Shake Microphone

The Shake Microphone is an easy to make, human-powered microphone, made from a hacked shake flashlight and common electronic parts from RadioShack. Similar to the shake flashlight, you shake the microphone, press the button, and speak into the microphone to amplify your voice!

I created this Instructables in such a way that you can use the written instructions as well as the photos to follow along with the project.

DIFFICULTY: LOW - MEDIUM
TIME FRAME: Small weekend project.
PREREQUISITES: My instructions assume you know the basics of electronics and soldering. I don't explicitly go over how to solder but it may be a nice small project to introduce you to electronics.

Step 1 Parts, Materials, and Tools

Parts and Materials:
A. Hummer Shake Flashlight (about $10 on eBay)
B. Universal Cassette Recorder Microphone (Catalog #: 33-3019)
C. Small 8 ohm Speaker (Catalog #: 273-092)
D. 8-pin Retention Contact (Catalog #: 276-1995)
E. LM386 Low Voltage Audio Power Amplifier (Catalog #: 276-1731)
F. PC Board (Catalog #: 276-150)
G. 220uF Electrolytic Capacitor (Catalog #: 272-1029)
H. 10uF Electrolytic Capacitor (Catalog #: 272-1013)
I. 10M ohm resistor (Catalog #: 271-1365)
J. 0.1uF Ceramic Capacitor (Catalog #: 272-135)
K. Plastic Cup
L. About 1.5' of wire, red and black each
M. 0.032" Rosin Core Solder (Catalog #: 64-009)
N. Electrical Tape or Duck Tape
A bit of corrugated cardboard (not pictured)

Tools:
O. Wire Cutter / Stripper
P. Soldering Iron
Tin Snips (not pictured)
Scissors (not pictured)
Pen or pencil (not pictured)

Total Cost (assuming you have all the tools and materials, not parts): approx. $35

Note: Most of the parts can be commonly found at local RadioShack stores.

Comments

[WickedFabala]

Cool! it looks like a Jadoon Scanner!

[alex-sharetskiy]

ALL shake flashlights should be compatible, they may not have the same circuit board, but they should have a capacitor, a coil wrapped around a tube containing a magnet

[n0ukf]

Be careful when buying cheap "shake" flashlights. I have found some in stores that are fakes, they have a coil, but it's only a couple layers of windings, they have a plain steel slug instead of a magnet, they have no capacitor to charge and no diodes to rectify an AC voltage. They do have a white LED and two CR2032 batteries, so I thought it was still worth the $3 I paid at the time (have you priced those coin cells? They're expensive in the stores, at least $2 I think when I can get them for $0.30 or less at Digikey).

[ert]

this is a very useful instructable i give it a 100/100

[Keith-Kid]

wow. very original i love it!

[technodude92]

Any "shake" flashlight should. Or you could use one of those emergency crank flashlight radio combos and have a built in speaker and housing

[thewoodcarver]

Very Nice ! I really do like that you added the radio shack catalog numbers as a link

[splatterpaintballer]

Very Cool I can't wait to make one for myself!

[Gnome]

Quick unrelated question: How did you manage to get the flash player on to instructables?? I know I've tried several times but Instructables doesn't support HTML or embed's right?

[prizepony]

I believe there is an Instructables floating around describing how to embed video using various online video sites. Since I have Dreamhost as my provider, I simply converted my video to a .flv and used their .swf player to embed it. I followed the instructions on how to embed a Blip as guidance.

[Gnome]

Alright, thanks. I just asked this question here because I saw you used the same swf player I use. It's useful when you want to keep your stuff private if you store your flv files on a server; then you just have to link the player to the file. That way you don't have to upload it to YouTube, Metacafe, or others if you just wanna embed it. Thanks again.

[alvincredible]

hey that's cool! very nice pictures

[Weissensteinburg]

Wow! That's really neat. About how much louder would you say it makes your voice?

[prizepony]

It is a bit louder than your voice going in. Keep in mind that the project is very low power. But, I've noted a bunch of possible improvements to fix the volume and clarity in the very last step, "Improvements + Notes". For the time being, making an easy to build project using readily available electronic parts was my priority. All comments and ideas for improvement are totally welcome!

[GorillazMiko]

Amazing Instructable! Very detailed, the pictures are GREAT, everything is awesome, nice job labeling the items and stuff, great Instructable! +1 rating.

[joejoerowley]

Great instructable! Well Documented!