Muff's Modules & More

Tombola · Last edited by Tombola on Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:50 pm; edited 2 times in total

Scroll down or click for schematic/details

Inspired by this quote from Don Buchla, I've been trying to build the simplest possible CV controlled radio:

Neutron7 · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:07 pm Post subject:

That's very cool, but the content is FM is kind of boring humans talking and playing music.

I would love to have a VC short wave, short wave is full of all sorts of bleeps and buzzes, rather than crappy pop music smile

Tombola · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:13 pm Post subject:

Guess it depends where you live - in London there are tonnes of strange pirate stations - you're flipping between speech and dub step and classical. Haven't yet found a simple enough SW circuit...

BananaPlug · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:53 pm Post subject:

You can get a simple SW kit but the problem is you need a really long antenna wire, probably outside, or you won't get much. I decided it wasn't practical but I do wonder about the amplified antennas.

Neutron7 · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:56 pm Post subject:

I like that last one. so there is none of that old "waiting for it to lock" bs when you slide past a station?

Bricks · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:08 pm Post subject:

tasty

Tombola · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:42 am Post subject:

Jarno · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 8:12 am Post subject:

I saw the other thread, and immediately went ahead and order the Conrad kit, they have the Franzis kit as well, but that's 5 euro's more expensive.

They do have SW kits, but if you look in the building manual, they use a variable cap for tuning, not easily sequenced.

I am going to use this Madbean DigDug, since I already had it in my projects box, using a vactrol to generate the control voltage.

Paradigm X · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 12:08 pm Post subject:

beautyofdecay_ · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 6:31 pm Post subject:

With a TV aerial you will probably be able to receive FM stations although TV antenna's are usually designed for higher frequencies.
For SW it is definitely not suited but you might receive the strongest stations.

If you have a SW receiver you can also try to put a simple wire (10-15m long) inside the house. This works rather well, depending on your local situation of course.

An active (amplified) antenna is also an option for receiving SW transmissions and has the advantage of being very small and can also be used inside the house.
A long wire antenna outside the house is the best way to go however wink

limpmeat · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 12:12 am Post subject:

I like this idea, it would make for an interesting noise source. especially if you could get shortwave

negativspace · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:02 am Post subject:

I love the idea, same goes for the ADDAC offering. But it's the AM bands that are full of sweet noise textures... surely that can't be too hard to do, can it?

Paradigm X · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:09 am Post subject:

beautyofdecay_ · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 9:10 am Post subject:

Not at all! Just solder the core and the shielding together or just use the shielding and you have a nice wire antenna wink

BTW: The ideal wire antenna length (in meters) for a given frequency is (approximately) 300 / f (in MHz), where f is the frequency you want to listen to.
So if you want to listen to the bleeps and bloops at 14 MHz, the ideal wire antenna would be aprox. 21 meters long.
If you need it to be shorter use half or a quarter of the calculated length.

But, truth to be said, on shortwave you will get pretty decent results for this application with any wire length of a couple of meters and longer.

oootini · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 9:48 am Post subject:

very cool concept! sounds mega in your second clip all up in the mix. great work.

Tombola · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 11:47 am Post subject:

So - has anyone found a shortwave radio schematic/kit that uses a varactor for voltage control?

The Franzis shortwave radio kit definitely has a rotary variable capacitor
http://www.conrad.com/Franzis-Retro-Shortwave-Radio.htm?websale7=conra d-int&pi=191326

http://www.produktinfo.conrad.com/datenblaetter/175000-199999/191326-a s-01-de-FRANZIS_RETRO_KURZWELLENRADIO.pdf

The Ramsey SR-2C cost £45, has varactor tuning
http://www.wsplc.com/acatalog/Kits_Ramsey.html

Anything cheaper out there?

emdot_ambient · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 12:12 pm Post subject:

I'm in the SW camp, too.

And I've had several portable SW radios that got wonderful reception just using normal boom box style antennas. I never ran wire antennas and could get S. America, Europe, Russian, Japanese...better at night than in the day...

Anyway, I wouldn't be looking for the voice/music signals so much as the strange sideband noises, satellite and morse code signals. Those things are total strange noise generators. Wish I had one still sad banana

jenamu6 · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 12:27 pm Post subject:

No idea but might this be something?

http://www.prismnet.com/~nielw/tentec1054/tentec1054.htm

Tombola · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2011 3:35 am Post subject:

Pro tip: Don't accidentally connect the +12v rail directly to pin 1 on the chip.

Sigh.

Back to the Conrad website...

bbow73 · Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:18 pm Post subject:

krz · Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 2:41 pm Post subject:

dan_k · Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 3:38 pm Post subject:

I remember he had a rack of car cassette decks with tapes running in them with gates that were opened by drum pads.

That was pretty cool, constantly morphing drum textures.

bbow73 · Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 10:05 pm Post subject:

I saw this post which made me search muff's again:

http://nomeist.com/voltage-controlled-fm-radio-cv-radio/274/comment-pa ge-1#comment-1661

Paradigm X · Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2012 1:45 pm Post subject:

dmitri · Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 11:04 pm Post subject:

Man that sounds cool !!! Rockin' Banana!

RealDudes · Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:17 am Post subject:

Tombola, you've made some of the most beginner friendly and genuinely satisfying contributions to the community. I really appreciate you sharing your wonderful gizmos with us.
thumbs up

hbbk · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 3:47 pm Post subject:

great another FM module, but please add AM too, pliiizzz... we're not worthy

Tombola · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:08 pm Post subject:

Thanks RealDudes

jenamu6 · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:33 pm Post subject:

Could you please explain what you did exactly?

Where did you put in the CV?
Did you use a resistor to temper the cv?

The kits are only 14 euro here......I think I just found a nice module for my bugbrand blinds.

they also have all kinds of am francis kits even shortwave.

Tombola · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:48 pm Post subject:

Finished my CV-controlled radio project.

I'm really happy with how it came out - I know everyone says 'can we have AM' and 'I want shortwave to browse numbers stations' but I like something that mixes up music. Particularly living in South London, there are loads of strong weird pirate stations around, and this is a fantastic source of randomness in the modular.

In the video, there is one bit where I'm using a numeric keypad - this is a CGS10 Mini Keyboard that puts out 1v/octave voltages - even that locks on to 6-7 stations in the 16 keys.

It's built around a Franzis FM Radio kit from Conrad. The interesting thing about that kit is that it's tuned by a varactor / varicap / tuning diode, which makes voltage control really easy. It's a very simple board - a SMD FM tuner on-a-chip and a few other components.

Untitled by Tom.Whitwell, on Flickr

The rest of the circuit is one TL074 quad op amp. Two amps mix the CV, two amps boost the radio output to modular levels after removing the big DC offsets the radio module produces with a cap/resistor. That's really it. The kit comes with a little mini telescopic aerial, which is now uhu-glued to the back of my case:

radiomodule by Tom.Whitwell, on Flickr

Thanks to iopop and daverj in this thread about mixing CV signals, to Jean-Louise on electro music for discovering the Franzis module and to Don Buchla for having the idea in the first place.

jenamu6 · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:50 pm Post subject:

Thanks mate.

Too difficult for me, I'm afraid

numan7 · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 5:34 pm Post subject:

nice work, tombola! i think i'll try building a couple of these sometime soon...

cheers

Navs · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:32 am Post subject:

The clip on Matrixsynth is excellent, Tombola applause

What are the other modules (not the numeric keypad), some sort of sequential switch?

asterisk · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:47 am Post subject:

nice work! i love the little sequencer bits around 0:16.

seems cool to create sequenced loops where the sounds of each step change as the radio stations change.

Kendall Station · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 4:29 am Post subject:

The Ten-Tecs are pretty good. Also I've done well even in the city with my Sony handheld and 3 ft antenna. Could be done easily.

And yet I wonder, reading this, since everyone's so down on FM radio saying it suck (which it does here in the US), why not do something to change it?

Find an FM transmitter kit (there are many) and turn into a module (which could be done) that you plug in audio from your modular. It could then spit out your wiggle out a couple thousand feet 1000 ft on the FM band of your choice.

Better yet, put a really slow LFO on the tuning and sweep the spectrum so everyone gets about a 2-second taste of what you're twiddling up?

Just an idea / mobile modular pirate radio.

Tombola · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 4:41 am Post subject:

Love the mobile pirate radio with LFO idea!

In London, ResonanceFM is more or less the same as random modular connected to broadcast transmitter ;-)

Tombola · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 5:48 am Post subject:

CJ Miller · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 7:55 am Post subject:

I am part of the "shortwave" chorus! Unfortunately, where I live FM is a wasteland of bad pop music. But FM does sound great, so when there are decent stations it is a joy.

I did a google search for "varactor shortwave" and quickly found this kit, which has apparently earned some excellent reviews:

http://www.radioaficion.com/HamNews/articles/5765-sr2c-shortwave-recei ver-kit.html

I don't know if it is compatible with Tombola's interesting circuit, but it should be fun to play with.

Jarno · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 9:37 am Post subject:

Think I found this one as well, not very cheap though (40-60USD excl. ship), so I am going the Franzis FM kit route as well (plenty of FM in our area).

Edit:
and there's another one which is even better, switchable bands and all.

Tombola · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:15 am Post subject:

Just make sure it has the varactor 'diode' tuning - otherwise it won't work. Most of the Franzis kits have a big rotary variable capacitor inside

EDIT - sorry Jarno, I can see from your earlier post that you already know that. Have you found a AM/FM kit with a varactor?

qu.one · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 11:17 am Post subject:

Need to build one of these.

*Any chance for a dummies, non schematic style version as a build reference? Something a la CGS?

Tombola · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 11:43 am Post subject:

lms.ktp · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 1:10 pm Post subject:

Love this idea! Could you please tell me, why you leave the space for the transistors empty?

Tombola · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 1:36 pm Post subject:

qu.one · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 1:56 pm Post subject:

lms.ktp · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 2:06 pm Post subject:

Paradigm X · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 2:47 pm Post subject:

Wow, awesome stuff. applause

Searching, i also found this velleman kit (LINK to pdf datasheet)

which appears (could be totally wrong) to use a variable resistor wired as a voltage divider, to tune AM and FM ! hence (ditto!) would be easy to add CV (triple ditto!)

Any thoughts?

Im up for trying it in a month or two once im less skint and have cleared backlog a little.rapid sell the kits for £12.53

Nice one.

Tombola · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:01 pm Post subject:

Tombola · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:02 pm Post subject:

Jarno · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:15 pm Post subject:

Paradigm X · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:28 pm Post subject:

hmm, i thnk youre righht, rapid says

"Tune in to your favourite AM/FM radio stations"

must be a typo. :(

CJ Miller · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 4:03 pm Post subject:

Tombola · Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 3:55 am Post subject:

Here's a more musical / in context recording I did last night - all the voice samples from local pirate African stations (I <3 London) and the big wooshing running through is the module being tuned by the stepped random out from a Wogglebug, then bandpass filtered in RS110 and a bit of spring reverb. Drums from Ableton, some guitar and Hohner Pianet

[s]http://soundcloud.com/musicthing/wild-speaker[/s]
http://soundcloud.com/musicthing/wild-speaker

Kendall Station · Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 6:29 am Post subject:

God I wish we had decent Pirate radio here. TBH my inkling toward AM isn't the blips and bloops (already got noise and ring mod in my kit) but the crazy christian stations you get here esp. on shortwave.

Tombola · Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 7:30 am Post subject:

If tuning didn't always seem to be so slow, I'd suggest a Wifi Internet Radio module - then you could literally run anything into the modular.

Could a simple module load and 'hold' a number of streams, and allow fast switching between them?

Maybe this could do it: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Monobass · Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 7:47 am Post subject:

I miss london Pirate stations.

I've been thinking about the potential of the raspberry Pi too... I wonder how noisy the audio output will be. Other option is a DAC on the audio section of the HDMI output.

poladark · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 1:32 am Post subject:

krz · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 5:01 pm Post subject:

[quote="dan_k"]I remember he had a rack of car cassette decks with tapes running in them with gates that were opened by drum pads.

That was pretty cool, constantly morphing drum textures.[/quote]

Was that with the car decks in the 80's? I heard/saw the radio trigs
in the late 90's at subconcious studios (when it was still in Van)
Helped pack 4 move to Cal. Still have old puppy Atari 1040.
Big woop.

JP · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 10:55 pm Post subject:

krz · Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 5:04 am Post subject:

[quote="Monobass"]I miss london Pirate stations.
[/quote]

2015 I hear, is the year when all analogue radio stations will
cease broadcasting in the UK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/16/digital-britain-analo gue-radio-switchoff?cat=technology&type=article

lms.ktp · Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 5:43 am Post subject:

Hey, finally finished my radio and I love playing with it SlayerBadger!

nice random factor for my rack. Now I got the problem, that its kind of hard to trim the frequence, the part were you rly here the radio is very small :( Do you hace any tips for me?

fluxmonkey · Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 10:03 am Post subject:

i just attenuate the cv voltage way down, like by a factor of 10 or more. ton o' fun but perfiddly... at first i thought i'd be able to jump from station to station via a keyboard, never got there but the random factor is just as good if not better...

bbow73 · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:50 am Post subject:

Hey, I tried to order that radio kit and this is what I got:

krz · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 12:55 am Post subject:

Do you want shipping to Canada or the US?

bbow73 · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 9:26 am Post subject:

krz · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 12:20 am Post subject:

http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/

No experience with 'em but lots of kits.

Looking for an Asian kit co. link. :(
Canakits doesn't look like they do
much afa receivers anymore.
I could only find transmitters.

bbow73 · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 7:13 am Post subject:

Ramsey has a few kits but I think we specifically need the Franzis kit because it has the varactor tuner necessary for the responding to VC control.

So... can anyone not in the the US or Canada order one for me?

Or better yet (since I don't know anything about electronics or own any electronics gear), anyone want to PM me with their price to put one of these together for me?

fluxmonkey · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 10:35 pm Post subject:

from the ramsey website:

bbow73 · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 6:46 am Post subject:

SWEET!
thx man

Tombola · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 6:57 am Post subject:

Some interesting products on Sparkfun:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10906
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10342

Features:

Worldwide FM band support (64-108 MHz)
Worldwide AM band support (520-1710 kHz)
SW band support (2.3-26.1 MHz)
LW band support (153-279 kHz)
Digital FM stereo decoder
RDS/RBDS processor

Digitally tuned, I think - but shouldn't be too hard to build an Arduino sketch to convert voltage to tuning, or maybe to do some interesting work - i.e triggerable sequences of available stations.

I just ordered one, will let you know.

continuum · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 11:10 am Post subject:

I'm guessing you ordered the Arduino shield version?

Tombola · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 11:47 am Post subject:

Got one of each - Shield for experimentation, but more maybe build the breakout into a module.

Seems the Buchla 272e is digitally digitally tuned in the same way

krz · Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 8:57 pm Post subject:

Thanks for finding one at Ramsey fluxmonkey!

delayed · Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 4:52 am Post subject:

any luck with the Ramsey kit or the sparkfun kit?

Tombola · Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:46 am Post subject:

Sorry, have the sparkfun/arduino kit but am deep in something else at the moment...

freeyerheel · Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:55 am Post subject:

i wonder if anyone has done one with tubes? scratch scratch

hexinverter · Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:29 am Post subject:

What a cool idea!

Just make your own shortwave radio from a schematic. It's pointless buying kits for $45 or whatever to resell if you're planning on making this into a kit/project for people, as 80% of a kits cost is paying someone to bag it up for you.

I should know, because I spend most of my time on hexinverter.net stuff doing repetitive bagging and sorting of kit components! Dead Banana

themanthatwasused · Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 7:45 am Post subject:

Bump on this, as I have been entertaining the idea.
Has anyone tried a shortwave radio on this?
Tom great looking module anyway.
I am turning into a fanboy it seems, as I have the turing machine in my backlog waiting for me to solder and put behind a panel.

audioCTRL · Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2012 8:31 am Post subject:

for X-mas I've build myself a voltage controlled radio.
Behind the shiny black front panel...

- it's a complete mess...

- but it works! Shuffling the FM band fucking up the seasonal music is a laugh hihi

... THANKS TOM!

Kingnimrod · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 9:12 pm Post subject:

Been looking at this project myself, and found this shortwave kit with the right type of tuner:

http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&ke y=SR2C

Wondering if this could be ganged up in the same unit with fm without causing too much interference.

mmelnick · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 9:26 pm Post subject:

bbow73 · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:35 pm Post subject:

anyone know if this would work for an AM module?

http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&ke y=HR-SERIES

Kingnimrod · Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 11:38 pm Post subject:

doesn't look like it has the correct tuning diode

Jarno · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 5:00 pm Post subject:

Put this together yesterday evening, and finished it tonight, lots of fun!

Managed to put in an LM317 regulator backwards, so that created some smoke, didn't hurt the opamps or tuner though.

Also had +12v on the top of the tuning pot, and that didn't hurt it either.

Works like a charm, tuning is a bit fiddly, and it needs a better antenna (at least overhere).

Fantastic project, thanks Tom!

Cut a panel at work tomorrow, and bolt it in the rack, did a buchlaesque layout (model 272/4 hihi

).

Jarno · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 6:26 am Post subject:

Adjusting it is remarkably "set-and-forget". The stations are in a certain range, so you set the lower limit with the tuning knob (and no cv), apply max cv and open up the cv attenuator until you reach the last station. The chance of hitting a random station is pretty good that way.

qfactor · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 1:44 am Post subject:

Is there anyone selling this in kit form here? Sounds brilliant but I don't have the experience to source out and make my own PCB nor euro front panel and parts, being a noob in this area.
help

Jarno · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 3:15 am Post subject:

Well, the radio itself is a kit, the remaining circuit is usually done on perfboard, no pcb needed. But you will need to source the components.
I could be prodded to do a pcb for this, if there's some more interest.

oisin · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 3:34 am Post subject:

nice to come across the project - will definitely be trying it out when i find the time.

it looks like there are some radio kits (advent calendar version) on sale now at conrad - think these are the same thing?

http://www.conrad.de/ce/de/product/192407/Franzis-Verlag-UKW-Retro-Rad io-Adventskalender/?ref=detview1&rtl=reco_detail_bottom&rb=2#

delayed · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 3:37 am Post subject:

which radio kit did you use?

Tombola · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 4:58 am Post subject:

Jarno · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 6:10 am Post subject:

On the "original" franziskit were also some pads for buttons to do scan type tuning, so perhaps this one lends itself to voltage control as well?

Was googling for programmable C IC's, found some but I am not quite sure how much capacitance is needed, and it is likely that there will be some stepping in the tuning. Also, some kind of digital interface is needed, sounds like not as straightforward anymore.

Gripp · Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 12:28 pm Post subject:

A little bit of a necrobump but not much.

Tombola, did you manage to get the mute disable feature working?
I see a switch in the pictures.
Was it something like tying pin 1 to the 3.3V supply via a say 10k resistor?

I'm seriously eying the Conrad kit.

Also, did you just use a standard regulator to get 3.3V directly from+12V or something more fancy for power?

Oh, this schem could be a starting point for CV-AM

Obsolete components but I think one can still get them quite cheap.

Cheers!

delayed · Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 2:14 pm Post subject:

a layout and BOM would be nice for one of these instead of a $40+ kit that is not made to go behind a panel.

wavehead · Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 3:47 am Post subject:

really hope someone finds a good way to do AM and/or SW for this application because its a million times more useful for the modular.

stimresp · Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 5:40 am Post subject:

nathanxl · Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 7:13 am Post subject:

Jarno · Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 7:41 am Post subject:

It's depending on your location of course, but the CV-FM IS a lot of fun, so I don't agree to the million times comment.
The more the merrier however, so if someone does get it to work that would be extra colour to add to the modular.

But if it's SW or AM you really want, get it done. Maybe add a stepper to the variable cap? Mr. Green

mmelnick · Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 7:58 am Post subject:

I wish there was a kit/pcb for this. I am not good enough to make one but I want it woah

qfactor · Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 10:31 am Post subject:

Tombola · Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 6:31 am Post subject:

Gripp · Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 11:59 am Post subject:

Thanks

Regarding AM, the schematic I posted is among the most simple radio circuits there is. A so called TRF (I cheated and did some reading) tuned radio frequency. Basically the only thing really selecting the frequency is the passive filter in the front (and antenna). It won't most likely sound any good in the traditional sense and for all of us wanting noise, we must be careful what we wish for.
Think about how radio-noisy the near modular envrionment is for a while.
How fun will it be getting the same noise all the time, the noise profile of our cases.

I will probably tinker with this any way just because it is simple and varactor based. But will guide my efforts to clean power, thorough shielding and the antenna, which will not be a ferrite inside but an external solution with shielded cable. There seems to be a number of chips very similar to LMF501T such as MK484 which looks more obtainable.

But first, the Conrad kit!

dragulasbruder · Posted: Thu May 02, 2013 2:59 pm Post subject:

^keep us posted!