This week we’ll move from a breadboard to a soldered perfboard. We’ll also look at some other components and diagnostic tools we can use.
After reviewing the content below and watching the videos, you should move on to recreating an Atari Punk Console (APC). This page will have ‘documentation left by an artist’ and you’ll go through the process of piecing it together first on a breadboard, then soldering the pieces to a more stable copper clad board.
Once you have watched the videos for this week, please move on to the APC page
- potentiometers – a kind of voltage divider
- Turns a voltage into a smaller one
- potentiometers are variable resistors which can be used to create an adjustable voltage divider
- Other variable resistors like photocells require you ti build your own voltage divider with other fixed resistors
- Integrated Circuits
- aka ICs. Small components that contain entire circuits with specific functions (logic gates, timers, amplifiers) that are used ubiquitously in electronic systems.
- The 555 is a great ‘starter’ IC
- How to use an oscilloscope
- An oscilloscope allows use to visualize the waveform of a given signal over time. We can use it to detect amplitude, frequency, and any potential inconsistencies.
- Soldering
- Through hole
- surface mount
- related – wire wrapping
- PCBs: Printed circuit boards are used for manufacturing circuits in a more stable way than the point-to-point wiring used in a breadboard.
- Connectors
- Often when working with components, you’ll encounter different kinds of connectors. Often times folks will abuse these for purposes they were not intended for. For example, I’m a big fan of using 1/8″ headphone jacks as interconnects for digital signals.