I recently came across a See-n-say Story Maker (I'll get a pic up soon). Was bending it with the old spitty-finger method and found a crash point. What I think was happening was a very brief short circuit between the opposite sides of the clock crystal which threw the logic circuits off and made the thing crash in cool ways ("yickity-yackity-gribble-gromp HISSSS!" and 't...h..e..c.ow ... mmmmmooooooooOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! (pitch and volume rising eerily gradually)" being some of the better examples) . I'm wondering if anybody had any ideas about how to make a one-shot, extremely brief connection between the two leads. Also, I'm wondering if my spit was conducting the electricity differently than wires would? What is the capacitance of human saliva, anyway?
I've been circuit bending for a while, but i've never gotten into more theory based, solid state electronics. I've been more comfortable in the camp of "drill a ton of holes in the front, wire up a ghetto bolt patch bay, go party". My idea for getting crash control is pretty crude, and I'm wondering if it would even be effective. But here it is:
I'm thinking I could hack open a toy camera for a big electrolytic cap ( I know it's dangerous), which I would connect to the toy's power supply through a N.O. pushbutton. When the button is depressed, the charge would build in the capacitor, until it discharged through a relay which would briefly connect the leads of the crystal (perhaps thru a small-value resistor or cap to prevent full voltage contact?) When the cap discharged, the relay would switch back to open, and the toy would resume at normal clock speed and abnormal operation. The discharge from the cap to the relay would then go through a high-value resistor to the toy's ground. Would this voltage across the common ground cause problems for the circuit? I'm also thinking the high-voltage discharge unshielded from the audio circuit could be noisy (just amplify the whine of the charging cap and then POP! when it discharged ?), although perhaps it would be cool, too (?).
If anybody has any ideas about how to make this more elegant (and less dangerous), i'd appreciate it. Thanks!