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Connecting Switches

Lesson 16 from: Circuit Bending: Making Music By Rewiring Toys and Devices

J. Anthony Allen

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Lesson Info

16. Connecting Switches

Next Lesson: Switch Details

Lesson Info

Connecting Switches

Okay, so I was able to get the whole thing pretty much back together. I mean, I still have the two big pieces separated, but, um, I got both circuit boards screwed in and down, locked in place. This one had a hard time going in because of the extra wires. So remember that when you screw these things in, you're gonna have extra space, so you're gonna have to push him in their harder. So you want to push him down in hard, but you don't want to break anything, so you kind of have to negotiate it. This is why we ran the wires off to the side and not pointing up, you know, like screwing them down, going up because they would create even more space. So if you push him down to the side, we can put a little bit of pressure on him, and it's not gonna matter as much. Now, I did screw up one thing. Well, probably a lot of things. Once we actually fire this up, there's probably a lot of chaos happening, but, um, and the thing I screwed up now is that you can see my why you're sticking out So here ...

are the two that are going to go to these two switches. So one side to each one of these air to black wires here are my two green wires. So they have to reach over there to sew those air fine on that side on this side here, my two green wires. So I need one of these going to each of those and then here my two black wires. And that's it. That's my screw up. Those are too short. Um, they're not gonna reach. This is tight as I can pull him, and they're not gonna reach there. So I have two options. I can open everything back up and could screw in a longer wider are sauder in a longer wire, Or I can extend these wires and I'm gonna show you how to do that right now. How we're going to do this is we're gonna hook a second wire to it, and then we're going to use a little bit of this stuff. This isn't like it's like rubber kind of, but it's called heat shrink tubing. So what you do is you heat it up and it drinks. It's like a little Shrinky dink. So, um, I'm gonna cut off a little piece of this. We're gonna need to, and then I eat a piece of wire I have right here. I don't eat much, right. I just need a tiny bit more to get to their. So, um, let's go like this far this one. I'm gonna strip both ends of it just like before. It's pretty good. Now I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take one of these wires, twist them together a little bit. Now, one way you can do this is to line them up. So one of them's going the opposite direction. Kind of for come like that. I think you can see what I'm doing. I hope and then twist. Um, together, This is really hard on your fingers, but that's not too bad. Now, I could put a dab a little dollop of sovereign there. I kind of don't really need to, though, because what I'm gonna do is been this one going this way, and I'm gonna put a piece of tubing on them. This tubing is probably a little too big. That's what we had some thinner stuff, but I don't so I'm gonna do that. Groups. I'm gonna get him hooked together. Put this little sweet of stuff around him like that. Now I gotta let it on. Fire eso Let me get myself a, uh, lighter. I'll be right back, okay? I don't have a lighter. So what I'm gonna do is try to prop this up a little bit. Gonna look in there and make sure they're still connected. I'm gonna keep my fingers nice and far away and to see if I can. She had a longer later. Just burn this down a little bit, okay? Hopefully it's not on their very well shoot. So this is not working out as well as I wanted because this heat shrink tubing is just too big. It's not gonna get tight enough to really hold these on. There tryto is when the stuff shrinks, it only shrinks so far. Well, that sounds really good, though. I think I got it. I'm gonna call that good. And then when I put this together, I'm gonna make sure that that doesn't get any a lot of pressure on it. Cool. So I'm gonna extend the other wire, and then I'll be right back. Okay, so the next thing I have to do is I just have to go through Ah, my chart that I made earlier and connect the two points. So my 1st 1 is a one foot up here, Anyone to be six. So this had to find my A one wire. Might be six wire. There it is. And connect them to one side each of the switch, that sort of those into place, making sure that they're not touching, because that would defeat the purpose of the switch completely and to make sure that they're laying as flat as possible. And I'm kind of maneuvering the wire as I do this to make to make it get in the way as little as possible so that I can still close this backup, do those things, and then I'll be right back. Okay, uh, my switches are connected. Eso I got each one connected and the wires kind of snaking around to avoid thes kinds of holes where I'm gonna have to put a screw through to hold the whole thing back together. So I don't want wires in front of those. Um, I do have wires hanging over the board here, but I think I've got electric space right there when the board closes. So I think that will be fine if that we'll find out in a minute. So I just wired the screws through the the put the wire through the hole on the switch, and then he's put a little blob asada on there, making sure they didn't touch nothing fancy. That's actually probably the easiest sauder job of this whole operation. So before I close it up, I can kind of have a little moment of truth here, can I, um, because everything's working well, should be working. I'm trying it yet, but I still have batteries in um So, uh, I could actually I think I could just do this and I should be able to see what happens. So in theory, when I turn it on now, all my switches are up, so it's gonna be a whole bunch of noise because all four of those circuit bends are going to be active. And remember, we never tested what multiple bends at the same time. Will do. We only tested each one. So when multiple things are being bent, it might just be crazy. So in theory, it's gonna be, um, a lot of noise when I turn it on, but the real test will be when I turned all four switches off. Doesn't go back to a normal keyboard. That means I did it. Right. Um so let's try it. It's awfully quiet way. So the switches are are backwards when they're down, there are when they're on them all off. Okay, thank you. Board missing a couple of notes, but I can switch some stuff on. That's really quiet, but it's still a cool sound. No one up, that one. Okay. Bussiness a cool popcorn sound. Uh, so I'm pretty happy with that. I think that's fun. Um, now, remember, we didn't find a whole town of really awesome bends. We found these really noisy ones in this keyboard, but I think it's still cool for making good, noisy sounds. And there's probably a lot of really interesting stuff in these little drum loops that we tried out earlier. Um, we just tested the keys that time. Uh, my speaker still works. Eso I'm ready to close this whole thing back up and call this project done. So let's do it. So I'm gonna do is go back over. Everything is really in place. So all I have to do is put this back on. I turn it around. Hopefully it falls right back where it belongs. Should I kind of feel it? Click in? It's gonna be a little trickier to get back. There it goes. All right, Now, I just gotta put those screws back in and we'll be in good shape.

Ratings and Reviews

Karolina Kaminska
 

I am a complete beginner to this topic and I enjoyed watching the free live stream of this course. It taught me enough to get started with some ideas, although I anticipate I'll have to follow up with other YouTube videos to ensure I understand enough for different kinds of toys and techniques. Thanks!

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