind everyone that I did not design any of these projects; I merely bought them as kits from various suppliers and constructed them.
Basically this kit was a voice modulator housed in a Zippy Box that allowed you to speak into an electret microphone and have your voice changed into a hoarse Darth Vader-esque growl. It was the first kit I ever built and it kept me enthralled for about 15 minutes. After that, it was thrown in a cupboard and forgotten until I discovered it recently. Amazingly, it still works, but the poor state of the batteries means that the unit can hardly muster up a sluggish murmur :) The original kit (a Silicon Chip design) is no longer available but its successor, the Vader Voice MkII, is still available from Dick Smith Electronics.
Running off a 9v battery and utilizing an oscillator coil etched on the PCB, this transmitter went about 50 metres using a 30 cm hook-up wire antenna. Needless to say, this project gave me endless opportunities for amusement, and was particularly popular when I took it with me to boarding school in year 9 :-). This kit is part of the Funway 2 series of kits available at Dick Smith Electronics.
More Funway 2 kits. Both are fairly basic circuits, with the light switch using an LDR (light dependent resistor) to trigger a relay and the timer using a 555 chip to trigger a relay as well. Although I didn't put them to any practical use, they taught me a bit about how the 555 timer could be used. I toyed with the idea of making a wake-up alarm by connecting these two together but I abandoned the idea pretty quickly.
Part of the Funway 3 series at Dick Smith Electronics, this kit was plugged into any line source (stereo, TV, CD, computer, etc.) and the LEDs would flash to the beat depending on the frequency of the music. I added the pot on the top of the case so as to adjust the sensitivity. For a very long time, this kit sat on top of my TV flashing to the speech and music, until I stole its plugpack for another project and consigned it to the cupboard.
I know, this one was hardly an exciting project but I needed a regulated voltage source so I bought this kit. It came from Talking Electronics (+61 3 9584 2386) in Melbourne, a firm that sells a range of educational kits and books. Although it is very simple, I have had many occasions to use it over the past couple of years.
This project, a 9 chip trainer microcomputer based on the Z-80 microprocessor, was the focus of most of my electronics work for the latter half of 1997. The TEC was designed by John Hardy and Ken Stone of Talking Electronics in Melbourne, who sell kits for the TEC at approximately $AUD130. Consisting of a speaker, six 7-segment displays and a hexademical keypad, the TEC was used mainly for the purpose of learning to program in machine code. A number of games were supplied in the monitor EPROM, and it had the capacity to interface to other devices. Designed in the early 1980s, the TEC has gone through a number of revisions, and has a number of addon boards available for it (the board connected to the top of my TEC in the photo is a 16k non-volatile RAM card).
I built two TECs during 1997, one as a project at school, and the other for home use. I also built some of Talking Electronics' addon boards, including a tape/LCD interface board, a crystal oscillator board, and a speech module. With the aid of the TEC documentation and a list of op-codes, I wrote a number of small programs including one for a school Open Day. Naturally, I made full use of the speech module :)
The first really dangerous project I made :-). A 240V strobe light with two xenon flashtubes and four beefy discharge capacitors mounted on the back panel. Had a few problems getting the SCR to trigger reliably but a change of a resistor soon fixed that. A definite hit at parties. This kit is available from Altronics in Western Australia.
Based on a PIC microcontroller, this kit interfaces to a car's ignition system and allows microprocessor control of various sections of the ignition system. The only problem I had with this one was when the main LED didn't light up when expected to. Turned out I had put it in the wrong way (duh!). This kit is available from Jaycar Electronics.
An interesting project from Talking Electronics that allows audio to be picked up through windows, walls, etc. and transmitted on the FM band. This kit uses a tuned circuit in the RF oscillator section that gives a substantial increase in range over bugs that do not have a tuned circuit (this bug could go about 400 metres). And yes, that is a Tic-Tac container it is housed in.
I ran into a number of problems when building this bug. In the end, I ended up having to replace the contact microphone (a piezo diaphragm) three times, as I kept breaking the leads off :-). I also had problems with it drifting from the set frequency, but I found out that this was because the main oscillator coil was pushing up against the side of the case, thus changing the frequency! Finally, I overheated the batteries when soldering to them, causing them to leak and thus highlighting the need to take greater care when soldering them.
One of my favourite projects. This unit directs a laser beam over a wall or some other flat surface to create a huge range of dynamically changing patterns. It deflects the beam by using three mirrors mounted on the shafts of three motors, as can be seen in the photo. The laser I used in this project was a red (650 nm) laser diode module, but there is no reason why HeNe or other lasers couldn't be used. Most of the circuitry on the board is concerned with controlling motor speeds and stopping/reversing motors, however there is also provision for a laser diode driver circuit. This kit is available from Oatley Electronics in New South Wales, Australia.
I love this one! Basically, a potential of around 25kV is applied to the pair of V-shaped electrodes at the top of the case, causing a spark to rise up the wires. Creates a shrill buzzing and snapping noise whilst in use, which goes down well with people who are trying to do homework, watch TV, etc. :-). Circuitry within box is simply a 12V to approx 25kV inverter based on a television flyback transformer and some other parts including MOSFETs, filter electros, and RF choke from some surplus hands-free kits for mobile phones. During construction, I managed to lift a land off the PCB which stopped the ladder from working when I first turned it on, but I soon fixed the fault with a bridging wire. This kit is available from Oatley Electronics as well.
This project was basically a time-of-day readout deriving its clock frequency from the 50 Hz mains. It used discrete CMOS ICs rather than an LSI chip or a microcontroller which made construction a bit pricy, but my main purpose in building it was to learn more about how basic logic blocks interface together. Now the clock is sitting in my study at school and is a very reliable and useful timepiece. This kit is available from Talking Electronics.
Featured in the January 99 Electronics Australia magazine, this project can record around 25 seconds of speech, music, etc. and play it back. I was going to put it in a little case and use it as a miniature notetaker device, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Available from Oatley Electronics. UPDATE 17/9/99: I've finally put it in a case and it's proven to be a very useful little device...
Last updated 17/9/99
Created with Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0