Lunetta Starter Kit

[Inventor]

In the rush to move to Texas, with all the transience and stuff, I decided to let my electronics supplies go and restart my electronics hobby as far as hardware. It's a good thing to purge once in a while and I feel so free and easy now, it's been a great change. In a month, once my roommate and I are settled in our new apartment, I'd like to krank up the electronic music hobby once again with a strong emphasis on Lunettas.

I figure this is an excellent opportunity for us to design a starter kit for Lunettas. Inspired by the Lunetta Challenge, I feel that some set of parts would be excellent for a beginner kit. I will buy the kit contents and make some example circuits, do radio shows on them, and document them in pdf files. Then once that's done, we will have a great way for beginners to start out in Lunettas.

I'd set the price of the kit at $50 including shipping as a hard limit (or should it be $100?) and set it firm whatever it should be. I'm not going to suggest parts as I would like your input, so how about it?

Les

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[EATyourGuitar]

I think thats a great idea but what exactly are you going for? just the IC's? IC's, resistors, caps, diodes?

including breadboard?
wire?
LED's?

people that have a breadboard might not buy a kit that includes the breadboard. I think you should sell a mixed bag of sea moss (<----- lunetta joke) to the people who already have the iron, breadboard, resistors etc..

or go the other way completely and sell a kit that includes

breadboard <---------- a really big one please, they snap together, just make it 4.
CD4000 stuff
solid copper wire for breadboard or pre-made breadboard jumpers
diodes - small signal, zener, rectifier (some diodes might not fit in the breadboard)
LED
resistors
caps - electrolytic and poly
one 100k audio volume knob and output jack.
maybe a 1k breadboard trimmer. can be had for $0.06

usually I would say meter but I dont think there is any use for it in lunetta when you have LED's that show HIGH/LOW states.

[Cynosure]

I don't think that a breadboard is necessary. Maybe have it an option.

Here is what i think is essential to get started (other than breadboard):

7805
9V battery connector
40106
4040
and some other logic chips (you know better than me)
Caps (0.1uF, 1uF, 10uF)
Resistors (4.7k, 10k, 47k)
Pots (100K, 1M)
Diodes
Maybe one TL071

I think the $50 price range is more ideal than $100. You will have more people ordering them at that price, even if they get less.

[Inventor]

Yeah Cyno, looks like your parts list hits the spot, just need some more resistor values. And hold on, i didn't say i was offering kits, just one kit for me. Although if there is demand, sure, why not?

Les

[tjookum]

This is actually a really nice idea. When I first started I just copied the list from the lunetta document from droffset and ordered everything in tenfold. Im still struggeling to find a good use for the 8 leftover 4040 IC's. Starting with a lunetta should be cheap, fun and easy.

About a year ago I gave a lunetta workshop at my school. They were all art students and had no experience in electronics at all so I kept it very simple. Here is the kit I gave them:
1 x Breadboard medium
1 x CD40106
1 x CD4011
1 x CD4040
1 x CD4051
1 x CD4017
20 x 1 kOhm
10 x 100 kOhm
10 x 1N4148
10 x LED 5mm red
4 x MKT 0,1uF
4 x MKT 10nF
4 x 1uF radiaal
4 x 10uF radiaal
1 x 9V Battery
1 x 9V battery clip
2 x Trim potmeter 100K 10mm
4 x Trim potmeter 1M 10mm
1 x 3.5 mm jack, stereo
total cost: 20 euro's

The only thing I would change is to use 15mm piher trimpots with shafts, they are only 20 cents more and a lot easier to use.

here is a short impression of the workshop if anyone is interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTGZfIyd2u4

[EATyourGuitar]

sorry to thread poop but I can get that whole list for $10 usa shipped without the breadboard. maybe 10 euro with breadboard. I pay $0.06 per breadboard trimmer. just shop taydaelectronics.com

I hate to say it but anyone can just buy direct and save money. I think its great that you are trying to make it easy for beginners though. I just dont see how I could live with such a limited kit. If I'm noob, I need solid core jumper wire or the premade jumpers that mammoth sells. if I'm a pro, I dont need the trimmers, breadboard, resistors, caps etc.. all the average pedal builder or synth builder needs is the IC's. if you wont win your customers on price, you win on convenience and your personal gravity.

[tjookum]

You can "poop" on any thread you like, I would just prefer if it's constructive pooping.

Nobody is talking about winning over customers, this is about helping people get started with lunetta building. Ofcourse anyone can buy these parts from anywhere they like, I shopped at taydaelectronics a few times and their prices are very good.

The particular set of parts I mentioned was an attempt at the cheapest way to let people make some cool circuits with the basic lunetta parts. The 20 euro price tag was because I only had 1 week to order the parts and I couldn't have any shipping issues.

And Im well aware that you can get trimmers for $0.06, I was talking about Piher 15mm trimpots wich accept a seperately sold shaft for easy control.


Ok, back on topic:
I do agree on the pre made breadboard jumperwires, I've been using them for a long time now and they are the single most usefull bit of kit you can get when working with breadboards. They do have a tendency to wear out after a while. The bit where the pin is attached to the wire inside the plastic casing sometimes breaks wich gave me a lot of headaches when I was debugging a circuit.

My new revised list would be:
1 x Breadboard medium (or as big as your funds allow)
1 x Flexible breadboard jumper wires
1 x CD40106
*oscillators
1 x CD4093
*gating oscillators
1 x CD4011
*NAND gate
1 x CD4030
*XOR gate
1 x CD4040
*divider
1 x CD4051
*multiplexer
1 x CD4017
*counter(baby10)
20 x 1 kOhm
*mainly for LED's
10 x 100 kOhm
*pulldown resistors for unused inputs
10 x 1N4148
*mixing, Micky Mouse logic
10 x LED 5mm red
4 x MKT 0,1uF
4 x MKT 10nF
4 x 1uF radiaal
4 x 10uF radiaal
1 x 9V Battery
1 x 9V battery clip
2 x Piher PT15mm trim potmeter 100K
*mixing and attenuating
4 x Piher PT15mm trim potmeter 1M
*oscillators
1 x 3.5 mm jack, mono


and for more advanced circuits:
4 x Light Dependent Resistor
1 x CD4066
*Quad bilateral switch, great for interfacing your lunetta with all kinds of things.
1 x CD4077
*XNOR gate
1 x CD4094
*8 bit shift register
1 x CD4052
*4x1 multiplexer
1 x LM324
*quad single supply op-amp. Active R2R, active mixer, simple filters.
1 x LM386
*single IC amplifier when you want to use a speaker

What do you guys think?

I think this can really help out beginners, I know I would have loved a decent list of parts when I started.

[Psyingo]

[EATyourGuitar]

I actually like those trimmers you showed me a lot. they are definitely worth $0.20 solid core wire may be an alternative for some if you cant find a bulk source for pre-made jumpers. I realize that the list of parts and the price is not finalized. I like what you are doing.

[-minus-]

I really don't see the point of a kit. It seems to dictate some kind of standard which Lunettas should adhere to. There are many ways to approach this. I don't go in for the trimpot and header pin approach personally, or the nuts and bolt method either. But I wouldn't want to narrow down that option with a kit of specified parts. It isn't as if these components are hard to come by. This is not some vintage synth with hard to source obsolete parts we are talking about. It's pretty easy to get a few ICs of your choice and link up the pins. It's not exactly rocket science is it?

[sonic]

I can see how for somebody who wants to get up and running quickly such a kit might be quite useful. No it's not rocket science, but the sooner a beginner starts playing around with circuits the sooner he can get his head around it.

Better still if you can encourage creativity and get a pile of chips into the hands of beginners who might otherwise be more tentative with their first steps, and really encourage them to muck around with them then it might be quite a useful exercise.

[Inventor]

Well to reiterate, I'm not planning to offer a kit, just a set of pdf, text, and audio files that are based on the kit contents. I'd create some circuits and make class materials and do radio shows. So it's really more about what's to be done with the kit than a kit itself. However, yes, there must be a kit.

Les

[EATyourGuitar]

here is what I recently purchased from taydaelectronics.com to get started with CD4000 series logic.

[EATyourGuitar]

correction to my list. the 4014 and 4021 are static shift registers. this is probably not what you want at all. most of the lunetta schematics on the web that use shift registers have a serial in parallel out 8 bit or 4 bit.

CD4094B = 8 bit shift register DIP16
74HC164, SN74HC164N = 8 bit shift register DIP14
CD4015B, CD4015BC = dual 4 bit shift register DIP16

I also found no use for D flip flops at fisrt but once I started designing circuits I realized that these are like the perfect 1 bit memory device. for example, you can count up to 256 in 8 bit and you can use that D flop as a variable that goes high when you want to count backwards from 256. the D flop bit becomes the master bit for a parallel OR mask of your 8 bit data. this is how you convert ramp to tri. granted that you need a DAC to even hear these ramp and saw waveforms.