Built by Mike Walters, 2006

Back to Mystery Circuits Projects

Hear the Blue Boing Song!

 

"Blue Boing" is a little noise maker built in the same spirit as The Groovy Defibrillator and Peanut. It's simple, immediately playable, and annoying. The idea is touch the metal buttons on top of the bubble at the same time, and then rhythmically let go of one at a time. Of course those rules are supposed to be broken, and it can sound like a fun space ship. The guts come from circuits of two identical toy ray guns that have been declocked and routed to the body contacts. Also there's a circuit from a toy light saber declocked and replaced with a photoresistor. The ray guns had blinking LEDs, so I used those and positioned the photoresistor under one of them. The electronics are hidden under a blank shrinky dink, which defuse the lights in interesting ways. The bubble case was from a little alarm clock of some sort, and I painted it blue and red. The white button activates the light saber circuit, and there's a 1/8" output + speaker.

Blue Boing will be demonstrated to kids by a friend of mine along with a CD that has this song