Dumb Electronics

This summer started picking up electric oddities and toys at the goodwill. Had some fun taking them apart, learning a bit (though less than you might think) about electrics, and occasionally tried some weird stuff. If you’re in Portland ME and want to borrow either the camera or the keyboards for projects or fun, or collaborate on other similar stuff, be in touch!

Camera

The case.

The Camera

This is my iPhone’s perspective…

…while this is the photo it took around the same moment.

The camera does better in natural light than indoors. It has a digital zoom, it makes funny sounds when it turns on, off, and takes pictures (was originally a toy, I took it apart with thoughts to like glitch it out but it worked so well it felt a shame to break it, so I just had some fun repackaging it and left the functionality alone). It has a micro-USB drive, is basically a fully-functional digital camera.

Taking this dinky camera around, feeling a little self-conscious about its hipster presentation, working with the limitations of the device…it feels like high school art class in the best way.

Ghost Piano

So this is the Ghost Piano. Was a while when I was buying toy keyboards when they popped up at the goodwill with an eye towards circuit bending. Never got around to circuit bending because 1: lack of patience & 2: fear of breathing in lead fumes while soldering.

Have had some fun with just a long-ish male-to-male wire, taking apart these and other keyboards and then just exploring creating new circuits and seeing what happens.

But this one: so I noticed that the big keyboard had a component with a wire that looked a lot like the main wire of the smaller keyboard. So, I cut and connected them together. I don’t remember what the component I removed did. What actually happened, though, I was very surprised by.

I did make a short video (audio is really bad) showing, but basically you can play the small (cat) keyboard (which is powered off, by the way), and it ‘plays’ and lights up notes on the big keyboard. Sometimes but not always the same note. Jiggering the other settings on the big keyboard also changes how responsive it is. It would make my day if someone with a better understanding of electronics would email me (jakesimonds@gmail.com) with any ideas as to what’s going on.