Simple ways to circuit bend a toy

Step 3 Making and testing the pitch bend

Now that we've figured out where the resistor is that controls the pitch, let's see if we can make something that allows us to vary it. We do this through a potentiometer (also called a pot), which varies resistance as we turn a knob. (These are the things you find in radio or TV dials (at least before they all became digital).) We need to have a pot whose maximum resistance is near to the resistor that we're going to connect to. In this case, the pitch resistor was in the megaohm range, so I chose a pot that had an upper limit of around 5 megaohms.

Next, I connected one lead of the pot to the resistor on the circuit, and another lead of the pot to ground. (Pots have three leads, and you want to use the first two or the last two; which one you chose determines whether turning the knob in one direction increases or decreases the pitch.) And then it's just a matter of testing it out! If things don't sound as you'd like, go ahead and play around with things: different pots, different resistors in series or parallel, etc.

Check out the video for a detailed walkthrough of this modification within the toy.

Comments

[MilotisX]

how do you wire the pot though?