This will be my on-going thread for my Ciat-Lonbarde Bird, Monk, Train Solar Sounder Project.
Since Peter’s files are only available as Osmond files… I am doing my own PCB building for the Paper Circuit PCB designs that he has offered.
Here is my first -
Bird aka Mourning Dove
Copper Development.
Finalization.
Theory and Information:
https://econtact.ca/18_3/blasser_solarsounder.html
Circuit Assembly:
"I built the original circuits as paper circuit prototypes and moved later to fabricating them on fiberglass. To give the circuits a vintage feel, I learned to emulate hand-drawn traces in the digital format used at the printed circuit board (PCB) house (Fig. 10). First, I laid out the circuit in PCB software and printed it out at four-times scale. Using a sharpie, I traced around the sharp lines to make organo-form shapes, scanned and converted them into vector graphics. The result, reimported into PCB software, would be difficult to edit, but seems fitting for the analogue circuit ideas.
The first Solar Sounder Workshop occurred at Rhizome DC, a participatory culture space in Washington, with four pieces each of monk, train and bird boxes (Video 1, Fig. 11). We soldered and assembled the twelve-piece ensemble, then placed them in full sunlight. As permanent residents of the Rhizome instrument library, the boxes will eventually chance upon strongly sunny days — and, with the help of a good curator, sing out then!"
Peter Blasser.
Build Information:
- Rectangles are resistors, in values of 10 k, 22 k, 100 k, 470 k, 2.2 m and 10 m;
- Diodes are like resistors but with polarity stripe;
- Transistors are “+” for bc556 and “-” for bc546 or substitutes;
- The chip is an njm2073.
For capacitors, use plastic film or ceramic, except for the large electrolytic marked by a circle and polarity marks. Excepting the electrolytic, all capacitors are in jellybean symbols. Try MLCCs for the biggest, poly film for the general audio range, and styrene for the smallest. The following table suggests a value for each, and explains in parentheses what customizations avail the sound. For example, making a “bird brain” capacitor bigger will yield a slower call.
| Element | Value(s) | Sound or Effect |
|---|---|---|
| electrolytic | 1000 uf (or to taste) | affects the overall “bentness” of the circuit |
| spoke | 0.01 uf | |
| SPKIN | 0.1 uf | |
| SPEAK | 4.7 uf | |
| CALL | 1800 pf | dove pitch |
| bird | 0.1 uf | bird brain |
| BIRD | 1 uf | bird brain |
| pine | 1 uf | bird call length |
| PINE | 10 uf | bird call wait |
| HORNA-E | 1000–2200 pf range, in homogenous groups | train horn sounds |
| condu | 0.1 uf | brisk conductor or one echoing in mountain tunnels |
| TERR | 10 uf | speed of the terrain |
| coner | 0.1 uf | length of the toot-toots |
| CONDO | 0.1 uf | wait between toot-toots |
| MOUTH | 0.01 uf | frequency of the monk’s mouth |
| TEXTA, B | 4.7 uf | change rate of the monk’s chant |
| thort, THROT | 0.047 uf and 0.1 uf, respectively | the timbre of the monk’s throat |
On inserting a component, shape its leads to follow the lines and solder it. Power comes from a 9-volt solar panel into the obelisk shape. Its square pad is ground. The speaker connection is to the crown shape near the njm2073 amplifier chip.
