A Mechanical loop with motor hack (1 or 2 notes)
ridiculous but fun !
A note on the keyboard triggers the motor and the motor restarts the note and go.
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Bit of a thread necro, but I fancy a distraction and some learning of the ish I should already know would be good.
I picked up a toy for ÂŁ1 from a charity shop. Its got plenty of buttons and things to tinker with. But rather than annoy the house ill be kind.
I want to add a line out with a thonk jack, so that I can plug in some headphones and interrupt the speaker, perhaps a volume control too if I feel âfancyâ
My brain isnt logicâing properly at the moment. I know its simple and I should perhaps just âDBSTTIâ as Sam would say =)
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magpie is insanely awesome !
" and I have never broken anything "
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Itâs also good to add a resistor between tip and sleeve jack (8 or 10 R depend of the value of your speaker)
And if you want to keep the speaker, you need a switch jack (The Magpie donât do that on his vidâ)
Add a simple attenuator schematic pot for level out.
You know how to find the pitch resistor to hack it with a pot ? (if itâs an old toy with âtrueâ resistor, not possible with a black blob)
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Ive got some 10r left still (only about 80 ;D)
I think the Thonkiconns I have are switching (3 poles off a mono jack)
Ive cut the + line on the spkr ready for modding.
Then I got distracted taking the toy apart so I can tinker n poke about easier. By then it was 2am.
My guess for hooking up the spkr is;
Spkr + line goes to the âswitchâ, the spkr out line (from pcb) goes to tip, sleeve goes to gnd?
Ill post a pic of the toy later on, but yes there is a dreaded black blob, but there are a bunch of resistors, diodes, caps and perhaps a clock crystal covered in hot glue.
Theres some interesting bits on it for a ÂŁ1 find to be fair. Even if its not bendable, I got my moneys worth in switches and triggers.
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I know youâve bent a megaphone that has what Iâd call a black blob but does have an accessible through hole pitch resistor â so maybe Iâm misunderstanding. Anyway, an encased sound chip does not imply you canât do the pitch resistor bend.
Iâve only tried bending a few things, and Iâve seen some toys where the pitch resistor is between two sound chip pins (like that megaphone), but Iâve also seen at least one where itâs between one sound chip pin and Vcc. There it appeared the chip speed was governed by a current controlled oscillator. If I changed the resistor the speed changed but also if I replaced Vcc with a different voltage it changed. Which means for a toy like that you can do voltage controlled pitch changes without a vactrol.
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An overview of my bendâs toy collection 
Itâs the first time i can play with them all together, i have other one but my mixer only have 4channels 
@Dud Did you have any tips and trick for circuit bending ?
Where did you found youre toys ?
For toys with black blob i just use my finger and saliva and put it anywhere i can until i hear a good noise/effect; i saw this technic in this book : https://www.nicolascollins.com/texts/originalhackingmanual.pdf
This one is the original text, i have the second edition in paper book
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Nothing revolutionary, often in a circuit bend toy i added pitch down/up, a reset button (when sometime some glitch make stop the machine), glitch if possible, jack out with volume pot, and often an LFO with vactrol on pitch pot, some of them are controllable by external sources (trigger or cv), and some have also a filter inside (MS20clone)
the best I think is the flea market and garage sale
Not only for black blobs, for all toys, it is âthe basisâ of the circuit bending 
There are some infos on my blog that may be of interest to you.
If you have questions, do not hesitate
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To be able to connect more than fifteen things in live, I had made some small passive mixers
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I always forgot the use of vactrol ! What kind of LFO work the more often for you, 555, a super simple OSC (with transitor in reverse avalanche) ?
The sound dont become to quiet at the end ? I have some loud toys and some quiet itâs always a probelem for me to play it togethers
A friend just give me a bear that reapeat what you said but with higher pitch. no black blob but the only chip is a microcontroler and i spend few hours to find an interesting bend but nothing yet i dont realy know what to do with it
I 
555 !!!
I made several different in toys but the best and the most complete it is with this schem
not as good like a active one but it do the job
for your level âproblemâ, I will advise you to put a volume pot on each toy (can be cool to protect your mixer)
and yes some new toy canât be bending
Since i burn one and melt a breadboard i never touch 555 again and i call them 666 now 
But i wil try to fight the demon !
Ok i will do that thank you
For the unbendable ther is a picture of the (small) circuit
White : push button to switch on/off the toys
Red/Black : microphone
Blue : speaker
Black/Orange : power
Green/Orange : motor
Even if i dont make any bend i think i still can add a jack in and a jack out (to make it like a pedal)
I can add LFO to the input or output for the volume (vactrol in parallel with the volume knob ?)
And replace the motor with a jack to have a end of cycle trigger
The chip is a TR16F064 B Datasheet here
I need to read more the datasheet to figure what is the clock of this circuit but ther is no crystal on the PCB i read in the book i told you before that you can use a 555 in replacement of some clock in this case but i still never did it yet.
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Nice timing, I just made a post about tons of vactrols 
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I redrawn the schematic with a switch to change the rate and i made a small PCB, (3.5 x 4cm) with one mounting hole (M3) in the middle.
Here is the schematic
And the PCB :
The full kicad project is Here
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PCBs? Luxury! 555s are best built dead-bug style 
(also makes it easier to integrate the build itself in the resulting artifact)
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The original schematic is from Casper Elecctronics, maybe add it on your schem.
you have forgotten the value (50K) for the Depth trimpot 
and if you want to use it in some bending toys it will be better maybe to add a vactrol (instead of jack socket )
Thank you for the trim pot
For the jack socket/vactrol on the PCB itâs just 2 solder point so you can do both depending if you put the vactor on the toy with a jack input, or if you want to put the vactrol between the LFO and the jack output (LFO side) or if you just want a regular LFO.
I try to make it as modular as possible.
PCB like this will cost like 5⏠for 20 PCB (i didnt upload the file on the PCB makerâs website but i guess itâs super cheap)
I try to look at the original schem on casperelectronic website with the internet time-machine but i wasnt able to find it
I will add original schem by Casper electronics
There is no shape/speed/depth for this one but itâs powered by only 3v i will take a look at my design to see if it can be powered by 3v too the shape pot tend to lower the voltage but it still could be a very good feature if you can power if from every toys (generaly 4.5v)
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