Good Morning Sunshine...in a couple more hours

Last week the class began the initial "gutting" process with our toys.  The first toy that I murdered was unbelievable simple and unsubstantial as seen in Figure 1.  Thus, over the weekend, I purchased an Elmo phone as my victim of choice.  Although still quite elementary, no pun intended, this toy was a bit more interesting.  It had a speaker, a general PCB with touch activated sound, switches, LEDs and a source.  The crime against the Elmo phone can be seen below in Figure 2.

Figure 1.  Boring Toy

Figure 2.  Autopsy of Elmo Phone

Subsequent to gaining a good understanding of the inner workings and stimuli, it was then possible to figure out how it may be integrated with others for the project.  My group consists of Mary O'Leary (toy drum)  and Ben Geissbuhler (toy guitar/piano). 

When we first got together as a group, it was really difficult to see where this project had the potential to go.  We were left with broken circuits and an amalgamation of parts that we just started experimenting with.  At this point we simply had all of our "instruments" soldered so that they would output to the same speaker as seen in Figure 3.  The outcome was  cacophony that was less than desirable.  When we were cleaning up on Monday, the switches were turned off but as the jumbled circuit was put away we could audibly hear the guitar portion shorting out and most likely frying the on-board chips.  

Figure 3.  Initial Three Instrument Jumble

The group assembled  again on Tuesday, outside of class.  Still, the guitar portion was not functioning properly.  After a visual examination of the capacitors, resistors and other circuit elements, we came to the final conclusion that the chip must have been damaged (each of the others appeared in tact).  The only logical solution was to salvage usable parts for use with the other two.

At this point, we still really had only a very vague idea of what we might do with this project. However, after we 'cut' the guitar out, it felt like we lost a lot of the bulk that was holding us back before.  As we continued experimenting with how the components would interact it became like a physical brainstorming activity....and surprisingly turned into a bit of a jam session along the way.  As we continued experimenting with the different sounds and combinations, we naturally found things that we really liked.  Not only did the result make more sense, but it became more artistic and multidimensional by the second. 

From a slightly more technical standpoint, the Elmo PCB and the musical drum have remained with their respective power supply.  The outputs were wired to  1W and 1.5W speakers, respectively.  Three switches that had been salvaged from the guitar were attached on one end to the power supply and the other to the speaker.  In doing so, we will be essentially shorting out that portion of the circuit when we close the switch.  Musically, this leads to an effect similar to a DJ scratching the sounds together.  Not only did our experimental  jamming sessions provide a lot of entertainment, but it actually sounded pretty good.  

There are a couple other parts that we are waiting to incorporate (ie. parts of a piano), but overall we are much more optimistic about the results we have seen so far.  There is a distinguishable direction that we are heading...so our only job now is to bring the rest of our vision to life.  For now, I wont spoil any more details...