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Tips on Finding Toys and Bendable Things: Lets Go Shopping!

Lesson 5 from: Circuit Bending: Making Music By Rewiring Toys and Devices

J. Anthony Allen

Tips on Finding Toys and Bendable Things: Lets Go Shopping!

Lesson 5 from: Circuit Bending: Making Music By Rewiring Toys and Devices

J. Anthony Allen

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Lesson Info

5. Tips on Finding Toys and Bendable Things: Lets Go Shopping!

Lesson Info

Tips on Finding Toys and Bendable Things: Lets Go Shopping!

Okay, So in this video, we're going to go shopping. We're gonna find ourselves something to circuit bend, and we're gonna use it for the whole rest of this class. I'm gonna walk you through how I do it. Um, So what I did here is I went around to some stores looking for something circuit bent, and I use my camera on my phone. Ah, and I kind of had to be a little covert about it because I was getting some weird looks like people thought I was like, you know, looking around for a plan to, like, break in and steal stuff. Um, So ah, that's why the camera work is a little shy looking. I keep kind of turning it away. Um what? And I wasn't talking. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna play this video, that I'm gonna basically narrate over it Now. Um, I like to go to thrift stores when looking for something to bend. Um, secondhand stores. Ah, especially for like, if I'm looking for, like, a kid's toy or something like that, there's no need to buy something new. Um, by something old. Ah, and play a...

round with it and, um, you know, spend maybe two, maybe $3 on this thing. You know, don't buy something expensive and fancy that you're gonna circuit, Ben because you're gonna break it. Um, and certainly don't buy something new that has a warranty or anything like that. Because the instant you open it up, you're gonna void your warranty. This is kind of exactly why warranties exist. Is so people like us don't do what we're about to do. Um, okay, so here we go. Let's go shopping. Okay, So I'm in this first thrift store, and I found this keyboard, first of all, and it looked pretty cool. This cartridge thing in the back concerned me. Ah, I didn't know how I deal with that and checking out to make sure it will take batteries. It does have this cable coming off of it, but it looks like it'll run on batteries. But again, I think I passed on this one because of that cartridge. That little yellow thing that stuck out of the back. I didn't really know what that was about. I'm just looking at other toys. My hands in the way, Walkie talkies. Not very good, because they don't really make sound on their own. You gotta talk into him. Sometimes a little radio controlled cars can be phoned. Um, because they make little sounds, but ah, not that one. It didn't look like it made sound. This dark game was interesting, It looked like because I had a speaker in it. So it looks like you throw it on there and then, um, it makes sounds based on where you hit it, which could be really interesting. Um, because you could make it do all kinds of wacky sounds as he threw stuff at it. Um, looking at cars that ends up not being electronic at all. So I passed on it. It wasn't a lot of this first story went to I'm now in the game section. Sometimes these games can be really fun. Confined court stuff like this is where you might find, like, speaking spells, which are probably the most popular thing to circuit bend. So I'm just looking at the different games to see if there's any kind of gadgets in them that might be worth checking out. But I didn't find anything interesting over here in the Elektronik section of the store. They have some like CD players and speakers and stuff. These are not good to circuit, but none of them even like stereos. Um, there really just not good, because, ah, they don't really make sound on on their own and their kind of too complicated. Anyway, um, so we don't like this kind of electronic stuff. Stereos looks like a CD player there. Speakers come more toys. I think. Now I'm over in a new store. I went somewhere else, and, um, this one had a bit better selection. This was kind of interesting. Elektronik gadget had some barely a little bit of battery left in it, but we'll Dora the Explorer keyboard. These things are great. Um, Runs on batteries. Makes little sounds 20. What notes you hit could be good, but didn't strike my fancy at that time. But that would have been a good one. His guitar things are interesting. More games flopped. Two games, more stuff. I was This was really fun because I was at the store that had never been to before, and there was all these cool little things I didn't really find what I was looking for. And then, like I turned the corner here, and it's like a gold mine. Like so much junk. So much cool stuff I could circumvent. Um, so I did end up finding something here, so going through and looking at, you know, different things, like that thing looks like you kind of throw it around, and it makes different sounds, but it looked kind of hard to get into, because, remember, you gotta open these things up, so it didn't wasn't ideal. This, I thought, was really interesting. But after I looked closer, it looks like it's just a holder for an IPod. So you have to plug an IPod into that cable, and it doesn't really do much on its own. Now. The guitar thing. This'll I decided not to get because all the buttons play little tunes and I want something I can play individual. No town. There's the machete thing I mentioned in the last video couple keyboards, SpongeBob keyboard. Got a lot of buttons. Individual keys has got a speaker in it, which I like. Um, it does look a little complicated, but I think that's in the end when I decided, going with. But I'm still gonna look around for another minute and heading back to the SpongeBob keyboard because I think the SpongeBob keyboard is the winner. Little cars keyboard. That was interesting, but I thought if this is going to sit on my shelf, it should be something that is at least somewhat funny. Uh, and SpongeBob is funding your more funny to me than cars, so Ah, the SpongeBob keyboard is the one that wins. That's what we're gonna be working with in this class is the sponge bob Square pants electric keyboard. Okay, so I bought a SpongeBob keyboard. It might be a little complicated, but I think we can handle it. So the first thing I'm going to do is go home and put some fresh batteries in it and make sure it works. Doesn't work. I gotta find some out because I can't really take these things back when you buy a minute there store. So put some batteries in it and see if it works. Okay, so here we are. Are SpongeBob keyboard. I just put some fresh batteries in it, and it works. Um, it looks like this key this low c is not working. Thats a flat. So I got two broken keys, but I really care, because I'm not going to use it for ah, lot of pitch stuff. I'm going to get really noisy stuff out of this. So kind of okay, it's got some beats built in. That is the exact beginning of a death cab for cuties own. Um, it's got different sounds. Stop that. A lot of different things I could do here. Got a duck sound frog out. That's Ah, dog and a bird that's got some cool little sounds built into it. Um, Now, one of the best things about Ah toy like this is that it has a demo button. This demo button is gonna be great, because when you press it, it means it's just going to use a whole bunch of silence inside the thing to play on. Just play a song. Um, which when we've got it open and we're twisting wires and hooking stuff together, we can leave that going, and then we can hear the effect of what we're doing very quickly, Theo. Great, huh? Cool. So we've got ourselves a toy. Um, all we have left to do is talk about a couple safety things, and then it's time to crack this sucker open.

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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