Yesterday was the second day of the Theremin Workshop run by Andrew Kilpatrick at the Toronto Hacklab.
We seemed to get pretty well along the process in the first workshop. I had my power supply completed, but my voltage regulators were in backwards – because the pin-out diagram was labeled as if looking from the bottom of the IC, not the top (as I assumed that all would be). Unfortunately, we found this out when we connected the supply voltage, and things got hot.
Yesterday, I finished removing my potentially fried voltage regulators, and put new ones in. Andrew described the oscillator circuits, and the difference circuit. I’ll need to do some more research, and thinking on these points, but exposure to these concepts is one of the main reasons that I’ve signed up for the workshop.
I haven’t done a lot of electronics work aside from prototype/toy projects, and the keylogger – all digital logic type stuff. I signed up for the workshop to get some exposure to more analog electronics, and also to pick up some tips on assembling components.
Some wacky things about this project: our voltage transformer outputs 12vac, and then we split that out into 12vdc and -12vdc. I’ve never had to deal with negative dc voltage, and it feels weird hooking in my capacitors with reverse polarity. It also blows my conceptual model of dc voltage away.
Anyways, so far so good. I’m really happy that I have this opportunity to do this workshop.