Finishing touches

On Sunday (11/29) we got together to put the finishing touches on the theremin. We also practiced playing the instrument for our presentation on Tuesday. We found that it was harder to get our instrument to sound how we wanted it to but overall we were successful in producing a theremin.

Building the theremin continued

After the circuit board was complete we soldered all of the connections to make sure they were solid. Next we took a dremel tool and a 1/32 in. bit and drilled out all of the connections in the board. [video] The only difficult part of this step was using a drill bit this small. We broke 2 drill bits during this step but managed to get everything drilled.

The next step was connecting all of the components to the circuit board and soldering them. The components which we connected included 2 resistors, an integrated circuit, 2 LEDs, a power source, and finally a jack for audio out.

Finally we placed everything into a project enclosure box and mounted the 2 LEDs to the surface of the box.

After trying a few different methods for playing our theremin we determined that the most effective way to play was using a flashlight to alter the sound being produced.

Getting Started

Before Thanksgiving break we met to start building the theremin. The first step in creating our theremin was creating the circuit board. This was accomplished by first obtaining a sheet of double sided copper clad board. Next we used the laser printers in kettering labs to print the model of the circuit on photo paper. The reason for this is using laser ink on photo paper allows you to transfer the image onto whatever you want using an iron.
We used an iron to transfer the image onto the copper.[video] This was the most difficult step of the whole project because it is very difficult to get the ink to transfer completely. We were lucky and got about 90% of the circuit to transfer. The rest of the circuit was filled in with sharpie.
Next we cut out the square containing the circuit and submerged it into the etching solution.[video] The etching solution dissolves all of the copper on the board except for where the circuit was ironed on. This step took about 45 mins, and once the process was complete the circuit board looked like this.

Shopping Trip

On Saturday (11/14) the group met and went to radio shack to get the materials to build a theremin. We bought three capacitors, a timer integrated circuit, about 10 resistors, 2 phototransistors, batteries and a battery holder, and a project enclosure. We also got etching solution in order to etch the circuit board for the theremin. Altogether we spent around $40.00. The most expensive item we bought was the etching solution which was $10.00. We also found a website with instructions on how to build a theremin that we're going to use: http://www.oldtemecula.com/theremin/rs-opticaltheremin/rs-opticaltheremin.htm.