Thingamakit Night!

Our pal Emily stopped by tonight for a Thingamakit building party. We got started around noon, and by 11pm still hadn't finished our machines. Still, we had a ball and will hopefully have some new noisemakers chirping away before the holiday weekend comes to a close.





Here's where Emily was at the end of the night-- just the drilling left to do and that's all. Not bad for a first project! Great job!!


Some notes on the kit:

The Thingamakit PCBs are white with black text. Very nice!!



The manual is well laid out and easy to follow, but there are a few points worth mentioning--

When you solder the pots, fight the impulse to push them flush with the PCB. You'll need to bend them backwards later in order to fit in the case.

The instructions tell you not to connect the speaker until the drilling is finished. We're pretty sure you can ignore this.

Drilling blows. If you know someone with with access to a press, buy that person a pizza and visit them.

All told, this is a fun advanced-beginner project. It's a straightforward build, doesn't cost very much and makes exactly the kind of unmusical noise you want to hear at the end of the night. Plus, if you're the sort of hobbyist who immediately wants to modify your kits, the manual comes complete with suggestions to that end to get you started.

Recommended!

P.S. Can anyone point me to a CV sync mod (for either the oscillator or the modulator... or both)? Is there a way to do that?