Wednesday, December 2, 2009

555 Timers, Bent Projects, Vactrols and More.


Here's an example of using a timer IC in a bent project. This Butterfly has a couple of light sensors. I found that this bug re-acted to a circuit I had been building that was acting pissy with the wall wart I usually use. Too much amperage. Lately I have been using these timers to run an LED that is sandwiched with a photo-resistor in a sterile light environment. Also I have been using lots of 7 color changing LEDs. 7 colors are better than one.

The timing clock was easy to find. There was also a point right next to it that created some distortion effect. I was trying to give it a photo-active interface but settled on a 100k linear potentiometer that I busted out of it's casing so it can spin all the way around. This makes it sorta act like a switch and a potentiometer. This butterfly will probably stay in my collection because of it's weirdness and I'm working on a version for production.
Before I started introducing Vactrols and Timer IC's into my bent projects this was the most boring synth in the scrap heap. Now it's become the project that won't stop mutating.