Circuitbenders Forum

Circuitbenders Forum => Circuitbending discussion => Toys => Topic started by: electoyd on January 31, 2011, 07:25:09 PM

Title: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: electoyd on January 31, 2011, 07:25:09 PM

just wondering what unusual 'artifacts' people have disturbed on their circuit bending journeys, heres a pic of a strange couple of ghouls that i cracked open, 2 very unusual geordie accented  bingo callers, i bunged a pitch up and a pitch way down (demonic bingo calling, what the fuck!!) and a line out and speaker off switch.  Pretty basic but they kinda made me laugh, thats what i used to love about circuit bending was the unknown of wondering what the hell i was gonna come home with next!

Title: Re: unusual bent toys
Post by: Dylan on January 31, 2011, 09:52:08 PM

I bent an old Elvis phone. Had this wild pitch/glitch bend. It was one of my early bend that died really quickly though.

Title: Re: unusual bent toys
Post by: electoyd on February 01, 2011, 04:26:17 PM

my bingo callers are still goin strong  ;D is that a good thing, i dont know...........

Title: Re: unusual bent toys
Post by: electoyd on February 03, 2011, 09:42:31 PM

heres a pic of parrobot as well its kinda difficult to make out on the other photo. 

Title: Re: unusual bent toys
Post by: Circuitbenders on February 04, 2011, 12:09:45 AM

At the risk of showing my age, it looks like something from Starfleet or TerraHawks.  ;)

Title: Re: unusual bent toys
Post by: electoyd on February 04, 2011, 12:48:39 PM

yeah maybe zelda from terrahawks pet!  I think most of us are in that age bracket so dont worry Paul .  Parrobot is abit of a dude and he can sound pretty damn grungy will try and bung a sound sample up, he's just hard to control like any good parrot.  I used to seek out the most bizarre toys i could find and have got a rather odd collection, alot are still unbent.  Probably not really much use for much to do with music making, but my circuit bent lives sets were quite visual as well and they used to give people a laugh.  Paul you must have seen/opened some strange electronic items in your time?  nobody ever asked you to mod a geordie bingo caller before.............

Title: Re: unusual bent toys
Post by: Circuitbenders on February 04, 2011, 02:23:06 PM

These were a winner. I think i did 4 or 5 for the same guy. Apparently he used to set them all up on a perch onstage and have some kind of satanic dawn chorus going on.

Title: Re: unusual bent toys
Post by: electoyd on February 06, 2011, 07:22:43 PM

they are classic!, maybe they could be teamed up with parrobot for an devilish audio frenzy!  Would like to see some more pics from people on this subject, much is written about the mainstream stuff but not the really whacky stuff.  I'm gonna put some things up when i get the chance.

Title: Re: unusual bent toys
Post by: electoyd on February 28, 2011, 09:02:31 PM

okay i've gathered up a selection of my artifacts (i.e electronic rubbish) and took a pic this will probably give folk an idea of what kind of hoarder i am.  When i came back from work today this cardboard box with all this stuff in it was right where i stand in my workroom, woman doing spring clean goddammit! but it gave me a chance to take a photo.  This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my collection, this is mainly the one touch sound things off books and the likes.  There is a really crazy one with 10 dogs on it all wearing different hats!  I used to rehouse these things and dreamt off making a huge consol with all these circuits in and loads off buttons to push, but laziness got in the way.

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: Simon Vactrol on March 02, 2011, 06:17:07 PM

very interesting toys...

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: electoyd on March 03, 2011, 11:44:41 AM

i think the long black button things at the front of the photo are the best, they have about half hour recordings of Stan Lee (*creator of Spider Man) answering various questions on Spider Man.  This is split into about 20 questions (which you can flick through using a push button), they came with books, you read the questions out of the book and listen to the answers.  Think i will post a photo of the push button thing with the dogs with hats it is quite comical.

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: electoyd on March 03, 2011, 09:58:40 PM

here is the dogs with hats, cant even remeber what it was attached to something ridiculous, the black thing is the one with stan lee recorded on it.  The other photo is circuit bent Zoltar the fortune teller who gives out crazy predictions.

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: Simon Vactrol on March 05, 2011, 04:53:56 PM

hhh!!! Zoltar!! scary!!!

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: Bogus Noise on March 11, 2011, 03:28:59 AM

Not quite the same as the other things in this thread, but I have a fibre optic lamp with a gear mechanism inside that clunks a little bit. It wasn't horrendously loud, but enough to get annoying while writing tunes. So last year I opened it up, soldered a toggle switch on the motor's + wire, and presto, made it disableable!  ;D

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: electoyd on March 11, 2011, 11:33:32 AM

so did the lamp make noises or was it just for circuit bent decor?  Always good to be able to disable any annoying clunking sounds.  I always like the animated toys, like zoltar and parrobot but yeah they do clunk abit when the animated bits move, i never thought about disabling the motors though.  I quite like their spastic movement when you crank the pitch up.

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: Bogus Noise on March 14, 2011, 03:43:34 PM

It's purely decor - no speakers inside, it's just the mechanics that make the noise! I got it from a car boot a few years before I started circuit bending. The noise had always been mildly annoying, but after a while managed to put 2 and 2 together to solve the problem. :)

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: Bogus Noise on March 14, 2011, 04:01:30 PM

Actually, on a similar note to you mentioning disabling the motor on more conventional bending subjects, if you use a voltage divider pitch control the LEDs on some toys play with the pitch as they turn on and off, so I've taken to putting a disable switch on for those as well. But I also agree, the spastic movements can be great, and very complimentary to the sounds :)

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: electoyd on March 17, 2011, 07:24:02 PM

dragged this outa da archives, dunno if you guys have seen one of these by texas instruments, a computer fun.  It has rather cool little pictures of robots on it.   I should really stick batteries in it and listen to it, never actually got round to fuckin it up.

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: Circuitbenders on March 17, 2011, 09:27:24 PM

way ahead of you  ;)
www.circuitbenders.co.uk/demos/computerfun.mp3 (http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/demos/computerfun.mp3)

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: electoyd on March 21, 2011, 03:06:32 PM

thats not surprising Paul, you do run circuitbenders uk after all  ;D good to see it's bendable, as i noticed it's the super speech synth thing same as the super speak and spell which i found pretty uncooperative apart from producing distortion or a stream of garble.  Was the computer fun a cooperative patient on the modifiying table?

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: Circuitbenders on March 21, 2011, 05:20:12 PM

Its an odd one. The first one i had was years ago, it was extremely bendable and it produced that demo. The second one i had looked more or less identical but none one the notes i had made from the first one seemed to work on it. I think i might have given that one away.

I think i've got another one in a cupboard somewhere, but unless i get extremely bored one day thats probably where its going to stay, unless anyone wants it................

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: Simon Vactrol on March 21, 2011, 11:46:58 PM

i love it!!!  ;D :D ::)     

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: electoyd on March 22, 2011, 07:12:58 PM

just listend to the comp fun demo-very good wanna open that up now!...................

Title: Re: unusual bent toys or circuit bending targets
Post by: Outaspaceman on May 13, 2019, 12:10:38 AM

First post by me!!!
I've just cracked Brian the Robot of the Confused Dot Com site..
On first inspection there seems to be provision on the board for a pitch resistor, but it's bridged...
Shouldn't be to much of a hurdle..!
I hope to fit a pitch LDR, output jack, power starve, diode distortion, and an LFO..
Not sure what the LFO's going to do, but I'll have fun finding out... ;D