On Friday, January 31st, the Maker Lab held a small, “Hello World” workshop—designed and facilitated by Katie McQueston—where we built paper speakers and a small amplifier circuit that boosts the signal from a regular 1/8″ headphone jack. (We used the headphone jacks on our phones to test the circuit.) Participants learned how to build both the speaker and the amplifier by each receiving a bag of component parts and an excellent illustrated instructional booklet, which Katie also designed. (The paper speaker itself was included as a punch-out in the booklet.)
Participants worked in small groups to assemble the amplifier circuit and paper speaker.
Katie’s instructional booklet illustrates the circuit in schematic form, as well as how it can be laid out on a breadboard.
The perforated cardboard cover of the booklet can be punched out to form the speaker cone and base. Some gluing and taping are also required.
Alex and Karly breadboarding their circuit.
MLabbers and others participated in the event. For some, it was their first chance to build a circuit. From left: Nicole, Alex, Karly, Stefan, Zaqir, Emma, Laura, Nina.
Closeup of the finished speaker. Electricity that flows through the copper coil creates an electromagnetic current, causing the coil to vibrate around a neodymium magnet inside the cone. The vibrations emit an audio signal from the amplifier circuit. The amplifier circuit is powered by a nine-volt battery. Punk music was heard.
Thanks again to the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute for supporting the “Hello World” workshops.
Post by Shaun Macpherson, attached to the HelloWorld category, with the physical computing and news tags. Images for this post care of Shaun Macpherson.
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