Built 2 vco's, one works one doesnt!

I think its pic time! can you send a pic of the board so far?

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guys!!!

it now turns on, so i was just checkin to see if the nano still turned on, plugged it in and the whole thing turned on

a bit dubious, i unplugged power and then plugged back in again and it didnt work again, so there must have been a loose connection or something!

scroued the board and saw one of the ferrite beads connected to the +12V was a little bit loose and wobbly, got it tightened up and hey presto it works now

now gonna go in and check to make sure the whole module actually operates but its a good start!

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guys i am so proud of myself!

never done anything like this before, and they properly work!

only issue i have sound is the middle bar on one of my tuning screens doesnt work, maybe dodgy soldering or a broken component?

thanks you SO MUCH for your time in helping me out, building a synth like this is a dream come true

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really happy for you

maybe a little solder for your sceen bar to do and everything will be ok !

ā€¦soon your next module :wink:

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Oh, you mean like the middle segment of your LED 7-segment display? (the thing that looks like the digital part of a digital clock).

The arduino has that tuner code which tells which segment of that thing to illuminate. i would check the connections around the arduino first. :slight_smile:

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A major milestone! :smiley: Congrats!

Specifically pin 9 on the Arduino, marked D6. On the display, the middle segment is pin 10, in the upper left corner when you look at it from the front.

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Yeah Iā€™ll have a look, I feel a bit stupid and soldered the arduino straight to the board so Iā€™m a bit scared to go near it and damage it

Is there a way of finding out which pin corresponds to that particular segment, Iā€™d be interested to find out

Got the quad vca to finish tomorrow and then start on some more, really enamoured with this thing, it sounds so gnarly

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Ah awesome, Iā€™ll go check it in the morning!

Meant to be finishing my flux album but I think Iā€™m just gonna hunker down and build my Kosmo

Donā€™t tell the label

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Wow, you should not see any sparks when measuring. If you do you are short circuiting something. And sparks only fly in this type of circuit if you short your power supply. Be careful and try to prevent this.

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fluxpavilion
not to sound condescending but , you tube has a million videos on using multi meters and just about everything else. I know I have had to look up stuff [ like how certain jacks work ] . and it is much easier to watch than have someone try to explain with words . but having said that still ask , some of us have had the same problems .

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yeah totally, i was deep into youtube but it just wasnt doing the trick

the important information i found when checking voltage was that the ground shouldnt just be any ground, but the ground related to the voltage you are trying to check

as soon as i clocked that (thanks to the forum) it all made sense!

i watched so many how to use a multimeter videos and none of them mentioned it

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Yeah, important thing to remember is that voltages are always relative ā€“ you cannot measure the voltage in one point, itā€™s always a difference, and itā€™s up to you (or the circuit designer, rather) to decide what counts as 0 V.

(that said, itā€™s usually good if all low-voltage parts of your synthesizer agrees on what 0 V is, otherwise youā€™ll end up with ground loops, shorts, or worst case electrocution :open_mouth:)

(and before I scare people away from this hobby, just make sure to use isolated power supplies and keep you, your gear, and your signal ground away from the 120/240 V side of things, and youā€™ll be fineā€¦)

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