lookmumnocomputer

Accelerometer amplification circuit!

Added 2018-05-24 13:36:24 +0000 UTC

so this is what i settled on, a little drawing of what was required to make the accelerometer useful with synthesisers.

Basically the thinking behind the above circuit is :-

The accelerometers output between about half a volt, however that half a volt is between 1volt and 1.5 volts, so the axis facing down is 1 volt and when you move it up to the other extreme it becomes 1.5 volts.

This is problematic for two reasons!

- 1 it is hardly anything! for a 1v/oct oscillator (1v is 1 octave) it will only have a range of half an octave! so we need to change that! the above basically amplifies that 1.5 volts to anywhere up to about 7volts! which is 7 octaves! if you really wanted.

- 2 it starts at 1 volt. so it needs to be offset! i figured adding a manual adjustment for this would be useful! this helps to bring its lowest output amount to 0 volts or even lower!

Think of the above circuit as merely a signal mixer. its mixing the signal from the lightsaber, with a solid voltage inbetween + and - 12 volts, which offsets the whole shabang! You could easily turn this into an amplifying mixer, by copying the input and just repeating it a few times! into the first opamp. if that makes sense?

The above is just 1 channel, i built 4, 2 axis per light saber. If your interested in a stripboard layout of the above to wire up to accelerometers i can pop that together!

I also found it was quite useful to add some portamento to the output to smooth it out! thats another circuit! simple like the above if your interested!