Today I worked a bit more on my modular project. I'm currently building a Wogglebug module. The design is made by Grant Richter and it was originally a Wiard concept I think. The whole purpose of this module is to produce unpredictable control voltages and sounds. Sort of a random module, but with some extra controls. I bought the PCB from the internet and got a front panel and components kit for it from Bridechamber. Soldering the PCB is not as easy as it looks. Even though it is a very small PCB there are some SMD components on there (Surface Mount Devices). They are very small and don't have pins that stick to holes on the PCB, but you have to solder them on top on a very tiny area. Well they are not all that straight on but I think it is good enough now. As long as everything makes contact it should be fine.
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fter that I started soldering wires to the PCB that will be attached to the font panel components later on. In the picture you can see the back of the front panel. On the left are the jack connectors for the inputs and outputs and on the right the various potmeters that will control the Woggle Bug when it is operational.
If you are asking why I used two different colors in the wiring, well I want to make two neat cable trees later on and this way I can seperate the cabling to the jacks and potmeters easily. That's all.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a nice building manual for this project so I'm figuring out what goes where from the schematics. I found them quite easily on the Internet as a PDF so I can look at it on my monitor just next to my workspace. Very convenient. I'm already happy that I put that computer there now. I'm quite sure I'll need this more often in the future. Well next task is drilling some holes to attach the PCB to the bracket attached to the front panel that will hold it in place. But I haven't got a decent 3mm metal drill. So I'll have to get one first before I can continue. The one I had broke this afternoon because I used to much force. Unfortunately I cut my hand as well in the process. Nothing serious though. Well I hope to continue this soon.
Today I finished the Wogglebug module I was building. I had some trouble drilling holes in the bracket that holds the PCB. It is some kind of very hard steel and it looked like it was as hard as my drills :) Now I bought a special set of super strong gold colored drills and with those it was no problem. After attaching the PCB to the bracket I started wiring the front panel components. Since there was no real construction manual I figured out what went where using the schematics I downloaded from the Internet. And then comes the always exciting moment of hooking the power up.
Well that all went well. The first thing to always check is if there is no smoke and if no components get really hot. I always switch the lab power supplies on with a very low current limit so that this should not happen anyway. But better safe than sorry. But OK. It all went well. Then I hooked up the oscilloscope to see if all the signals were coming out of the jacks and that all looked fine. The final thing I did was hook up a PC speaker to get some audio from it. And it started making weird noise right away. And that is what a Wogglebug is supposed to do :)
The final thing was to test all the functions. And only the 'cluster' function I don't understand. If someone can enlighten me please do :) But it is a very nice module. It is like a supercharged random module. I just called my two daughters downstairs to play around with the module and they had a lot of fun with it. I even managed to explain to them how sound is made en showed then on the oscilloscope what it looks like. Well for now I'm done with this module and I'm going to finish up another project. I have a lot lying around from last year.
Here is another close-up picture of the front panel. The only thing that is confusing in my opinion is that it is not very clear what are outputs and inputs. Actually there are only two inputs on the module: 'Clock' and 'Rate CV'. They can both be controlled externally. The rest are outputs were the upper row are CV outputs to control other modules and the lower row are audio outputs. So you can hook them right up to a speaker to get weird noises. Especially 'Ring Out' is nice since it is a ring modulated sound coming from it. Oh 'LFO out' is also an output and is actually the internal clock. When you connect a jack into the 'Clock' input it is overridden by the external clock you offer there. Well I'm going to play around some more with it and maybe will post some sounds later.
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