I found my original idea online here and planned to follow it exactly, resulting in a simple crayon lamp that I could plug into my computer or sound system to watch the light change along with sound.
2. What I actually built.
I finished creating the circuit in the above mentioned link from scratch, but still had some time left. Something that was bothering me about the project was that you could see the light changing with music, but you couldn't actually hear the music. I remedied that by attaching some small, cheap speakers to the project so that the music could be heard as well as seen in the crayon. I also ended up building a giant crayon box as housing for it, which was not originally planned, but I'm really happy with how it came out.
3. What I learned from the process.
I'd only ever worked with very simple circuits before (due to a class called "Low-Tech Computing" that I took last semester) so I had a general idea of how everything would fit together, but had a lot to learn in order to fully understand this particular circuit. After doing a lot of research and asking a lot of questions, I finally felt comfortable enough to start building the circuit (which worked on the first wiring). After that, I felt confident enough that I was able to add other extra elements to the circuit, such as an on/off switch and speakers. On the most basic level, I learned how to solder and use a lot of neat machines in Lemelson.
4. What I will do differently next time.
I'm planning on doing a very different project for the next section of the semester, but I think it'll end up relating to the audio crayon project simply because it deals with audio signals.
I'd like to build a ribbon microphone from scratch, which is much more ambitious than my last project, but I technically finished early so I'm hoping that trying to do this will be more accurate as far as the time period for the assignment goes. I have a few sound engineering books with sections on microphones that I've been reading to try to further understand the construction and science behind how ribbon microphones work, and still don't fully understand it, but am hoping to talk to someone on campus who may know more about it within the week. There's not much about them online except for one company who sells DIY Ribbon Microphone Kits, and a few other sites that aren't as much help as I'd like them to be. But the search continues and I'm determined to follow through with this project in one way or another.
