Constructing the stick 1

Finally got my soldering iron out and started connecting tilt switches up to the keyboard matrix. Everytime I connected one up, I quickly tested it with my patch and each one generated the values that I expected which was a bit of a relief. As with putting the Simontron together, my soldering iron needed recharging right at the crucial moment which in this case was putting the last tilt switch circuit together. Still, at least it let me start work on the pipe.

Thanks to the combined efforts of Mr Black and Mr Decker, I managed to drill a hole in the pipe for the cable to feed thru without splitting it. I then cellotaped the tilt switches to some paper to workout the best positions for them. Not a roaring success but then paper isn’t the most inflexible material around. It did give some readings but 2 seemed to dominate the proceedings so a rethink on the order is likely to be needed. It has highlighted a problem that I had first thought about when I came up with concept but had shoved to the back of my mind – how do I fix the array inside the pipe? I’m thinking something along the lines of a couple of small holes, cocktail sticks and some superglue but that’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow. In case you were wondering, the post-its are so I know which switch generates what signal.

Photo of keyboard matrix and tilt switches soldered to it

Photo of keyboard matrix with wires soldered to it

Photo of newly drilled hole in pipe



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