Acordeonador, an 555 accordion powered by a CD player based genrator

CD Player Powered 555 Piano Goes Accordion To Plan

December 30, 2021 by Ryan Flowers 8 Comments

Ah yes, the 555 piano project. Be it the Atari Punk Console, or some other 555 based synthesizer, Hackers just love to hear what the 555 can do when attached to a few passives and a speaker. It’s a sound to behold. But for [Berna], that wasn’t quite enough! Below the break, you can see his creation, called the Acordeonador.

A portmanteau of the Spanish words for “Accordion” and Generator”, the Acordeonador does what no project we’ve seen so far can do: It turns a CD drive into a generator for a 555 based synthesizer.

To give the Acordeonador a more analog feeling, a large 4700uf electrolytic capacitor stores just enough energy to make the music generation more than an on/off affair. It’s a great effect, and it works well! Not being one to leave any details out, [Berna] prototyped the build on perf board and then covered the board in what appears to be an wood grained contact paper, giving it that 1970’s dual keyboard electric organ feel.

It really just goes to prove that a 555 project can be the source of a great time! Hackaday is rife with 555 projects, but if you enjoy this, be sure to check out The Most Important Device In the Universe, which is of course powered by a 555. Continue reading “CD Player Powered 555 Piano Goes Accordion To Plan” →

Celebrate Display Diversity For A Circuit Circus Clock

January 3, 2018 by Dan Maloney 12 Comments

There’s a lot to be said for nice, tidy projects where everything lines up and looks pretty. Seeing straight lines and pleasing proportions speaks to our obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and tends to soothe the mind and calm the spirit. But disorder is not without its charm, and mixing it up a little from time to time, such as with this mixed-media digital clock, can be a good idea.

Now, we know what you’re thinking — yet another Nixie clock. True, but that’s only half the story — or more accurately, one-sixth. There’s but a single Nixie in [Fuselage]’s circus-punk themed clock, used for the least significant digit in the hours part of the display. The other digits are displayed with four seven-segment devices — a Numitron, a vacuum fluorescent display, and an LED dot display — plus a real oddball, an old electromechanical display with individual slides for each character and a rear-screen projector. The RTC part of the project is standard Arduino fare, but as you can imagine the power supply needed for such a diversity of displays is pretty complex and has to provide everything from +5 to -270 volts. Each display needs its own driver, too, making this more of a zoo than a circus. The mixed up look just works with the circus theme, too. We’d really like more information on the projector display, though.

Looking for a real statement for your next clock build? Check out the rare as hens’ teeth NIMO tube.

Continue reading “Celebrate Display Diversity For A Circuit Circus Clock” →

Roman Headgear Looks Less Silly With Lots Of Blinky

May 3, 2014 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

centurion-project

Look, it’s not Steam-Punk because the period is way out of whack. And we’ve never seen ourselves as “that guy” at the party. But it would be pretty hard to develop The Centurion Project and not take the thing to every festive gathering you could possibly attend. This sound-reactive helm compels party-going in a toga-nouveau sort of way.

[Roman] tells us that it started as a movie prop. The first build step was to remove the plume from the top of it. The replacement — seven meters worth of addressable RGB LEDS — looks just enough like an epic mohawk to elicit visions of the punk rock show, with the reactive patterns to make it Daft. The unexpected comes with the FFT generated audio visualizations. They’re grounded on the top side of each of the LED strips. Most would call that upside-down but it ends up being the defining factor in this build. Seriously, watch the demo after the break and just try to make your case that this would have been better the other way around.

As a final note, this project was written using Cinder. It’s an Open Source C++ library that we don’t remember hearing about before.

Continue reading “Roman Headgear Looks Less Silly With Lots Of Blinky” →