PCB Assembly, Explanation and Testing - Excitation Section - Vocoder

A little bit more assembly and testing of the vocoder excitation PCB

[philipashmore]

I know there are software vocoders out there but this is more about the journey, which I appreciate.
I can remember Laurie Andersons "O Superman", sends chills down my spine every time I hear it.
My 2 cents worth would be to drill some holes through from the back, scrape off the solder resist on the top and run some mod wires through.

[flickpad]

Your mystery knobs are available from soundtronics part number 7212-193.

[jlucasound]

It is so awesome to see you back on the Vocoder. Does anyone out there have any of those knobs or a lead to were Julian can get them? I don't see you using the others. I suppose for now. Also, the cabinet. (When you get there). Wood! Please make the cabinet out of the most gorgeous wood you can think of. (I don't know how original you want to keep it, though). I am only assuming the original cabinet was steel.

[chrisroberts]

Instead of chopping up the tracks could the connector fit on the other side of the PCB?

[MrBrymstond]

Julian...Let me know a week in advance so I can get my band into England for our new band

[jlucasound]

Make it like a Superscope (pre Marantz). I actually have a Superscope amp with its wood (Veneer) cabinet. looks so cool.
Just a suggestion. :-)

[SimpleElectronics]

I've been watching your channel for many years but it feels as though we are getting quite close to a completed Vocoder!

[andymouse]

Hawkwind ! I've waited years for this vocoder and I really think ya on the home stretch, go Mr Ilett go!

[Jeff]

I like the idea of having a noise sauce.

[dentakuweb]

Scraping off the solder mask to attach the mod wires flat to the PCB works fine. It also looks better and is more reliable because you only need a few centimeters of wire that are less likely to get caught on something.
I guess the only downside is that if you pull on it too hard you could rip the trace off the PCB but I've never had that happen.

[Chriva]

Julian 'the noise maker' Ilett :D

[kassutronics]

You could also cross the wires around in the ribbon cable before the last connector.

[melkiorwiseman]

Here in Australia, we get a New Zealand magazine called Silicon Chip which fairly recently described how to get pseudo-random noise by using either a shift register with XOR gates or a simulation of them in a computer.
I used the information they gave to program a simulated 32-bit shift register and XOR gates into a PIC 12F675 microcontroller (I happened to have a few of those handy). It toggles one of the I/O pins using the lowest bit in the simulated register after each pass through the simulation loop.
It works great, even with just a small speaker. With the low-voltage tolerance of that chip, I can run it directly off an 18650 if I want to. I added some NOP instructions at the end of the main loop before it goes around for each pass in order to lower the over-all frequency of the noise, which I found gives a more pleasant sound.
I hope to eventually make a white-noise generator to connect to some ear buds to mask noise while I'm sleeping. Since the 675 has an a-to-d converter built in, I may connect a pot to that and program the microcontroller to vary the pause length between each bit to vary the frequency.

[rasmushaun]

Do you have some documentation on your vocoder project? Or is it your own design? (:

[fifaham]

BTW: I also used Sound Forge Audio Studio from SONY to generate sounds and mix them by software or Hardware. I purchased this software from Staples for about $100 and it has amazing features. I can spend hours and hours generating sounds and effects and program them in the memory chips then create own weird effects. Problem is that creating videos on YouTube take time and I posted some of my projects, not all of them. I wish to have team with people like you and me creating new things for life.

[fifaham]

Great job, great results - keep the good work. Few years ago I designed voice and noise generator circuit that was used in a Robot to show to my community. I used a sound generator chip that can generate allophones. I used similar chip back in the late 80s, it was selling at Radio Shack and it generated preprogrammed words and sounds and presented in my Graduation Project in the university. We also can generate those sounds by digital means, condition them, filter them, and mix them together. I love those kinds of projects and that remind me of my old days - cheers and have great time working on those fascinating projects.

[milenedejong]

really making progress julian.. gonna be a nice instrument !

[grahamsquared]

Do you have a link to the DC inverter please?

[steveroberts]

The old knobs are available at Tayda also

[incorporeal]

Always wonders why those who dislike never leave any feedback as to why.