Cheap Dub Siren Part 3

Been puting my cheap and cheerful siren to the test tonight. See the sample below. With a little tape delay it sounds quite splendid and the extra control using a push to make switch makes the unit rather playable.

I'm pretty happy with overall build of the unit and have learned a lot from my experiences customising the enclosure. On reflection, fitting the unit into a small space requires a lot of preplanning, preparation and thought. I'll put down some words on this another time, in the mean time however ... Junior Delgado in fine voice.

Dub siren jnr delgado by isistowersmusic

Building a Cheap Dub Siren Part 2

This is my first enclosure design. I'd had a couple of attenpts over the years which generally ended in sadness. I spent a long time looking at the guts of the siren next to the empty enclosure. The tricky thing was making sure the battery and jack socket had room to breathe.

Step 1: Screw in knobs and buttons and solder connecting leads to the board.

 Solder the cables from the  pots, switches and triggers to the board. I've stengthened the join in places with wire and extra solder. Not so neat but very effective.

Tone pots, switches and trigger mounted (from the inside) I had to countersink the drill holes to push enough of the component through to attach the mounting nut.

Step 2: Trim excess from tone pot control with hacksaw and attach control knobs

Building a Cheap Dub Siren Part 1

My first proper post of the new year. For christmas my loving lady gave me some money to build myself a little dub siren. The project outlined in this tutorial is a great beginners project and was the first kit I crudely made years ago.

Parts:

Velleman MK113 Siren Sound Generator Kit : available here

1 x 220k linear potentiometer
3 x Toggle Switch SPST
Push To Make Switch
1/4” Mono Chassis Socket

 The kit contains all necessary components to create a simple build, those listed will allow you to make full use of this siren, controlling the oscillator and tones easily, as the onboard switches provided are a little fiddly to use creatively. I've decided to repalce them with switches and knobs, using a simple push switch to trigger the siren, and will house it all in a little wooden box I picked up from ebay.

Included are a full set of well designed instructions. See below
.

 

Step1: Add the resistors

Step 2: Add the IC holder and diode

Step 3: Add the capacitors

Step 4: strip and tin the ends of 3 pieces of wire 5-7 cm in length. Solder on to the ends of the switches, leaving the other ends free to solder onto the board where the blue threeway switch would have sat.

Step 5: solder the switches in place on the board

Step 6: Prepare the 220k variable resisitor by soldering wire to the terminal ends. Solder in place to replace the onboard surface mounted mini pot included in the kit.

Step 7: Insert the IC chip.

Now its time to prepare the case.

Create a scale drawing of the holes that will be needed on the case on a sheet of paper. Use masking tape to hold in place.

 

Drill mounting holes for the trigger (13mm dia), 3x mini switches (8mm dia), pitch pot (11mm)

Sand off as necessary and check the components will easily push through. Join me in part 2 where i'll put it all together. Thanks for looking

A Productive Time

I'll be posting on 2 new cheap n cheerful dub sirens very soon. Whole projects and samples. In the mean time I need to drop an output to line level. Heres a link to a tutorial on building a 40dB attenuator pad.

Contact Mics

Happy new year, here's a link to help you build your own contact microphone.

This documentary on Radio 4 regarding recording the sound of wind passing through wires is fascinating and most inspiring.