Quick little post here. Friend Felix sent me a link to a guy called Moldover who built an optical theremin into the jewel case of his latest CD so I went looking for optical theremins this morning. Well, I didn’t want to be so obvious so I went looking for light theremins.
First one I got I fell in love with and I’m thinking about doing something called the paper bag circuits. Long story but simply put I had a bunch of the kind of paper bags you get pies in, new and un-used, and when findin’ small circuits that didn’t require an A4 I picked up these paper bags. The first one was a speaker as a microphone circuit and this one is an optical theremin. Basically they are small and simple circuits where the schematic, parts list, and the working out of the etching for the PCB can all be done on one side of a paper bag. Whats come to mind is that I could build these little knee jerk reactions to over-complexity and mount them in eclipse mints cans and berocca tubes, have a number series thing going on, and sell them as artworks on Trade Me.
Complete, of course, with the original hand drawn paper bag.
The simplest little light theremin.
Oh wow, that’s insanely simple! Just how I like it – sometimes.
What’s the speaker providing? Just a resistance or something else? Seems like you should be able to swap it for a resistor.
Also, this could be a way to re-birth your two- handed dual-theramin concept without the “tuning” problems…
It may in fact work with just a resistance or even a speaker with the diaphram removed because a coil also has inductance and capacitance which tend to act with the resistance so…well, it’s so simple that it worth experimenting with. The sound may be fairly droll but then again it could be quite nice. But… it couldn’t really get much simpler than that!