G15 PMN Creative First-hand Programming
G15 Intraplates Multiversity has many relevant links:
http://intraplates.com/
The Elsketch approach deals with actual work with electronical
components in a hobby laboratory. Our engagement in this goes back
to before the G15 PMN programming language and platform was fully
conceptualized and given the stable form it now has. Note that
some of the dated documents in this Stamash Elsketch section,
named, here 'reports' (for they are observations and experiments
from actual work with electronical components) here and there
has a language that somehow may predate the final mature version
of the G15 PMN programming language. In addition, the core set
of reports of this nature were made before the Elsketch app, for
we want the app to help clarify what goes on in the Elsketch studio.
Cfr norskesites.org/fic3/fic3inf3.htm for the main #5558888
Elsketch emulation app. THIS G15 PMN APP IS TO BE MADE AFTER
THE FCM EXAMPLES IN THE THIRD FOUNDATION APP ARE COMPLETE,
AND WILL BE RELEASED IN 2017. The analog radio receiever and
transmitter examples, and other such core electronics
documented here, are however very well-tested indeed and
anyone interested in hobby electronics can spend time with
this already before any radio-relevant software in G15 PMN
has been completed from our hands. After the release of the
G15 PMN Elsketch app, fresh Elsketch work, also with relevance
for boolean logic gates and G15 CPU construction work, as well
as for robotics control, will unfold here. We are now speaking
of the G15 PMN Elsketch developments of the 2020s, where also
new apps for higher-level construction will be released.
Status of technology development relative to analog radio:
the deliciously simple, first-hand analog radio concept, which
includes such as medium-wave and short-wave AM, is alive and
well. However, short-sighted politicians here and there have
tried to save money by giving in to industrial conglomerates
that push in the direction of relying more and more on the
vulnerable, cluttered, and intensely second-hand chip
technology for radio transmission, such as the socalled
"DAB" technology ("D" for dummies). Nevertheless, analog radio
will never vanish, and when the beauty of analog radio is
reborn in people who want to deal more with technology of
a first-hand understandable type, then, I predict, there will
be more radio transmissions of the analog type again.
ELSKETCH: Our notion of improvised, intuitive, first-hand,
'dirt-under-nails' sketching -- both in mind, in terms of
programs, and in concrete reality, of supreme electronics
devices using only the most elementary electronics items
in existence; and doing this without reliance on the whole
array of cluttering conventions as for diagrams, without
any overuse of formulae, and with a raw instinct for what
works. The author of the Elsketch programme (Aristo Tacoma)
has dabbled with stuff like this since childhood.
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EDUCATION AND SELF-EDUCATION FOR ARTISTS, DESIGNERS, MODELS, THINKERS
IN ANY FIELD, EVERYONE WHO WANTS A DEEPER SENSE OF MEDIATION AND A
NOVEL SENSE OF BEAUTY AND ESTHETICS: G15 MULTIVERSITY 'DIRT UNDER NAIL'
PROJECTS. Ever seen a bunch of bikini models make their own transistor
radio? Not for a Vogue or Sports Illustrated pose, but because of their
real, sincere interest in self-education and mindfulness? No? About time! ;)
* You want an overview over all Multiversity G15 Elsketch projects?
http://www.stamash.com/secs_stamash_educational_centers/elsketch/sitemap/
We coined the concept "ELSKETCH" to incorporate a sense of hobby-like
but also professional contact with ELectronics and ELectronics in
a sense of both rational and intuitive improvised SKETCHing of
various circuits, diagrams or whatever one calls it. Elsketching
is a process, while "an elsketch" is an implemented actual
piece of electronics, or the representation in the forms of numbers
so that the computer can make some sense of it. We have experimented
with various forms of the Elsketch project since the programming
language PMN G15 Yoga6dorg had one of its earlier names, Lisa Gj2 Fic3,
but it is now a real, actual up-and-running activity which has
an idealistic educational flavour for anyone anywhere in the world
who wants to get the upper hand on electronics with only a couple
of dollars to start with for making radios, transmitters, amplifiers
and eventually mastering all sorts of things including ALL the
elements of a first-hand G15 transistor computer the size of a
giant truck, including first-hand logical gates.
For the G15 Multiversity: Background works
Also part of the Stamash Educational CenterS, SECS
Primary Multiverse Noetics, or PMN, is a first-hand
programming language built within G15 Yoga6dorg platform.
This can also run on its own hardware as an "O.S.",
for absolutely everything of it has been designed
from scratch with the thought that transistors,
capacitors and such neat little things can run it
directly. {It has 240 instructions, only some of
them require some larger bundles of transistors.}
The G15 concept in education takes the stance that
more important than merely having 'useful' skills,
and more important than merely have surface contact
with entirely un-understood boxes of modern technology,
an eductation should involve some degree of 'getting
dirt on one's nails' with real contact with real
building processes of elementary technology and
other elementary things in a whole life
For general info about PMN G15 Yoga6dorg see www.moscowsites.org/fic3
www.norskesites.org/fic3
In general terms, we might use the following
vocabulary: Each Elsketch project constitutes
also a report over successfully completed
electronics development and implementation work,
in a sense a bit of 'neopopperian research',
intended to be replicated in an improvised,
intuitive, playful way by anybody who likes
to educate herself in this way.
This report is dated August 11, 2013. For
general info about copyright confer the spirit
of honoring acknowledgements as found in our
www.yoga4d.org/cfdl.txt.
As for acquiring standard electronics components
try a variety of relevant words including 'electronics'
and 'components' as well as such as 'npn' and 'pnp',
'picofarad' and so on at www.yoga6d.org/look.htm
or any of the other equivalent mounting-points for
the search engine we've made in PMN G15 Yoga6dorg of
a mind-stimulating (free from over-helpful-ness
but honest and wise and long-term use certainly
increases own knowledge and capacity to do many
interesting things, all the time!) search engine.
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Elsketch: Creating a first transistor radio module
-- quality through simplicity: the fiest of good
sound through just a bunch of simple components
which make up an AM MW radio
Images of the full-fledged working AM MW radio that
can pick up stations thousands of kilometers away
and fill the room with with relatively high-quality
talk and music extracted from the luminous aether
-- when the stars are up, and weather conditions
otherwise right
{ anything in brackets, soft {} or hard [] -- whether one bracket
[ ] or three brackets [[[ .. ]]] is generally an updated info of some
sorts, making some things more precise or giving a novel kind of
hint, sometimes inserted a long time after the date of the main
page containing a report. for instance, at the completion of this
page you'll find how to measure on transistors given a simple
measurement instruments and how to find out which pin is what
pin of the three pins, and this was inserted after the main
report at this page was written -- so this is in brackets.}
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Elsketch has a G15 Yoga6dorg side to it: each project can also
be studied by a first-hand emulation of it made in the G15
language, by fitting the number-oriented description to the
G15 program.
[note: the program Elsketch in G15 is being worked on, but we want
several projects to be up and flying so that the empirics is
far stronger than the emulation in digital terms -- we want
the emulations to supplement the real empirics of working
with real electronics, and so make no haste to implement this.]
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WHAT IS "ELSKETCH"? AND WHAT IS A MODULATOR, A CAPACITOR, A
COIL, AND A TRANSISTOR, REALLY?
ElSketch-ing is our name for first-hand work with sketching new
things in electronics, where we work with components or items
that are as simple as possible, and with as few premade things
as possible.
If you take any steel wire, and put some electricity of the
battery intensity through it -- say, 12 volt -- you'll find, if
you measure it very precisely, that the steel wire heats up just
a tiny little bit and it eats off a little bit of that electricity
as it heats up. Put the same volt through a bit of coal, such as
a burned piece of bread, and, depending on the nature of the coal
and how it's fastened to wires, it may lead some of the electricity
through it, and heat up a little bit, but it also simply resists
electricity, and allows electricity to be modulated in its
intensity. So the component that we call 'modulator' (or resistor)
is any one such -- measured in Ohms, coal has more ohms than steel
-- which doesn't quite let electricity fully through. A particular
kind of such a modulator is a signal lamp, which instead of just
heat also makes light.
Put two large metal plates very near one another, but without
at all touching. If you put electricity to them, for a very brief
instant -- but a longer instant if the plates are very large --
they do allow electricity to pass through them. After a moment,
they won't allow it anymore. Amazingly, they keep on to the
electricity -- they have a charge, just like a battery. If you
connect wires to the plates to a tiny signal lamp, and the
plates are big enough, they might cause the signal lamp to
flash up with a light for a brief moment. And after this brief
moment, they are again available for re-charge. This is a
CAPACITOR, for we're talking here of a capacity to hold
electricity. This is measured in FARAD. The smallest ones are
used to make radio frequencies, tiny ripples of quick quick
flashes of electricity, and these have values in terms of
pico-farad. A thousand pico-farad, pf, gives one nano-farad, nf.
That's suitable for dealing with audio frequencies, sounds having
like merely a thousand or five thousand cycles pr second (a 1000 or
5000 Hertz, or Hz), compared to radio frequencies of such as
a one million Hertz, also called 1 MHz, one mega-hertz, or
a thousand kilo-hertz). When we want really low frequencies
such as fifty hertz to be smoothened out we can go up yet
one step, from nano-farad to micro-farad (one thousand
nano-farad is one micro-farad (and we always abbreviate
micro-farad to mf, the 'm' not to be confused with the 'm'
as in mm, milli-meters), and then you can imagine just
how nonsensically much one farad is, a measurement unheard
of in normal electronics), and put the micro-farad
capacitor in there somehow. If the power-supply is buzzing
with 50 hertz noise, but it provides rather clear SC,
straight current, then it will get straighter still by
fitting a suitable capacitor of some micro-farad between the
two wires coming from the power-supply. But such capacitors
are hard to make without introducing chemicals, at least if
they're going to be fairly small. And these chemicals are
a bit like the chemicals in batteries -- they get explosive
if they get the wrong polarity in quantities. So we must
take care to fit such POLARISED capacitors so that the
poles are correctly set.
In Elsketch, we focus on fresh names to lift new insights
into play, which not always were spoken clearly about in what
we can call 'twentieth century electronics'. While everybody
in the 20th century agreed that the notion of the "negative
pole" was a misnaming, since that's a pole overflowing in
abundance with electrons, few did anything with it. We rather
call that pole for the E pole. The other pole can still
sometimes be called a + pole, a positive pole, but it's
important to recognise that what it is positive with is a
kind of 'hunger for electrons'. It's also important to
recognise that all the electronic sketches, when they do
work, work by means of what we in supermodel theory also
sometimes call q-fields. These q-fields are holistic, they
are whole, they are not mechanical push-pull things. We
can describe individual items by pushing and pulling,
by charging up and charging out, and so on, but once these
items work together as a whole, we must understand deeper
aspects such as resonance; it's almost like saying: take
these machine bits, and fit them together; but when you
start up the machine, it tranform from being a machine to
being a bit organic.
A capacitor that's small lets through frequency currents
(that is, electricity that goes back and forth in polarity),
but it doesn't let through straight currents (except for that
brief instant). It lets through, we might say, FC, but not SC
-- this is a vocabulary we use in Elsketch. For when electricity
goes back and forth, it picks the electricity we've charged up
a capacitor with off it, making it clean and fresh and receptive
for new charge.
A very large capacitor also only lets through FC, frequency
currencies, but it is more roomy, and allows slower FC, such as
audio frequency stuff to come through it. Its slowness may also
prevent a bit of radio frequency to come through it.
Take a copper wire painted with epoxy or such, making it
insulated, and wire it around something many times. If you
put it beside a capacitor, and it's constructed so that these
two fit one another, the copper wire is then able to provide
a kind of slowness to the change of polarity that the capacitor
would like to do its charge and recharge. While a capacitor
filter out any too-low frequencies, such a COIL has the
feature that it filters out any too-high frequencies. Coils like
capacitors just as high-heeled shoes like girl feet.
While it is really easy to make a capacitor of a lot of
picofarad, or even nanofarad, only with metal plates -- a
variable capacitor in a radio by moving metal plates,
insulted from each other but near one another -- once we
get up to microfarad, they are more complicated to make, as
said above. But we need to go up in farad when we go from
high-pitchen quick frequencies of the RF -- radio frequency
type -- and over towards audio frequencies, such as are
involved in audio amplifiers. Interestingly, it is also
easier to make RF coils than to make audio coils. The coils
we measure in terms of HENRY. A wire of just some turnings
have but pico-henry, and it takes much work to make
nano-henry. A good audio amplifier does need even more
work, approaching micro-henry with its coils, just as it
needs micro-farad with its capacitors.
A coil that is also used for radio reception must have in
it not only a great deal of fine-tuning relative to the
frequency ranges involved, but also we must ensure that it
is using metal that invites reception of radio frequencies
in the air. Ferrite is a kind of composition involving also
particles of iron so that it is rather light-weight while
at the same time encouraging the coil to work like a coil
with a good many nano-farad, though not so as to lock the
coil into a closed field. A coil always makes some
magnetism when it has electricity on it. If we want to
focus on this magnetism, a core of plain iron or steel
is perfect. Electric engines typically have several such
magnets-from-coils constantlly pushing and pulling the
engine to rotate. But when we want to receive very subtle
impulses towards magnetism in the air from radio waves,
we don't want the coil to stick to its own magnetic field.
We want it to let go of any built-up magnetism quickly,
and stay receptive to the radio waves. That's why such
things as ferrite comes in. When you have a well-working
radio, therefore, keep all strong magnets at a distance
from all the components and especially at a distance from
the coil. For some metals store magnetism for a good while,
and if you put a magnet near coil metal so that you
induce magnetism in this metal, the coil may not be as
good in picking up radio waves before that magnetism has
vanished. A screw-driver might be usefully magnetised,
however, so that it can pick up tiny screws fallen deep
into an apparatus, by rubbing it one way only against
a strong magnet. It will then retain the bulk of the
magnetism perhaps for just some hours, or less if that
magnetism is then rubbed off against something.
So we have looked at modulators ('resistors'),
capacitors, and coils. We're almost through with the
essential items. The one item we must also have, and
which is of key importance, is the transistor. In one way
or another, this is a key part of digital computers. When
we want to make a first-hand computer using Elsketch
technology, -- truly first-hand, like really so that
we can visualize how everything works and get to touch
each individual transistor -- we must have a truck-load
of elsketch modules. But, significantly, we only need
modulators, capacitors, coils and transistors as the
components. The socalled 'integrated chips' which began
to pervade all technological society in the 1980s has
that truck in a microscopic scale, and it relies on work
with the big, grand, standard items in Elsketch. But when
something is done in Elsketch it is UNDERSTOOD, and it
can be MAINTAINED. With the chips came the 2nd hand
relationship to reality, with the chips can the throw-away
attitude to things that didn't work, with the chips --
which, when finished, hide their quantum nature, came
the more mechanical and less spiritual worldview that
as if the universe is composed only of machines -- what
a rediculous point of view! So Elsketch is a key component
in any spiritual, artistic, humane education, for it
brings together the logical/mechanical with the intuitive/
organic, and transistors are true quantum-like objects,
acting, with their crystalline structure, in fields
organising themselves nonlocally and in ways going beyond
the physics before quantum physics.
Transistors can be replaced by other types of
things, but transistors is, and will probably remain,
the simplest type of component that does just its job.
It's main job is to act as a kind of amplifier element.
A transistor on its own is a very mild amplifier indeed.
Most amplifiers that give loud and high quality sound
depends on a whole, big lot of them, and a whole big
lot of modulators, coils and capacitors as well, so
as to not overstrain any of these mild amplifiers, and
so as to enhance core sound and filter off noise sound.
Similarly, a computer must also have in it elements to
filter off noise fluctuations. This is always a bit
unsure process, and for reasons of that unsureness,
one can never be totally certain a computer won't
suddenly malfunction. One can only lower the risk, by
doing clever good work and using high-quality items.
But one can plan for having alternative computers
stepping in at once if a computer stops working, and
yet other computers to do the switching, hoping that
not too many of them malfunctions at once. And so on.
So before transistors, electron tubes were used:
rather as some types of light bulbs, these are glass
units where air has been pumped out, and that work
best when fairly hot. Electrons can then fly in the
vacuum without resistance from the air, from one pole
to another, and be regulated by such as grids in the
middle. So vacuum tubes, like transistors, never have
less than three pins.
The transistor type we use here is one that can be
used both in radio receivers, radio transmittors,
audio amplifiers and computers, and in the Elsketch
series of works, we make everything up to a whole
G15 Personal Computer by means of transistors. The
latter is not something one does manually in a
complete sense, but one does bits of it manually, and
lets robots make the rest of the computer. But it can
then be walked through, and one can put one's fingers
on any component, and even repair individual modules --
things not possible when all is put into a couple of
chips with tremendous compression.
This transistor type, easily available, is called
-- and this fits with the 20th century terminology,
let's add that! -- BC547C NPN and BC557C PNP.
These are just names, nothing to understand about them
really. The NPN or PNP are their broad types, the
first letter tells us that it's a type that's oriented
towards the + pole. These two are among many that are
really hyper-general. The only variations are when
it comes to pushing the power that can be allowed
to pass through a transistor, and as to their
behaviour with regard to extreme frequencies,
temperatures, and such.
So any transistor of such a standard type has what
we call a 'middle pin'. Here you apply the input.
This, when tending towards just that polarity which
it says -- 'P' for 'Plus' when we as in the radio
module and transmitter use NPN transistors -- will
allow a greater flow of current through the transistor,
a current which is otherwise rather completely blocked.
It can be just a trickle applied to the middle pin and
quite a lot of power can be regulated by slight
fluctuations of this trickle. This, however, presupposes
that you put fairly much power to the 'collector pin',
or C-PIN, and that this has the same polarity as the
middle pin; and that you put the opposite polarity
to the remaining pin, the 'emitter pin' (rediculous
names, I know, but get used to the names as names),
which we write here in Elsketch as E-PIN.
There is no difference at all between the practical
functionality of an NPN and PNP transistor apart from
this polarity. If the sketch works well with a PNP
transistor, then, by switching polarities on all
polar-sensitive things, and switching the input
volt polarity also, you can typically change the
PNP to NPN and it will work straight away.
Let's bear in mind that when we talk about
a real-life item out there we are painting a kind of
map in our minds of the item out there but the item
out there is infinitely richer than any map we paint
of it, we might say. And there are entirely different
way of using transistors and sometimes it's best to
trust it to intuition. A particularly apt example is
that when you design an oscillator, you are trying
to design something that is going to oscillate
maybe for a million times pr second -- that MW radio
frequency. So you cannot really try to manually
go through each step involved. You must look at it
as a whole. And that whole involves a very subtle
tuning of the electricity. We may find that when
we put a coil and capacitor beside one another and
wire them in parallel, we may have an excellent
starting-point. But if we simply connect this to
a transistor in an obvious way, it may be that
the transistor gets over-eager in feeding electricity
to the capacitor and so the whole process dwindles in
intensity before it pulls off.
Let's also note that it may be of value to give a
tiny bit power of the opposite polarity that you
would expect to the middle pin also -- a little bit,
so that there is something it can swing in between,
something that helps it to establish a kind of
balance point. These words are approximate; it's
a question of finding out what gives the best
result, also in terms of quality.
And it's good to remark that it is usually vital
to throw in at least one modulator between the
transistor and any power supply -- let's say
between C pin and the plus pole, for instance --
this involves shielding the activity of the
transistor a little bit from the power supply
so that it is possible to pick out some of
the electricity variations that the transistor
is making before it's swallowed up by the power
supply -- battery or 12 volt coming from the
a transformator unit.
ALTERNATIVE USE OF TRANSISTOR AS WHAT WE CALL
"BUFFER": We have given a description in which
a transistor is used as an amplifier. In some
cases, we have a separate amplifier module but
we have too much noise, or potential noise. A
case in point is that it is often something like
50Hz associated with most power supplies of 12v;
but there are also other forms of noise. A
fantastically simple trick -- a crazy one,
compared to most 20th century thinking about
transistor -- but it works, and it works really
well at that -- is to switch the PNP/NPN type of
transistor WITHOUT switching the polarity as
one would expect -- but in such cases one will
also remove any modulator between the middle
pin and the collector, and maybe instead insert
a modulator between emitter pin and its
connection to one of the poles. Experiments
with getting the highest quality sound on the
radio showed that buffer transistor is what
we needed here (we make a quality audio
amplifer in another Elsketch project that can
be connected to this radio).
A transformator (also called a 'transformer', but
really it's all about transformation, and the word
is too general, despite its 20th century use in
electronics in such a way) is two coils, or more,
entwined on the same magnetic metal material. The
metal is used to give electricity from one coil to
the next. Interestingly, the quantity of turnings
allows one to alter the voltage by this. By having
FC -- frequency currents -- of some 50 Hertz or so
of a higher voltage than what can be used in such
first-hand electronics, the wires, usually copper
wires, used to transport electricity between houses
work more effectively than if lower volt is used
and if SC -- straight current -- is used. So we
have much volt and FC, and we want few volts and
SC, and a transformator box equipped with a bunch
of other items in addition to the transformator
will do the job. There are some items which are
derivatives of the main group, such as 'diods' --
half a transistor, fundamentally -- employed in
such boxes -- and fuses, which are but modulators
tuned to only work if not too much electricity --
measured in AMPERE when we speak quantities of
flow, rather than the 'volt speed' of the flow --
rush through them -- and more such, used in
various modules. But by focussing on modulators,
capacitors, coils and transistors, we have the
general understanding we need to conquer any bit
of electronics in our own minds.
So a transistor, made of germanium or silicium
or the like, is made out of a particular crystalline
like of metals that are not nearly as easy-going
with regard to electricity as steel, tin or copper
-- the holy triunity of electrical metals -- and
these crystalline like metals have more q-field
properties than other metals, we might say. The
q-field is sensitive to its surroundings, and more
so if the metal is destilled and purified a great
deal. The silicium or germanium can, once it is
very very pure, be strongly modified by extremely
light additions of some critical other chemicals,
belonging to a group of perhaps not so common
chemicals such as boron and antimony. It only takes
a little bit for the q-field to change. So this
change allows us to classify the germanium
(or the silicium) as P-type or N-type. Once we are
able by exact chemical processes tuned very
precisely in an industrial manner to fit two
P-type bits tightly together with one N-type bit,
or vice versa for an NPN transistor, and also,
in a precision way, connect wires to each of the bits,
we get the transistor. This is admitted a lot more
complex than to burn a bit of bread and put wires
to it so as to get a modulator. But it doesn't seem
like it can get simpler than this. After all, it is
still elements of nature, although very purified and
modified with great exactness by a slight addition of
the little modifying chemical, and they must be fitted
in a laboratory using very precise temperatures and
what not. But we're not talking of a microscopic
scale here. We're talking of processes that after
all a fairly modest chemical laboratory can carry
through. Indeed, in our sister educational process
to Elsketch, named Atomlite, we deal with light
chemical processes including these so as to actually
make transistors.
WHAT IS "TINNING"?
I guess the right word for it really is "solder" and "soldering
tool" and such, when we melt a thread of tin containing also a
little lead and use it to fasten such as a very thin steel or copper
wire to another, but in Elsketch -- our educational approach to
relate to the fundamental items or components of electronics in
a first-hand, experimentative manner -- we form of the noun "tin"
a verb, and say "to tin". Instead of "soldering", we say "tinning".
This is a more pleasant word, and it is instantly recognisable
and understandable.
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THE NORMAL PRECAUTIONS: TINNING SAFELY
Tie your hair back if it can get in the way of the tinner and
be ready to cover as much as possible of all your skin so as
to protect against the heat of melted tin (four times as hot
as boiling water, and it contains poisonous lead as well),
and the heat also of the tinner. If you get enthusiastic and
wild about an elsketch project, don't continue with it before
you're calm, because no project is so important it's worth
blemishing your prestine beach body.
Each Elsketch experiment as described here is well-tested, but
it is part of the first-hand nature of working with the units of
electronics that there's always a sense of personal discovery
about both the process and the result, even if the result can
be predicted in general terms. For instance, in the bewildering
array of radio stations you can pick up, weather conditions of
all sorts matter in the extreme, and also minute differences in
how you arrange the antenna, and, not untypically, how you
hold the radio components when you tune the radio, for you
yourself influence the reception and strongly so when you touch
the metal part of some of the components in this low-voltage
radio. Don't work when it's lightening and thunder, as it may
change the voltage level and on some occasions be damaging.
Before you begin, you should take precautions against the one
enduring challenge with tinning: that of melted tin sometimes
splashing around. What you don't want is to get any of that
splashing tin drops on your skin -- and you absolutely don't
want to get it on your face, and you must take infinite
caution not to get it in your eyes. So before enthusiasm grips
you with electronics -- as it will, if you stick to it, you
must respect the fact that melted tin has several hundred
degrees of celcius and can cause instant burn marks. Unless
you're a proficient tinner, and perhaps even then, use a face
mask. The responsibility is your own. The clue, in general, is
to recognise that you must only tin in a case where you're not
applying pressure which bends the wires or pins you tin. If
you are applying pressure, then it usually means that sometimes
can suddenly slip and the wires can rebound and throw off their
cargo of tin to the air. You must be sure the wires are RESTING
on the tin position, not pushed there. So you take the extra
little time involved to bend the wires prior to the use of the
tinning tool -- so that they are naturally shaped so as not to
suddenly rebound during or right after the tinning process.
You also have on clothes that cover the skin, and you are
situated in general so that the electronics work happen on a
table that's considerably lower than you; for tin with lead is
heavy and usually will fall, and there's a protection in being
higher up. You also simply don't do it if in a rush. You've got
to give it time or avoid doing it.
Components can be reused up to a point. Take pains to use
intuition to sense the degree of coherence about components
before using them. You want to make highly holistic, highly
coherent things, out of highly coherent components. If
something is on the verge to breaking down, your intuition
can usually tell you if you listen to it; and avoid these
components, so the lack of coherence doesn't spread. Don't
insist on over-reuse of components.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE RADIO
What we will here make: we'll make a first radio module. In this
particular case, we'll use a premade medium wave ferrite coil and
a premade medium wave variable-capacitor and also a premade audio
amplifier with its own loadspeaker or headphones, so that not too
many things have to be done in the first experiment. We'll make
the radio module by adding some modulators (our word for what is
also called 'resistors'), a couple of transistors, and some
capacitors to the ferrite coil and the variable capacitors, and
connect these to the audio amplifier. We'll use a lot of rather
thin steel wire as antenna, in addition to the antenna effect of
the ferrite coil, and also add some metal near the ferrite coil,
putting it beside it, around it and near it, so as to enhance
the capacity of the radio. We can do this in daylight, when the
sun is up; but it is the nature of MW, medium wave radio
frequency that it can tune into myriads of transmissions especially
the first forty-five minutes before the night is at its darkest, and
and for one and a half hour especially -- longer at times. The Sun
is its own radio station and it is a very, very powerful one, swaying
all other stations. So it's primarely when the Sun is at the other
side of the planet you've the best chance to get this radio to
work. During daytime, the radio won't give any other than a very
radio-like noise when tuned into any faraway station, -- which
is pleasant and perhaps can be called 'white noise' (for it may
evenly spread across frequencies). During the construction of the
radio, perhaps in sunlight, you can tell by the noise that you
might have got a radio. Then you wait until the stars are up and
the nightsky is otherwise its most magnificent black: and when
the radio is put together right, and with the very crucial
ferrite coil exactly right -- don't experiment by making a coil
by experimentative means before you're sure the radio does indeed
work like a real radio with the premade ferrite coil -- it can open
up a world of listening, music and talking.
Now before I put together these components -- of size, and in a way,
chosen intuitively but with reasoning applied along the way, and
after a great deal of experimentation before this, and some fine-tuning
aftert his -- I had imagined that, with luck, one will be able to
barely pick up a station or two, and with extreme luck be able to
pick up what is said on one of them, at least for some seconds
where one strains one's ears to the outmost. I imagined how one could
lie about this, for fun, and to the frustration of people who will try
the experiment. "Go make this fantastic radio! It has good sensitivity,
it's selectivity is good, and we might say that it is high fidelity.
Real studio sound you know."
I especially liked that bit about "we might say", -- it's a kind of
humility thrown in, just before the total absurdity of the phrase,
"high fidelity".
I was then positively shocked by realizing that when the stars set
in for real, and the darkest patch of the night set in, I found
myself listening to one radio station after another -- music and
talk -- coming in loud and clear, and sometimes with a quality
that made me wonder whether one ever needs any better quality
than this on a radio. The little radio module with two transistors,
once powered by a ferrite core surrounded by some extra bits of
metals, and with an antenna thrown around at the floor tinned to
the correct wire, turned out to be a fiest of electronics, and
the notion of 'high fidelity' was at times coming to mind, not as
a joke this time, although HIFI is normally more correctly applied
to recorings. This is an Amplitude Modulation or AM radio of the
Medium Wave range (not the more phoney kind of quasi-radio
of the 'frequency modulation' or FM kind of very high frequency
that is typically going not much further than loud sounds themselves)
-- and we're talking listening in to transmissions strongly coming
from stations that are thousands of kilometers away. The MW radio
frequencies have properties that allow the atmosphere and ground
to alternately reflect these waves and propel them across the
planet. Very high frequencies do tend to require -- like light --
an absence of barrier, and a straight line from transmitter
station to receiver station.
Once the radio module is made using pre-made amplifier, pre-made
variable capacitor, and pre-made ferrite coil, the doors are open
for making each of the pre-made things for oneself. Once one has
a working radio module, one can try to replace one of the pre-made
things with a self-made thing. If it doesn't work, one knows where
one must work further. This is a step-by-step process which makes
huge sense in all Elsketch work. This also reduces the reliance
on any highly complicated and involved measurement technology
for such as coils. A radio works or it doesn't work. If it does
work with one coil that's prefabricated, and you can yourself make
a coil that makes it work just as well, more or less, then you
have presumably made a coil of roughly equal strength in Henry.
But to make a Henry-measurement tool, although possible, involves
reliance on pretty involved machinery that is not necessary to
have a sense of the charm of Elsketch electronics.
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PREPARING THE STEEL GRID FOR EACH ELSKETCH PROJECT
After a great deal of experimentation with just what easily
constructed foundation general hobby electronics does need,
we reached the notion of the relaxed steel grid, of squarish
size somewhat smaller than a typical piece of paper. This is
a pleasant structure, and it is supposed to be constructed
consciously appreciating the fine features of NOT having straight
normal corners and straight lines -- consult the q-field
discussion as part of the super-model theory in a design
context (archive section page 10 of the Eco-nomy column).
Create a steel grid to mount the components on, with wires with
plastic insulation that you fit in suitable places with a simple
knot or two. (See picture of completed radio.) These wires should
be of steel or copper and very thin indeed, to allow easy tinning
with a low-watt (watt equals volt times ampere, indicates such as
heat very roughly) tinner. But it is important that these wires
contain only one metal thread each, rather than such as many
thin copper wires: for one metal thread can be bent and kept in
that bent position, which is important for tinning, and in
dealing with many tinning operations, we don't want tiny and
nearly invisible threads to possibly cause shortcuts here and
there. Use thin copper-threads woven together as one wire where
that is technically important only (they conduce electricity
superbly e.g. in a high quality audio context), and normally,
for elsketch projects, use wires that are not composed of smaller
threads in any way.
The steel grid you make by taking ca 1mm steel wire the length of
which can fit roughly around a sheet of paper, and you knit it in one
end after cutting it. (Have a strong liquid soap ready if you touch
the cut wire so that a finger bleeds, to prevent infection, and
don't get any tin, which contains lead, and lead is toxic, near
any wound; wash your hands real well after each tinning session keep
fingers outside the reach of food and also don't touch sensitive
areas of your body such as mouth before you've strongly washed
hands.) Use a tool to make five (or maybe six) indents in the
steelwire at each of the four sides, so that each indent at one
side matches an indent on the opposite side. At each dent,
put a steel wire there, twirling it around itself e.g. by use of
tool and stretch it over to the corresponding indent on the other
side. This gives you a grid, it needn't look stringent at all.
Then at about every second spot (where a steelwire going
horisontally cross with a steel wire going vertically), tie a
wire with colored insulation with one or two knots, with varying
sizes but always ten centimeters or more distance from the knot
to the end of the wire. Spend time with tinner to remove
insulation -- heat it up by the side of the tinner, keeping
tinner tip clean -- and then pull off the insulation somehow
(most should do it by tool).
Clean tinner tip regularly by gently rubbing a steel tool on
its tip then giving it fresh tin.
Apply fresh tin from the thread of tin to each un-insulated
bit of wire.
The capacity of these wires to lift the components above the
steel grid, and to keep them in relatively stable distance from
each other, and to also keep the tinned bits in stable distance
from each other, makes this an ideal playground for Elsketch
projects of any kind. When we use the word 'module' here, we don't
refer to a prefabricated sleezy box which is closed, but to such
a deliciously first-hand product, open to inspection and
maintenance. And the stability will be enhanced by applying
suitable bits of tape for extra insulation, after the tinnings
have been checked to be stable and good. The module can then go
into production of professional equipment where the size
considerations are so that they allow such a grid to be present
without being pushed around by other things in the environment.
For large Elsketch projects such as the G15 computer, one will
mount the steelgrids in arrangements which allows them to be over
one another without touching, and with availability to repair etc.
The advantage of the steel grid over the 20th century notion of
sticking holes through an insulated 'board' with copper pathways
underneath in a premade connection is that it is far more open
to mild and strong changes, to control to experimentation. It is
also less flammable than all comparable approaches.
___________________________________________________________________
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Terminology: when we say 'use these components in parallel', it
usually refers to two items each with two pins, so that you can
tin pin 1 on both to each other, and pin 2 on both to each other.
Which is pin 1 and which is pin 2 doesn't usually matter at all --
for such as modulators, capacitors. For coils is may matter in
some cases as for the direction of their magnetic fields and so
also it may slightly influence how a coil performs as antenna
in a radio. For capacitors, parallel connection in general means
adding their farad strength to one another. For coils, in order
to add strength one would usually put them after one another, in
what is called 'series connection'. For modulators, they are
added in strength also when put in series connection. If you
put two modulators in parallel, the resulting ohm is reduced,
and there's a formula for that. Take one divided at the ohm for
one of the modulators. Take one divided at the ohm for the other
of the modulators. Add these two new numbers. Then take one
divided on this sum, and up comes the magical answer. The reason
modulators behave so peculiar when in parallel -- and, for
complicated elsketch designs, what is parallel is indeed a
matter of perception, not always that obvious -- and anything
at all can be seen in the light of their modulation as ohm --
is that the whole elsketch behaves as q-field, not as a mechanical
unit of push-pull things which can be analysed merely as local
parts pushing and pulling on each other. In other words, elsketch
is a matter of organic perception. A machine, when switched on,
is not merely a machine, it also has something organic about
it -- a whole field of coherence.
___________________________________________________________________
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___________________________________________________________________
The project: Making your AM MW radio.
Get these standard components: one premade
variable capacitor for MW radio frequency [say, one that is
variable from a dozen of picofarad and up to maybe as much as 200
picofarad or so, if you have to select from a catalogue],
one premade ferrite coil tested to work for sure with MW radio
frequencies [see notes elsewhere here for how, or cfr sitemap
as to how to wind your own ferrite from noise-reducting ferrite
chunks that one easily can acquire in any well-equipped hifi or
computer cable or hobby electronics store],
one normal simple mono sound amplifier with its own power supply
and a small loudspeaker or headphones, and with two simple wires
sticking out from it that can be tinned to the radio module, and
these capacitors:
one polarised big one, 10 mf (mf in Elsketch context means
micro-farad, while in such a case as we would like to say
'milli-farad' -- a thousand times as much -- we would spell it
out [let's spell out that if you have a tiny roughly made
power supply, make it 1000 mf (one millifarad) or even more
to cut away some buzzing 50/60hz noise from it; but note that
all big capacitors must be short-circuited by e.g. a screwdriver
if you want to assume that there's little electricity around
in an elsketch that has these capacitors there; if you open
a cathode ray tv the big capacitors may hold tens of thousands
of volt and believe me, I know how it feels to touch one of
them before you have shortcircuited them with a screwdriver
and it is definitely not a recommendable experience, ordinarily
speaking; the most low-noise power supplies are those that are
ripped from high quality audio amplifiers e.g. a quality
synthesizers with loadspeakers has a separate power supply box]
two medium-big ones, 46.9 nf
-- and these modulators (resistors):
a medium light modulator,
2.2 k -- mentally tag it 'buffer power supply'
a light modulator,
1 k -- tag it 'oscillator power supply'
a light modulator, also
1 k -- tag it 'oscillator middle pin modulator'
a big modulator,
100 k -- tag it 'oscillator e pin modulator'
-- and these equal transistors:
one BC547C NPN -- mentally tag it 'oscillator transistor'
that can handle 45 volt or more
one BC557C PNP -- mentally tag it 'buffer transistor'
that can handle 45 volt or more
(see note above about how a BUFFER transistor is having
the opposite type PNP instead of NPN in this case --
while admitting of much the same connections; this is
to improve quality of radio sound)
Be sure to note that when these transistors are lying with
the flat side of them up, and the pins towards you, the
rightmost pin is the E pin, the middle pin is the M pin,
and the leftmost pin is the C pin. [helpful hints: search
on datasheet or datasheets or PNP or NPN or such in the
yoga6d.org/look.htm search engine and click around until
you find one that is user-friendly enough to give you the
pdf description of the transistor you've got, they are a
bit messy some of the datasheets online; if you use an
inexpensive digital meter giving its 'voltage drop in the
forward direction' when connected to two pins of a
transistor, one of which must be the middle pin, then there
will usually be very slightly less voltage drop in a
typical silicon PNP or NPN transistor between collector
and middle pin than between emitter and middle pin,
while no measurement is given between emitter and collector
in isolation; when you have a black and red
connector to the instrument, the red being positive, then
connect the red one to the 'P' and the black one to the
'N' and the measurements should come out nicely. for
comments on digital meters -- which are helpful in
moderation but not if they overwhelm your lab -- you may
see also a note at the completion of the 'Winding your
own ferrite coil for the AM MW radio' document, cfr the
link to the sitemap at the completion of this page.]
Be ready to change transistors if they have been
subjected to too much volt or have been used for too long,
they are usually the most sensitive bits in any elsketch
electronics. If any of the items have pins that are too
near each other for tinning, then taking enormous care,
hold the pins in their middle and bend just a tiny little
bit so that the bending happens in the middle of the pins,
but not where the pins are fitted on the item itself
(for that might loosen their connection to the main item).
-- as well as some three meters of ca 1mm extra steel wire to
be used as antenna
-- and some things or blocks of metal not very much bigger
than the ferrite coil, that you can put beside it perhaps
usually not touching, and experiment with getting different
receptive conditions out of the radio and also modify the
wavelength it receives on somewhat. This metal should not
be very magnetic. It can be copper, blocks of tin, or loose
ferrite cores that you have still to put wire on. You can also
experiment with bits of iron or steel, just don't put any
strong magnet near radio ferrite or it may have reduced
capacity to do its work for a while.
Be sure also to get good quality 12 volt, SC (straight
currency, no frequency). If it carries too much noise in
it, fetch the biggest mf polarised capacitor you can get
hold of and put the + of the capacitor to the + wire
from the power supply -- be sure to get it right -- and
the other pole of the capacitor is connected to the other
pole of the power supply. A battery is of course of superb
quality but you want plenty of hours to experiment without
having to shift battery all the time. Then it should work!
Cease working for some hours if it's roaring lightening
and thunder, we want stable volt and we want to preserve
the transistors.
Mount the stuff you've collected like this:
Connect the power supply to two wires on one side of the
grid. Connect the variable capacitor to two wires on
the side of the grid nearest you, for you will adjust
it much. Connect the coil to two wires usually on the
opposite side of the grid. And then why not connect the
amplifier wires to the remaining of the four side of the
grid, to two wires there.
We can right now pick the mf polarised big capacitor
and study it so we locate which polarity goes where.
Its electron-side, in 20th century marked by minus
signs, obviously goes to the electron-side or 'minus'
side of the power supply incoming wire. And the plus
side of this capacitor goes to the plus wire. Triple-check
you got it right. (Fitting it wrongly destroys it; fitting
it to 220 volt 50 Hz frequency current makes it explode
and as it contains metal, it isn't something you want
while working -- so take care with polarised capacitors.)
Turn on the amplifier and turn up the volume a little
bit. Tap each of the two wires with your fingers. If
there's a little noise it will usually get less noise
when you touch what is called the 'ground' wire of
the amplifier, and it will become a clear sound or a
tap or buzz when you touch the other wire. Take now
the ground wire and connect straight ahead to the
E pole of the power supply. Take the other wire that
goes to the amplifier and tin to the C pin of what
we informally and mentally call it buffer transistor.
[see note at the completion for how to
put in an extra capacitor here when needed]
Now locate the middle pin of the buffer transistor.
Tin this to the two nf capacitors. The two nf capacitors
are to be used in parallel (side-by-side -- see
the paragraph 'terminology' just above).
Let the nf capacitors, in parallel, stand between
the M pin of the buffer transistor and the C pin of
the oscillator transistor. The oscillator transistor
is NPN. Don't try to apply too simplistic maps (nor
such over-elaborate mechanistically inclined blah-blah
theories they had of the stuff in the 20th century,
in profusion) for understanding oscillators. They have
to be tuned, intuitively designed, not just by reason
but also by reason. This radio works like hell!
And we have a transmitter to match!
Buffer power suppy and oscillator power supply:
these are two modulators. Fit them between the C
pin on the respective transistors and the plus pole
of the power supply.
Take the big modulator and fit it between the
M pin of the oscillator transistor and the E pin
of the oscillator transistor.
Now get the suspension with the coil and
variable capacitor going. The coil and variable
capacitor are going to be in parallel. This done,
put one side of them straight to the C pin of the
oscillator transitor. Put the other side to the
modulator mentally tagged 'oscillator middle pin',
and the other side of this modulator goes indeed
to the M pin of the oscillator transistor.
Let's also now fit the antenna. The antenna
doesn't have to be other than lying about on the
floor, maybe, and it certainly can be twisted, it
doesn't have to be straight -- but experiment a
little with it when you're doing the final
adjustments to maximalise this fantastic super
'high-fidelity' ;) radio. What you do is to fit
this antenna to a normal bit of wire with plastic
insulation -- using the tinner a longer time and
holding the steel wire with a tool since it gets
very hot very fast -- and then this bit of wire
is tinned to the wire that comes from the variable
capacitor (and coil) and that then goes to the
modulator and through that modulator the connection
is next to the middle pin of the first transistor.
The other pin of the variable capacitor (and coil)
goes to the C pin of the oscillator transistor.
The antenna will then partake in light vibrations
set up by the oscillator and it will help fetch
from the air the station most near in oscillation
to just that. It will also of course transmit a
little tiny bit current but near the middle pin
of the transistor it's not so much it should cause
any great deal of disturbance for any equipment.
Now pay attention to the fact that the ferrite
coil can also directly receive especially if the
transmission stations are fairly near. You will
find that you can tune into stations also by slight
movements of metals very near the coil, not just
by varying the capacitor. By adding much metal,
all the stations move and in some cases the
capacitor may be suddenly able to tune into some
frequencies beyond its reach earlier on. By varying
coil size and capacitor size, we can go a little
up into short wave, socalled, and a little towards
longer waves with less frequencies called long wave;
so we have LW -- MW -- SW. LW can work a little
better in sunlight if radio station is just
kilometers away, SW can work also a little better
in sunlight given great transmission power combined
with hyper-exact tuning of reception antenna and
equipment for the short-waves, for these waves are
more high-powered and penetrate mountains with ease
and do not require reflection in the atmosphere
like MW does. But MW is the coziest place, with
the easiest high-quality AM sounds not requiring
over-exactness of antenna, just requiring that
it's near the actual maximum of midnight.
Is the reception instantaneous? Radio waves
usually travel at about three hundred thousand
kilometers pr second. It means that if the
transmission is one thousand kilometers away,
it did take some time but much much less than
a second. But since there are phenomena of
reflection you may find that, sometimes, given
some weather conditions, and some environmental
conditions, waves go much longer than that and
then come back, a little bit delayed, causing
a shift in the original waves and sometimes a
general shift in the exact position of the
station on the radio.
In any case, when the Sun isn't competing with the
radio stations, you've got a superb radio elsketch here
when you've tinned it carefully like we said.
When done with the tinning, go over: is every pin of every
component fitted to a wire that goes to something and not
nothing? If something is forgotten in the description,
check with the technical Elsketch program description,
link to it in the Elsketch site index connected to this
description / report.
..AND GETTING IT ALL GOING
Arrange metal objects on around the ferrite coil if u like.
Put ca three meters of steel wire in your working room so that
it doesn't touch any other electrical equipment, nor any
metal, but it doesn't have to be straight, and fit it as antenna.
[see hints at the completion of the page for still more
possibilities]
Wait until the night is at its darkest, the sun on the other
side of the planet, and weather conditions suitable.
Switch off as much as you can switch off as to other electrical
equipment in the room -- especially things that might oscillate
on its own -- and keep as much distance as possible to whatever
equipment that must be left going. A computer has fast oscillations
and even some lamps may have oscillations, and these may block
reception pretty much completely. With AM MW radio reception,
every little bit in the room suddenly may matter enormously --
including how the cables from the power supply lie about. All
and anything may act as an antenna, and some types of things may
dampen the radio signals too much, so clear the room up pretty
much. Unplug even the tinner.
Then turn it on -- but always keep a safe distance when
switching on any electronical equipment, even low-voltage
like 12 volt, as there are always possibilities that some
components might go up in fire, and a real but rare possibility
at this volt that a component might explode. The responsibility
to protect yourself and shield yourself from any elsketch
project is your own.
So you connect the 12 volt power supply, amplifier put on much,
and -- if need be -- review the connections and repair them
until it is entirely correct. If in doubt whether the
transistor has survived any misplaced wires, replace them.
Experiment on getting better reception of some stations by
very gently touching the antenna or the E pole of the power
supply with a finger.
GET IT TO WORK REAL WELL: As I'm writing this, I just listened
to a sending taking place over 500 km away, clear, crisp, with fair
tonality. And then I started the Mini-TX as it is not very far
from listening in on a recording direct from the music box --
with a tiny bit of garbled sound bits, and some buzzing because
I use a cheap power supply for the radio, and not yet a perfect
one for the transmitter. The radio consistently works best with
a big bunch of copper lying on top of the ferrite coil, and
tonight I found that I had to double and triple the use of
steel wires for antenna -- forking it into two several-meter
long wires hanged up on the wall for the long-distance
reception. On other occasions I have used the radio in a place
where the receptivity is better due to housewalls etc, -- and/or
weather, and where the idea of having two ferrites touching,
one of which is the coil, was the right one. But this is all
due to the use of the buffer transistor, the PNP. If this is
switched to amplification, we don't get high fidelity even
remotely, but rather a shrieking kind of radio that amplifies
all and every noise. However, it is possible to handle it by
extra measures, and one of the measures is then leave the
ferrite to its own devices, put up a separate antenna connected
to the E pole, and put in a tiny capacitor between the two
separate antennas.
Let me also say that it's not untypical that in the first
few days after I've given a report of a successfully working
approach, I find some mild or occasionally radical improvement
and chuck it in. I'm glad to say that the Mini-TX got improved
perhaps by a hundred times after its first version -- so much
so that it almost seemed to blast the radios nearby it out of
existence. With that improvement, the notion of providing an
extra HF amplifier for it seemed rediculous -- and it still
does. (The improvement is now part of the Mini-TX Elsketch
project -- the wiring was updated, the component list was
updated, although the description of the transmitter and its
name is fairly much as in the first version -- but read it
with what I just said in mind.)
When it works, enjoy it! Spend time with it. Look forward to
all your next Elsketch projects, -- why not the Mini-TX!
Or,s one of the obvious next Elsketch projects could be too look
at the premade elements here -- one at a time -- and get them
constructed more manually.
[[[practical helpful hints in the present context
(note that the practical hints inserted in brackets,
and other things inserted in brackets as well as of course
the links on top and at bottom of each report may have
a newer date than the bulk of the text of the report):
four hints here -- first about a possible improvement or
two, then about coils, then about an approach to indicate
which pin is what pin used throughout, and on how to
determine whether a transistor is NPN or PNP, and
fourthly about how to use 9v batteries and headphones instead
of 12v power supply and separate audio amplifier module.
*1* ground -- as we call it, perhaps because the soil when
wet is ripe with electrons and so has an affinity with the
E-pole of the power supply -- may need to be 'equalized',
and it can also help picking up stations. to equalize it,
throw in a really small capacitor between antenna and
ground, such as 27pf. as an alternative, on a radio,
you can wet a finger and touch the E-pole of the battery
and the radio will 'click on' if it get unbalanced in the
accumulation of the electrons -- this is much more likely
to happen when you do it by batteries instead of power
supply -- transformer, or transformator (as we like to
call it), to wall outlet of higher voltage. also, connect
some meters of steel wire to the E-pole and keep it
totally separate from the antenna; it can possibly be
a bit heavier metal parts there also, more like a grid
also, perhaps. be aware of the 27pf trick, the equalizer
capacitor, as useful also for other devices with antenna;
this you should work out yourself, it isn't necessarily
pointed out each place. it helps recreate a balance with
the electrons (and the plus pole, the 'hunger particles',
hungry for electrons) which the variable capacitor may not
always be able to deal with on its own -- anyhow, it's
a trick that works. on occasions, it's a necessity.
*2* the prefabricated variable capacitor and the prefabricated
ferrite coil we intend to provide in the Elsketch kit
sets at some time in the future. For now, the best bet
-- unless you have an extraordinarily well-equipped
supplier -- the best bet is to get hold of a transistor
AM radio with MW of the type that is certainly much,
much bigger than pocket size, and cannibalize this radio
for those two components exactly. This will usually
require a bit of patience, clipping around a bit roughly,
so that you get a bit of the printboard underneath the
components with you. Add to that the confusion of getting
such as six pins or more from what is supposedly a simple
variable capacitor. So you'll have to work out which two
pins are most to the point -- probably one that reflects
the middle axis, and one that is on the edges. The
ferrite coil may offer similar challenges. Check with an
ohm-meter that the ferrite coil doesn't have many ohm,
while the capacitor ought to, like any capacitor, not
conduct plain straight current at all. Variable capacitors
are easier to get in an electronics store than suitably
wired AM MW ferrite coils. If you have to, go straight to
making your own ferrite coil -- see sitemap beneath.
*3* which pin is what pin? the E pole, the electron pole,
the one often indicated in 20th century terminology by
a minus or dash sign (-) is the most abundant pole. the
complementary pole, the + pole, has a q-field which seeks
out electrons, it is a 'hunger for electrons' pole, and
so we have two forces pulsing through the resonances of
each elsketch. the electron pole you can find that we
often mark E and be sure to note that the letter E does
contain a dash in a sense, so there's an affinity to the
20th century terminology of using a dash to symbolize the
E pole. now here's a trick that we sometimes use: when we
can vary the size of the pins -- such as from a power
supply -- let the longest one be the one most abundant
with electrons, namely the E or - pole.
right? the LONGEST PIN IS THE E PIN, is an approach we
can take, but keep the presence of mind with you, for it
is easy to clip it different and you must detect that in
case. So if you have two equal size pins and you don't
want to clip any one of them, you might want to bend the
+ pole zig-zag at least once so that it gets shorter.
on transistors, it is probably best to look to the
type of pin -- middle pin, emitter pin, collector pin,
or M, E and C. for some transistors, when the flat size
is up, the sequence is C, then M, then E, and this is
the approach taken with the data for the elsketch --
pin 1 is C, pin 2 is M and pin 3 is E. But transistors
can have other shapes, circular and what not. So then,
when we find out which pin is what, we can let E be
the most straight pin, C be the most bent pin, and
M be bent half-way between E and C.
with a measurement instrument that has a capacity
to measure diods (which is NP or PN, in other words
more or less two-thirds of NPN or NPN, but a
transistor isn't symmetrically made, in order to
distinguish between emitter and collector, so a
more subtle structure than a diod, generally
speaking), you will get a reading that is called
'voltage drop'. This is small in one direction, but
can be given a number; while in the other direction
there is so little electricity flowing that there is
no number for it on a simple instrument. at an NPN
transistor, put the red + measurement stick to the
P and the other pin to either emitter or collector
and then usually the collector will have very very
slightly less voltage drop than the emitter. reverse
the position of the sticks, and nothing shows at all.
put the sticks between emitter and collector, again
nothing shows at all. at a PNP transistor you start
with the black E or - stick to the middle pin, and
put the red stick to the emitter or the collector.
the clue to remember this is red is P for positive
as for transistors, whether NPN or PNP, when it
comes to measuring this thingy called voltage drop.
so this gives you a possibility of working out with
some but not total certainty whether any given
transistor of an ordinary type is NPN or PNP,
and which pin is what pin. then bend the collector
pin the most, the emitter pin you let be straight,
and the middle pin you bend half-way between the
two. note that some high-power transistors get hot
when you put them to use and they have to be
screwed very tight to a chunk of metal e.g. with
ribbons so when air blows through it, it cools;
for neither diods nor transistors can stand
temperatures very much higher than some 50 or 60
degrees.
*4* let's be clear that this needs an amplifier
to produce any sound but the most meagre whisper
in even a headphone. the buffer transistor, as
said above, doesn't amplify but shield, in a
particular way, so that we get a minimum of noise.
But if you want to switch this into a more headphone
friendly setup, switch the NPN transistor with a
PNP transistor, and call it not buffer but mini-amp
(mini-amplifier), and fit ca a 50k ohm modulator between
its middle pin and collector and ca a 100k ohm modulator
between its middle pin and emitter. it will make noises
and squeak but at least it will give output -- in
this situation, the ferrite shouldn't touch any
metal near it, but it can still have metal near it.
better is to put an additional amplifier module in
(separate project before headphones). still, there
are more hints in this point -- a very tiny (27pf)
capacitor to be fitted between antenna and ground,
and a particular 'ground antenna' will improve
reception.
So: 9v batteries and headphones. You can take many
types of headphones and tear open and deinsulate
carefully so that you access just one of the
headphones, then put them through a large
capacitor -- it can be another of those
polarised 10mf capacitor -- but only use them
if you don't have such as a nonpolarised 1mf
available -- and do please use care, be sure
that they have volt capacity many times of what
you put onto them when you use them a bit quickly
like this. you put it between the main output
of the 1st radio module and the headphone main
input wire -- positive side towards the headphone
input wire, the other headphone wire goes to
ground. since we haven't put any much amplifier
transistors to the 1st radio module it might not
any much headphone sound at all unless you create
an extra antenna-like wire, many meters preferably,
and put it to the ground -- the E pole of the
power supply (or touch it, if you have correct
humidity in your fingers to emulate ground).
Then you can put two 9v batteries one after
another in series, that is to say, + pole of
one battery to E pole of the next, and you use
the two remaining poles, one from each battery,
which gives you twice the nine volt. that's
gonna be necessary unless you want to add
an amplifier module such as described in another
project. as long as we deal with 45v or more
transistors, that won't destroy them. be sure
to notice that the 9 volt batteries will be
quickly used up so you should add an on-off
mechanism as well. measure with voltmeter to
be triple-sure you are not short-circuiting
the batteries in any way and that you do get
out around 18 volt before you connect it, and
that the batteries are connected with the
right polarity. this however is so much more
fun if you throw in some amplifier transistors.
if you do have a 12v battery rechargable
available it's probably more suitable than
running around buying 9v batteries all the time;
but then you use only one 12v battery, don't
do twice 12v battery for that gets you more
than half the height of the maximum volt
capacity of the transistors. there are peaks
of volt twice what you give it so we have to
say that some 12-15v power supply is best.
by the way, with batteries you probably don't
need to have the polarised capacitor in the
beginning. when you do this, for sure do the
27pf trick in *1* in this note.]]]
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GENERAL LAW NOTICE
Note that you must yourself take responsibility to look up the
laws and regulations governing what type of transmittors and
what transmissions and at what time it is legal to employ these
and other electronic components, some of which may have strong
influence on near-by electronic activity of some kind.
These texts concern themselves with the joy of first-hand
electronics in an educational sense. It is your own responsibility
to match this educational process with the laws of your society.
The fundamental tenet is of course that whatever you make, shouldn't
disrupt society in any fashion at all.
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* SITEMAP: OVERVIEW OVER ALL ELSKETCH PROJECTS CURRENTLY LISTED:
http://www.stamash.com/secs_stamash_educational_centers/elsketch/sitemap/
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