Electronics

If you are interested in any Computer or Electronics Projects,
Please contact the Bowral Men's Shed.

The Computer shed also has resources for electronic projects that members may wish to undertake. These electronic projects are based on low cost micro-controllers and micro-processors such as the Raspberry Pi and Arduino. Help on learning programming for these devices is also on hand.
A great new low cost Electronic device has emerged, similar to the Arduino but with Wifi on board,
It is called esp8266 -12E, very useful for many small electronic projects.
For more details on the Arduino click here
Raspberry Pi help is available here
For the esp8266 help and learning click here or for Community support try this

Project: Home Monitoring

A home monitoring system has been built by one of the members using Arduinos and a small wireless RF device (RFM12B)
The project uses the resources from the openenergymonitor group which provides lots of ideas, support and open source software.
Information from the sensors can be logged using the Emoncms.org site or locally using a Raspberry Pi.
The Internet of Things is also an area of interest.

Project: Yamaha FX-20 Organ

The Men Shed Electronics section has repaired a Yamaha FX-20 electronic organ which was otherwise destined for the Tip. The output amplifier stages have been replaced and the mechanical sliders have been refurbished to restore the instrument to its former glory. This instrument, when first released in 1983, was Yamaha's flagship concert organ. As a skills enhancement project our group is pursuing a longer-term project to modify the instrument (called "MIDIfying") to give it a much greater flexibility of sound reproduction. By connecting the instrument's keyboards and pedalboard to a high-performance PC, vi the MIDI musical instrument protocol and downloading appropriate soundfonts the instrument can be made to simulate the sound of the full sized pipe organ from which the sound fonts have been recorded. In this way, an instrument so "MIDIfied" can sound for all the world like, as an example, the organ in Salisbury Cathedral in England. In principle, the organ can be made to sound like any organ (or any other sound system, eg, a carillion of bells, for which the soundfonts are available. In this way, the sounds of the instruments of the great cathedrals of the world can be made available to any church congregation at a very reasonable cost, and the useful lifetimes of what might be a congregation's highly-prized, beautifully-constructed instrument, (such as the Yamaha FX-20), can be extended virtually indefinitely.

Project: Kriesler Radio Company Radiogram repair

A successful repair of this vintage Stereophonic Radiogram Model 11-98A Circa 1966
A valve amplifier 2X 6MS for the left and right channel producing 3 wats per channel.
Radio section has a 6AN7 and a 6N8 valve.

Project: AWA Radiola repair

A none working AWA Radiola Model 614T from 1947 restored and working again. A super -heterodyne receiver using 5 valves.

Raspberry Pi -3

We are keen to develop projects for the Raspberry Pi but we are not the experts. If you have the skills or are familiar with the Raspberry Pi platform then come and see us for a chat and have a look on what we are doing in the Electronics section.
For more information head to the Raspberry Pi Website.
www.raspberrypi.org