In my junkbox I found this vintage 1977 (or so) 76477 synthesizer chip- this model used to be used in arcade machines. It was gonna be another Matchbox Synth - you can see I have the case all prepped - but, whether because it’s old and broken, or because I wasn’t using it right, I couldn’t get any sounds out of it except for these.
Still, you may not have seen and heard the last of Syntho ‘77!
Catching up — I’m already behind, so posting twice today. That “Greener Gadgets” conference I went to yesterday is still on my mind. During one of the panels, Sony, among other corporations, were hyping their (highly flawed) recycling program. A lot of emphasis was put on electronic products’ “end of life” (how consumers need to be educated on how to properly dispose of them), with little discussion or responsibility being taken for the environmental impact of resource mining, energy consumption in the production stage of the product, labor practices, and on and on.
Anyway, while checking the status of my video camera repair on Canon’s website today, I checked out their recycling policy. The page had a rather incongruous image of bears in the wilderness, and was I reminded of how certain images/ideas had been (and apparently continue to be) used to represent environmental concerns — a fairly depoliticized image that functions as a kind of short hand for the issue. As if to say the problem is out *there*. It’s pretty common to pull out the mediagenic , guilt-trip inducing images to demonstrate corporate kinship with the world. So I thought I’d do an image search on keywords related to corporate recycling programs in the electronics industry. Here are a couple of samples. I’ll post an expanded version on my site soon.
embedded by Embedded Video
And the Instructable slideshow
Today I made a penguin that alights in joy when your cell phone rings. Okay okay, maybe only when my cell phone rings. And maybe it doesn’t alight, but light up. And maybe I didn’t make the penguin at all… but I did make it light up when my cell phone rings.
It uses an Arduino, an AQV210EH low-voltage relay and a hacked cell phone vibrating alert. It was a good excuse to figure out the Arduino, but I still rather use a PIC.
Arduino code by popular demand:
int anlgPin = 2; // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int ledPin = 13; // select the pin for the LED
int val = 0; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor
void setup() {
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // declare the ledPin as an OUTPUT
}
void loop() {
val = analogRead(anlgPin); // read the value from the sensor
if (val > 50)
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // turn the ledPin on
delay(10000); // stop the program for some time
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); // turn the ledPin off
}
}
Anyways… enough of the technical…. See it for yourself! Watch the video sucka!