Diy

cool portuguese tunes played by foreign people. our gaita is getting popular. today we’re doing a small diy segment again

me and T first prototyped a solar pouch almost a year ago. we designed it because one of the issues with solar chargers by themselves is that you have to carry them along side your electronics. putting them in bags is common, but expensive, so we designed a pouch with a panel and a charging cable.

since the first test, i designed an improved version of it using a 6V panel that is a single piece, versus the other diy segment i did previously that used 1V cells. with this 6V panel and a diode, i made a trickle charger for the cellphone. basically, if there’s enough sun, it charges the phone. if you put the phone inside the pouch, it charges it and also it protects it. it’s handy and feels more organic than having a separate unit. the jack for the charger on this model is on the side, which makes it kind of ridiculous to use. i guess i could mod the phone, but instead i’m willing to bend the jack a little.

feel free to copy this design, it is under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. if you want to sell them let me know and we’ll work something out. here’s how to do it:

materials

• 6V solar panel with less than 3W (in this case, 2W) so it doesn’t burn your electronics equipment (see what the power of your cellphone charger is and choose a panel below that power)
• diode (any diode works, a shottky would be better, but i had a lot of regular ones). one advantage is that on a 6V polarization the diode should be at about 0.7V, which in turn makes the whole thing output 5.3 ~ 5V for the cellphone
• a jack for your phone. i cut mine from an old charger. make sure it works (this was the second one i used, the first one didn’t work)
• fabric, velcro and glue for the pouch. be creative. bland black pouches are so passé
• soldering iron, multimeter, solder and whatever you enjoy to have around when you do electronics

instructions

• sew a pouch that has about the same size as the panel. make sure it swells enough to stick to the panel even when the electronics are in it
• solder the diode to the panel (to the plus terminal, make sure it is polarized correctly so that current flows only to the cellphone)
• test the panel in direct sun. if it doesn’t work now, start again
• solder the other end of the diode to the cable and jack (check the plus and minus with a multimeter)
• test the panel on the jack terminals. if it doesn’t work now, start again
• glue the pouch to the panel using whatever glue you may have. put something inside the pouch so that you don’t glue the pouch to itself
• test it under the sun and happy charging!

results

it works! that’s it. this is an easy (and less extreme) way of doing a self-powered device. be creative! stick panels on everything!

demo video. i wasn’t drunk, i was filming with one hand, so i couldn’t plug the jack. the main thing is there: it charged!

i found this panel on some online store. just look for 6V panels and you’ll find some. these weren’t that cheap but they are sturdy and give enough juice to charge the cellphone in about 3 hours. also, on a lithium battery, you don’t want to charge all the time. but it’s definitely handy to have around. thanks for reading!

some shuttle pipes, the drones use the same principle as the musette de cour.

another diy segment. i followed this guide to do it. laptop chargers (all chargers actually) are usually done in a particular way by the makers so they guarantee that only they sell their stuff. for example, my (now over 8 years old) laptop had an apple jack charger. this jack is not standard, so it means i had to get it from the maker (or some chinese knockoff like i did). so i changed it so it’d have a standard jack to charge it. works perfectly, and now lets me use any charger that matches the voltage and current rating. here are the results, pics by T.

right now i’m designing solar mods for the rest of my electronics. what i applied here works for every charger. for example, a regular cell phone charger can be modded into a usb plug so you can charge your cell using your laptop. another fun thing would be doing a solar charger on the laptop cover, but for that, i’ll need some more sketching and electronics recycling. a key thing is epoxy, so i could make a proper casing for the cells. by now my front bike light is solar, and i’m planning on adding some more panels to do the back light too. the plans are to have all my electronics be entirely solar powered.

it’s alive! the foonki chanter on my transmontana bagpipe. i tuned the drone to this one. sounds really good! check it out! still working on the drones though. i made custom wood pieces to connect all the parts, but it’s hard to make a metal-wood joint completely airtight. every slight leak leads to a lot of air going away and a weird “wind” background noise. anyway, now i can carry this one whenever i can’t play too loud, and can still practice. i used wax for the airtight part. worked ok for the chanter, but for the drones the pressure is very high, so there’s still no result. the plans are at least unison and fifth. maybe soon. i also want to do another chanter in another pitch. this one is in G, i want to practice in Bb minor and C major, so i need at least these two.

another diy segment. this time, i completed my membrane pipes using the foonki chanter design by Linsey Pollak (check out his stuff, it’s amazing).

i used a rubber glove as the bag, and made an equal-length drone using a very thin pipe. to connect all the pipes to the glove i made a tiny hole in each finger and used tiny garden hoses to channel the air. the final version had one chanter and 3 drones, octave above, fifth and unison.

though i managed to make all 4 membrane reeds, it’s hard to balance the pressure for all the pipes, since the 3 drones are each less than 1/3 of the diameter. as you can see in the video, it was also hard to keep the chanter from doing the above octave. so the result was an out of tune mess, so this video was the best moment, when the single drone was properly tuned

so i sacked this design and will change to single reeds. this change will allow an easier (and more visually appealing) shape. with these membrane reeds i have to make angles versus making just one base to keep the chanter in.

so far, the only material was metal pipes, garden hose, thread, rubber gloves and plastic bags, with a total cost of maybe 15€. so with enough work, proper pipes can be built for a ridiculously low amount of money. since i used proper measurements this time, it actually sounds good. choosing a cylindrical bore was key, since it makes tuning much easier and the hole position is always the same, plus the volume is slightly lower.

i have a rubber bagpipe bag, and made full pipes with this, but since i had no valve for the mouthpiece, it’s very hard to play. so now i’m doing one with a valve, 3 drones and 1 chanter, but it’s hard to tell when i’ll be done. i’m not very good at making single reeds, so this will be the main challenge.

another diy segment. i went on, after the first reed construction, to tune a proper pipe. unfortunately, i relied on nothing more than instinct and made the holes randomly. i tuned the length so it would sound as the intended note (Bb in my case), and then made a hole in the middle to do the 5th. actually, it was wrong, but i got it working. check out the video to see it.

i designed it so there would be no holes open on the lowest note, which means you can stop all sound by touching your knee. this is like the uillean pipes, whose last hole is the actual tube opening. i’m planning on building a proper Bb minor like this, so i can play at home.

probably the most fun part is that this kind of pipe sounds like and 8bit sound card, so playing tetris tunes is much more fun. i’m working on the design, and soon i’ll post it with a working bag (something like a glovepipe).