Plan of attack v1.0

I’ve been thinking about how I should go about constructing the simontron and I’ve got a rough schedule of what I want and need to do.

Finish my introduction to electronics by completing the exercises in the hobby kit – 17/12
Find the contact points in Simon for hooking up “externals” – 31/12
Experiment with Simon, Wiring board and Processing and work out if any extra equipment is needed – 31/1
Decide on final “model” – 17/2
Construct “model” including writing of any additional code – 17/3

The Simontron

The more I’ve been thinking about hacking Simon, the more I think he should have a name. Something really cool and retro-futuristic. So I came up with The Simontron. I’ve just done a quick Google to make sure I’m not gonna get sued by Simontron Inc and apart from some Russian sites nothing showed up. So from now on, the project is called The Simontron.

Some favourite circuit-bending

There are loads on this page but I particularly like the Speak&Maths, the Speak&Spell and Speak&Maths “talking” to each other and the chicco drum machine – http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/soundz.html

The Hellbringah

The Eardrill

The Goethite

Circuit-bending article

I’ve just discovered this article on Reed Ghazala – http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar00/articles/ghazula.htm who seems to be the daddy of circuit bending. What is interesting in the article, and from what I’ve found out so far, is the key seems to be to hack cheap, electronic toys. Firstly there’s the cost, it’s a lot less painful frying a cheap toy than an expensive Moog, but also there’s safety to consider. Toys tend to have low voltages and so you are less likely to get an electric shock than if you hacked a mains powered gizmo.

Reed also has a fantastic definition of circuit-bending. He sums it up as “Circuit-bending is the electronic art of the implementation of the creative audio short-circuit” – poetry!!

Wet finger

I’ve found a really good guide to how to circuit bend – http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/tips.html. It looks as though the key is to wet your finger and then poke it around inside. If the noise changes then it means you’ve found a body contact and a connect point.

I think what I’ll do first once I’ve found a connect point is solder up an led first to make sure that there is some output that I can use and then connect it to a wiring board.

Circuit Bending

I”ve been researching my idea for altering a Simon and I’m quite surprised at how many people are doing similar stuff. It’s a huge sub-culture of people who look at a piece of electronics and see something else entirely different. I shall be documenting some of my favourites later once I’ve gone thru’ all of the examples. But checkout this documentary that was shown at a circuit bending conference in New York in 2004 That tries to show what circuit bending is and what it means to the people who do it.

http://absurdity.biz/CircuitBending/downloads/what is circuit bending.mp4