Designing your own gear, Electronics

Now I know there are some people who want to know how to make your own gear from scratch. To do this you need to know electronics....If your not tech savy it's a bit overwhelming. Here is a starter book, I got a few others that I can't upload, but I'm more then happy to give them out.

Electronics for dummies

From there I got a program that will help you design your circuits and to test them on your computer, 280 mb but it's a nice program.

For anyone who'd like these and more, you can send me an instant message on any of my id's wich are listed below, just let me know who you are first.

msn-sweettiger87@hotmail.com
yahoo-greendragonplayer
aim-dmx121487

Also forgot you need to learn safety before doing anything. Here are some simple things before you embark on this.

1) NO JEWLERY: why, metal is a conducter and depending on the voltage it can jump....similar to how lightning travels from the ground up and vice versa...it is also a burn hazard, electricity heats up metal, and hot metal can burn you.

2) DO NOT ADD ELECTRICTY TILL DONE: why, most of the time there are capactiors in a circuit wich store electricity, some of the bigger ones can hold well over 250 volts, about two and half times the electricty stored in disposable camera wich can cause 3rd degree burns if held long enough.

3) DISCHARGE: why, get some insulated screw drivers, the ones with the thick plastic handle and touch all over the back of the circuit board, don't be shocked if it sparks a little, touch all the silver dots on the back of the board.

THE FRONT WILL LOOK LIKE THE FOLLOWING

THE BACK WILL LOOK LIKE THIS (make note of the small silver bumps on the back)

These silver bumps are what the electricty will travel through, so make sure you discharge the circuit...otherwise you may not be able to feel anything in an arm for a few hours....I once took 15,000 volts to my right arm, I didn't get feel back for 3 days and had a nasty burn.

4) WHEN IN DOUBT RIGHT HAND ONLY!: why, your heart is in the left hand of your chest and you only need 1 milliamp (current and almost all circuits got over 1 milliamp in current) across your heart to go into cardiac arythmia and have your heart stop....so use your right hand.

5) PINOUTS: why, so you don't accidently blow a component or kill yourself. The latter is true for flyback transformers and any high voltage applications. Fly back transformers are commonly found in television sets and can put out 50,000 volts, enough power to lift a 350 pound man up and throw him back 10-20 feet killing him instantly. Also the component's are picky sometimes and reversing the polarity (positive in the negative and negative in the positive can break the component) a capacitor with reversed polarity can smoke, catch fire and explode...same is true if you add too much electricty to it.

Flyback

example of a pinout (this is off a lm555 timing chip)

6) INCASE OF FIRE: get a fire extinguisher that is accepted for a electrical fire...if your new...your more likely to set something on fire...DO NOT USE WATER FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! NO WHISKEY AND CAPTAIN MORGAN WILL ONLY MAKE THE FLAMES RISE HIGHER!

7) FLAMABLES: paper, flamable liquids and stuff should be stored in a metal chest so that incase of fire, it's away from the burning flames, unless your trying to burn your mad scientist lab on fire...or the house or the class room.

8) ASK QUESTIONS: why if you don't know something it's perfectly ok to ask questions, it's how you learn....you can also learn by actually burning things and starting fires but asking questions is safer...

9) FIND A CHEAP SUPPLIER: most places can be expensive for components. I like avtech and mouser electronics for a supplier.

Avtec Electronic Supplies
132 Gansett Ave
Cranston, RI 02910

Mouser electronics There site is a bit confusing but well worth it.

10) COOKING: why, well you need to eat while you work, and need to know how to make hot pockets, it's something you can make with one hand and not risk killing yourself....no need to you know hold a fork or anything that conducts electricity...and I've not tested the electric properties of melted cheese...

11) NO LIQUIDS-why, too easy to spill some and get zapped, if you must drink, put it away from power supplies....like on the table behind you.

Thats pretty much it...for now...most of the time you'll be tweaking stuff that already exists.

I TOLD YA I'D THINK OF MORE SAFETY STUFF!

12) COLOR CORDINATE YOUR WIRES: why,so you don't forget later on wich wires are live and dangerous vrs the ones on ground wich won't hurt you...RED is for wires that have positive electricty, or hot wires..BLACK is for wires that are cold or negatively charged...alternately you can use other colors to show WHAT HOT WIRES go to other circuits, and WHAT COLD WIRES go to other circuits....

For example, the circuit below is a lm555 timing circuit.



Yet we want to connect the lm555 to a yelp oscillator (it yelps who cares what the tech name is long as it works)

Moving on from safety, you need to know how to read a schematic..(a pin out for an entire device showing where all the whatsits doodads thinger majiggs whatchamacallits and gadgets and any other name you have for a component)

First what is a schematic? Think of it as a road map. It tells you where the road takes you and what's on that road.

Now there are tons of symbols thousands...and if your unsure what it is already...then you might as well be looking at aramic...cause it don't make much sence to you.

So where to begin learning today's aramic? A big book of symbols isn't too helpful for it takes ages to look it up...this is where google comes in handy...or you can go here.


Schematic symbols

From time to time your going to run into symbols that aren't listed, you need to read any instructions or part numbers on the schematic.

Let's say I've run across a slight problem and I don't know this strange symbol, a box with diagnal lines comming off the box connected to each other.



Well I look at the schematic and it says something about a 20 watt speaker is needed..well let's look up the schematic symbol for a speaker to see what it is.

Go to google.com type in speaker schematic symbol then click images....and low and behold we find our mystery symbol.




major symbols

More major and complex symbols


Now you know basic safety and where to learn the symbols...but what else do you need to start?

Well you work hard on making a circuit...you've tested that it works, but now what?

Well now we make it perminent.We mound it on a PCB (printed circuit board), my buddy mike has been doing that over 20 years, and has a nice tutorial on this located here. Mike's PCB tutorial

He also has some other interesting stuff on high voltage and how fire can teach you how to be safe. Wich can be seen here FIRE!!! YES BURN FIRE!!!! and beauty and the lightbulb

Just follow mikes tutorial and you'll make high quality pcb every time, he's the best at it.

Well now you know some basic safety, how to read schematics and where to look up symbols used in schematics, and some components.

A new and easy component is the resistor...it resists as the name sugguests. It resists eletrict current. They have no polarity and look like this.


Now you may notice in the picture they got bands....you may be asking why do they have bands?

The answer is color coding so you know what they are. In the above image there is one on the far right, brown in color. The bands are red red black silver.

What do these bands mean? Each color has a number assigned to it.

black is 0
brown is 1
red is 2
orange is 3
yellow is 4
green is 5
blue is 6
violet is 7
grey is 8
white is 9

First find the tolerance band, it will typically be gold ( 5%) and sometimes silver (10%).
Starting from the other end, identify the first band - write down the number associated with that color.

The above resistor on the far right was red red black silver.

22x0 (2 red bands at 2 is 22, times black wich is 0)

22, so you know the resistor is 22 ohms, ohms being the measure of resistance...so this resistor is a 22 ohm resistor.

If you have trouble there are numerous calculators, but I like this one the best as it allows me to visually see the bands.

resistor calculator



Now these next components are much harder to do as some of them have a given polarity and others don't.

LEDS light emitting diodes, these you have most likely seen but haven't got any idea what they were called. The computer your currently using, does it have a tower? If so do you see small green round lights on the front? Laptops have them too! LEDS are like firemen and police men and paramedics (who if your not careful with electronics you will know all too well), unsung hero's of the world.



The above is a water tower and is illuminated by blue led's.



the little dot's that pac man is eating are also leds.

So what's inside an led? Let's take a look.



How do they produce light? Well as the electricty stimulates the molecules inside it agitates the atoms wich can give off light, it's the most basic simplist form of light.

There are different forms of leds.

1)VLEDS-Visible light emitting diodes

2) NVLEDS-Non Visible light emitting diodes.

These 2 groups of diodes have their own little subcatagories. You got super brights. regular, wide angled.

Super brights if held close to your eye can put a big white blob in the middle of your vision if your too close. (take my word, I made a mistake and added the super bright led into the circuit at the end forgetting to turn the power off from the power supply it was hooked up to...and a few inches from the eye it blinded me for a better part of a day.)

Regular, these are all around normal, they come in many sizes ranging from 3 mm to 5 mm.

Wide angled have a wide spread emition of light some up to 360 degree!

Each have their own uses, but they are rather lovely.

They come in many colors. White, blue, green, red, yellow, pure white, warm white, uv, ir, red green and blue all in one, amber, red orange, aqua, royal blue, orange, violet, and pink...So ladies if you love pink and want to pimp out your computer to match the pink phone, your in luck!

Led's have polarity...but how do you tell what the polarity is? What side is positive and what side is negative? Look at the top of your led, is one side flat? Is there a shorter lead on that side?






So what other components don't have polarity? Some capacitors don't, but most do, and they have on the side a + or a - sign telling you what side is positive and what side is negative, just like a battery!



But what's a capacitor look like? You have no idea how many different capacitors there are.

They are all capacitors.

Some of the biggest are larger then your hand.



There is stuff printed on the sides, like in the large picture above.

RIFA
peh200kj5470mb2

47000 uf
40 vdc
-20+20%
-40 +85 degree c
0514/142807/1

what does this mean to you?

This is the capacitors information. UF is the microfarad.

What is a microfarad? The microfarad (symbolized µF) is a unit of capacitance , equivalent to 0.000001 (10 to the -6th power) farad . The microfarad is a moderate unit of capacitance. In utility alternating-current ( AC ) and audio-frequency ( AF ) circuits, capacitors with values on the order of 1 µF or more are common. At radio frequencies ( RF ), a smaller unit, the picofarad (pF), is often used. This unit is equal to 0.000001 (10-6) µF.

In RF scenarios, capacitances range from about 1 pF to 1,000 pF in tuned circuits, and from about 0.001 µF to 0.1 µF for blocking and bypassing. At audio frequencies (AF), capacitances range from about 0.1 µF to 100 µF. In power-supply filters, capacitances can be as high as 10,000 µF

40 vdc...what's it mean? 40 vdc means 40 volts direct current, means you can't add more then 40 volts to the capacitor...to add more then 40 volts is a big no no...You can cause them to smoke violently, and some even explode!

Youtube holds plenty of these types of videos, as it's neat to make bangs....and there is a good portion of testosterone as there is a good deal more men in the electronic field then women....it's because us men are drawn to fire and explosions...

Exploding capactior

Smoking capacitor

so what does -20 +20% mean, this is it's failure tolerance, it will only handle -20 to +20% marked voltage. So -20 or +20% 40 vdc will be where it will start to over heat, then smoke, and eventually explode. (wich can be dangerous as some with metal and plastic bodies act as frag grenades sending shrapnel everywhere.) If your gonna learn the tolerances of capacitors, please do so safely and from a distance! Your camera can be replaced, a limb or finger or hand can't!

so what does -40 and 85 degree's c mean, it's the capacitors operating tempratures. It will work between those 2 degrees. That means -40 degrees f to 185 degrees f before it stops working, however it can also explode if surpasses 185 degrees f, so becareful!

Capacitors are tiny terrors, they store electricty!

To learn how they work, please read this site.

how stuff works capacitors

I am kinda not feeling like typing out a whole explination on how they work! After all I just typed all this....boy I need a life.

now I am confident you can begin embarking on making your own gear. We're gonna begin with a basic electro magnetic meter...Not an emf meter, but similar, this is to detect electro magnetics. This uses a 9 volt battery.

It contains some parts that I've not discussed yet. Wich I will explain right now.

SPECIAL PARTS REQUIRED NOT DISCUSSED YET

1 microphone jack

1 headphone jack

1 small speaker

LF351 cmos chip

bc109c transistor

1n4148 diodes x 2

1 mh coil

1 thumb toggle switch

Now I am gonna start with the 1 mh coil as it is the hardest to explain.

1 mh is 1 mega hertz. MH is the measurement of frequency. It is defined as the number of cycles per second. It is the basic unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), and is used worldwide in both general-purpose and scientific contexts. Hertz can be used to measure any periodic event; the most common uses for hertz are to describe radio and audio frequencies, more or less sinusoidal contexts in which case a frequency of 1 Hz is equal to one cycle per second. This is what it will look like. (below)



next I'd like to speak about the cmos chip. The LF351 cmos chip is the general purpose amplifier. This chip will amplify the incomming electromagnetic distortion for you to hear via the head phones, or in this case a speaker.

Now these are very picky, you can easily fry these, so you need a pinout wich I will supply. This cmos chip looks like this Just watch you don't poke the leads through your skin into your finger.

this is the pin out the upside down U on the pinout and the chip match up so you know wich pin is witch.

Next is the 1n4148 diode. These have polarity. Wich is displayed by this simple diagram. It allows energy to go in only 1 direction, the direction the black band is pointed in is the direction it allows the electricty to flow. The 1n4148 is a zener diode. A Zener diode is a type of diode that permits current in the forward direction like a normal diode, but also in the reverse direction if the voltage is larger than the breakdown voltage known as "Zener knee voltage" or "Zener voltage". The device was named after Clarence Zener, who discovered this electrical property.

A conventional solid-state diode will not allow significant current if it is reverse-biased below its reverse breakdown voltage. When the reverse bias breakdown voltage is exceeded, a conventional diode is subject to high current due to avalanche breakdown. Unless this current is limited by external circuitry, the diode will be permanently damaged. In case of large forward bias (current in the direction of the arrow), the diode exhibits a voltage drop due to its junction built-in voltage and internal resistance. The amount of the voltage drop depends on the semiconductor material and the doping concentrations.



now we move to the transistor, a bc109c transistor is used to amplify or switch signals. You can get them here.
bc109c they sell them with the pinout and data sheet.

The thumb toggle switch is next and you can get these from radio shack.

The switch only has 2 connection points, so one will be on and one will be off, it's not polarity sensative.

A small speaker is needed over a headphone jack as you will be spending most of your time in the dark, and if the headphones pulled out...it'll be tough trying to put them back in and you might miss a reading. So any small speaker will do. I provided a link for a good set of small speakers. speakers

Now we get to the last part a microphone. These pick up the emf. Emf will distort the circuit via the microphone and it will emit noise via the speaker. You can get a microphone from here along with the data sheet wich shows the polarity. Microphones


Now you know what the special parts are. You need the right tools.

1 roll of solder wire (any kind from benny's works)

1 soldering iron (can get a benny's)

components in the upcomming list

and the stuff mentioned in the above PCB tutorial by my buddy mike. You can find this by pressing cntrl+f and type in PCB. This will take you to that section.

NOW FOR THE GOOD STUFF!

resistors

10k ohm x 2

10 ohm resistor

2.2 m ohm resistor

2.2k ohm resistor

1 m ohm resistor

Capacitors

10 microfarad

100 nanofarad

150 picofarad

220 microfarad x2

100 microfarad

SPECIAL PARTS

1 microphone jack

1 headphone jack

1 small speaker

LF351

bc109c transistor

1n4148 diodes x 2

1 mh coil

1 thumb toggle switch

The forementioned tools and the following schematic and a 9 volt battery.

I will attempt to buy the stuff for this project and make a video tutorial on youtube.

also there is no need for a microphone jack I have noticed it's a meter output, so I will add this stuff into the video tutorial after I get the money I need.

Part numbers and locations and prices for building your own emf meters

Mouser electronics

1. Mouser #: 391-0105
Desc.: Panel Meters 0 CTR 250uA BOW SCL

2.Mouser #: 660-CF1/4CT52R105J
Desc.: 1/4Watt Axial Leaded Carbon Film Resistors 1M ohm 5%

3.Mouser #: 660-CF1/2CT52R222J
Desc.: 1/2Watt Axial Leaded Carbon Film Resistors 2.2K ohm 5%

4.Mouser #: 660-CF1/4CT52R225J
Desc.: 1/4Watt Axial Leaded Carbon Film Resistors 2.2M ohm 5%

5.Mouser #: 71-FP01/210R0G5605EK
Desc.: Flameproof Metal Film Resistors 1/2watt 10ohms 2%

6.Mouser #: 261-110K-RC
Desc.: Standard Size 1W Metal Oxide Resistors 110Kohms 5% Tol

7.Mouser #: 647-UHE1J471MHD
Desc.: Low Impedance Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors - 105 Degree 470uF 63V 105c 12.5x31.5 20% 5LS

8.Mouser #: 598-FCP0805H151G-J1
Desc.: Film SMD Capacitors .00015uF 50V 2%

9.Mouser #: 647-UVR1E101MED
Desc.: Radial Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors - 85 Degree 100uF 25V 85c 6.3x11 20% 2.5LS

10.Mouser #: 647-UVR1J221MPD
Desc.: Radial Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors - 85 Degree 220uF 63V 85c 10x16 20% 5LS

11.Mouser #: 647-UPW1V100MDD
Desc.: Low Impedance Radial Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors - 105Degree 10uF 35V 105c 5x11 20% 2LS

12.Mouser #: 1055-TA2120-EVX
Desc.: Miniature Toggle Switches SPST FLAT LVR 2 PIN

13.Mouser #: 254-DS128-RO
Desc.: Speakers 12 x 4.2mm 0.5W

14.Mouser #: 833-1N4148-TP
Desc.: Diodes - Switching 100V Io/150mA

15.Mouser #: 434-17-272J
Desc.: High Reliability Radial RF Chokes RF CHOKE 2700uH 5%

16.Mouser #: 526-NTE123A
Desc.: replacement Transistors TO-18 NPN AUDIO AMP

17.Mouser #: 595-TL071ACPE4
Desc.: Amplifiers - Operational Low-Noise JFET-Input Op Amp

total from Mouser 109.40 (thats for making 5), 22.14 (for 1 emf meter)

EBAY (thats right you can find cheap stuff on ebay!)

You'll need paypal for this, my buddy LUCKYCARDINAL has a 12 peice pcb kit for less then 20 bucks and always has pcb up for grabs quite cheap. This is more then enough for 12 emf meters.

Radioshack

1.PC interfaced digital multi meter
Catalog#: 22-812
price: 69.99

2.130 peice computer repair kit. (comes with soldering iron and solder reel)
Catalog#: 55004728
price: 39.99

3. 75 feet of hook up wire 20 guage (red green and black)
Catalog#: 278-1222
price: 7.99

total:117.97
shipping around: 6.05

The total for 5 is 270.00. If you resold and kept one for yourself price to break even is around 54 bucks.

Dude, look, I get that you have some engineering knowledge, I get that you can solder... Here's the thing, the guy who invented the Magic 8-Ball graduated from the Ohio Mechanics Institute. That doesn't mean it does shit. You dig?

Yes I do. I figured it would be a good introductory project to do, and might spark further thirst for knowledge and might lead to more interest in designing tools, perhaps something this way would come and completely revolutionize the field.

If thousands of minds are workin on building tools that work, thats when break throughs happen.

P.S. The man who created the magic 8 ball didn't risk electrocution and death to build it. Some people may choose to build High voltage applications, and thats a no no without any electronics knowledge. The dummies book is very thorough, and even goes over the dangers of this. I built a tesla coil using a fly back transformer which has enough juice and current, to kill instantly. Very nasty any repairman dreads when you bring a tv in because of the fly back.