Mantra Prayer Chant Box

I have had this thing sitting around forever and I finally did something with it. I am really really happen with the way it turned out. My wife hates it because I would play with it all day if I could. I'm surprised she hasn't tried to hide it from me yet.

I ended up recasing it from its original box. The box it was in was too small to add anything else to it.

I drilled little holes in the top of the lid where I hot glued the speaker. It made it a lot louder. I think I'm going to add a speaker off switch and a 1/8" output jack eventually.

This is the original box it was encased in. I still like this box and I will probably keep it for something else.

Here is the bottom of the top. There is a On/Off/On SPDT switch that switches between normal, low, and high pitch. There is also a momentary button that switches between the songs, mantras, chants, prayers, or whatever you want to call them. I used a 1M pot for the pitch. The pitch is connected to one of the pins of the momentary switch so when you push it, the pitch will change. For example, if you have the pitch low, it will go to high and vice versa. It doesn't do that for normal pitch though.

Here is a video of it in action....

Circuit Bent iCarly Toy

Bending this was a major headache. I might have added more to it, but the resistors used for it were surface mount. They were TINY. The traces on the board started coming off. I ended up with a teeny tiny spot to solder a wire to and I ended up having to hot glue it in place.

I would have taken a photo of the inside, but I would be afraid that I wouldn't be able to get it back together again. There is not alot to see anyway. I have to use an iPhone to take these photos and they are never right side up.

Here is a video of it in action...

First Circuit Bent Toy Video!

I finally recorded a video of the first toy I ever bent. It is a little long, but there is a lot of different sounds it can make so it was kinda hard to squeeze it all in.

Here it is...

Coleco Talking Teacher

When I originally bent this I only included a pitch knob, body contacts, and about 8 glitch switches. Which was okay, but I had seen schematics online that had used more. So I decided to take a second look. I used some stuff from a few things I've seen online and some other stuff I poked out myself.

Without further dudes...

From top to bottom, left to right...

• 1/4" Output Jack
• 5PDT Rotary Potentiometer Glitch Selector
• Distortion Knob
• Tone Momentary Push Button
• 2 Glitch ON/OFF Switches, connected to rotary switch
• Long Glitch Knob
• Hold Switch and Audition Button

Just like above...

• Pitch Photocell
• Photocell ON/OFF Switch
• Coarse Pitch Knob
• Fine Pitch Knob
• Barely Visible Reset Button

Originally, I just removed the pitch trimpot and replaced it with a 100k pot. The pitch range was okay but removing the resistor next to the trimpot really opens up the range. You have you replace it with a jumper wire though. I used a 500k pot for the coarse knob and a 50k pot for the fine pitch. You could just split the difference and use a trimpot if you want. You could probably just leave the original trimpot and just remove the resistor, but I lost it after I removed it the first time.

Here is the inside and a diagram of the bends...

You can see I had to remove ribbon cable to the LCD screen because it broke. I had to rewire it and it was a pain. The ribbon cable is really finnicky so you have to be careful with it.

  

Its kind of a sloppy mess but oh well. You can see the jumper wire used when I removed the pitch resistor. The three black wires on the left are for the body contacts.

Here's a video...

Sesame Street All Star Band

This keyboard sounds so cool you almost don't even need to bend it. The first one of these I bought off ebay for like twenty some ought dollars and I kinda fucked that one up. Then I few months later I found one at a goodwill for only a $1.99. I was definitely beating myself up for spending so much on the one from ebay, but I really like this keyboard so I still think it was worth it.

This is what it looked like before I painted it...

And the after I painted it...

I love the way the paint cracked and split over the keys. Apparently if you spray on a coat of white spray paint as a primer and then get impatient and spray on a thick coat of the next color, it'll look crackled like it does above.

The mods from left to right  :

• 2 Black Coarse Pitch Knobs
• 2 Grey Fine Pitch Knobs
• N.C. Momentary Reset Button
• ON/OFF/ON Pitch Resistance Switch
• Body Contact
• Loop Hold Switch and Audition Button

This keyboard can make such thick glitch-y tones when you lower the pitch. I love the way it sounds. You can also get some great drone sounds out of this thing, just drop the pitch way low and flip the loop switch. 

I removed the buttons on the left that played the programmed songs and put the pitch switch and the reset button there instead. I basically followed the schematic from the Getlofi.com. The only thing that is really different is there are more pitch knobs and I left out the capacitor buttons. 

First Circuit Bent Toy

This is the first toy I ever successfully bent. I've been really lazy about getting my circuit bent stuff online. I'm over that now, so I figured this would be the best place to start.

I was about to give up on the whole bending toys thing and life all together until this came together so well. There were so many mods I was able to find just by poking around with one lead connected to the pitch resistor. So many that I decided to use a rotary switch so I could use them all.

The mods from top to bottom and left to right are :

• N.C. Momentary Reset Button
• Low Frequency Oscillator Rate Knob
• LFO Depth and Shape Knobs
• LFO ON/OFF Switch and Rate Indicator Light
• Rotary Potentiometer Glitch Selector Switch
• 1/4" Mono Jack Out
• Glitch ON/OFF Switch
• Glitch/Pitch Knob

Here is what the inside looks like.

The Low Frequency Oscillator is from Getlofi.com, but the I used the schematic from Casperelectronics.com under the Speak n' Spell section. I just replaced the point on the Speak n' Spell in the schematic with the pitch resistor on whatever generic toy this is.

If I was smarter at the internet, I would find a way to upload some audio. You can see what points the rotary switch goes to on the board. They basically just drop the pitch in different ways. Some of them cause it to loop over and over. I put trim pots on the pitch knob because it will crash if it gets too low.

I've seen a handful of these things bent online. Some of them have had distortion mods but there was no audio so they very well could be the same bends here. It doesn't seem like there is a lot else you can do with this thing. Although, this was the first thing I did so maybe I could find some more in there if I came back to it.

Here are some more photos of it's insides...