Casper Electronics is offering a new kit called the Drone Lab, I pre-ordered one and just finished putting it together this afternoon and I am pretty happy with it. A few thoughts on the offering, first off I am really impressed at what Mr. Edwards of Casper Electronics has been able to feel out after playing around with circuit bending for so long and I am really impressed at the quality of the design being that I don’t think he has any formal training, read this as “designing electronic circuits does mean electrical engineering degree” and that is really comforting. I really liked the feet that are included, they are little round rubber things and they work out nice as stand offs. The design documentation minus the little mistake that was found right away were excellent, I really enjoyed the image nature of it as it leads to much less hunting for the screen printed numbers.
As far as the sonic actuality of the drone lab there is a surprising amount to explore here 4 tunable/Oscillators , a mixer, distortion stage, Low Pass Filter Stage, Band Pass Filter, and a Tremolo bank, as well as a place to input audio. One of the most interesting parts for me is getting the Tremolo bank up and running (556 timers) and using it along with some subtle knob manipulation, and this is was is included in the video below.
Total Build Time About 4 hours, not counting having to run to Radio Shack to pick up some more solder, As this is a Casper design Mods and Upgrades are allready in the works!