The Please Steal My Idea Thread

[stallik]

I think it would be cool to use something like this LCD "light valve" as part of a bypass indication for a pedal, perhaps hiding and revealing a backlit waterslide decal, perhaps with a cutout opaque decal on top.
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3330?gclid=CjwKCAiA98TxBRBtEiwAVRLqu1-Rf3OI9tHaEXmKw1z8_nbs4wvScgy9EUvip3KS63ZTZb66Pv0FQhoCu3oQAvD_BwE

It is glass, so the idea is not without risk, but since people make pedals with glass tubes sticking up out of them already, why not?

So, I got my little LCD shutter and breadboarded 2x LM317T circuits. I want the shutter to fade and it turns out this all happens between 0 - 1.9v
Unfortunately, the circuits I've got only drop to 1v  so I'm getting my fade but with only a small turn of the pot.
Better way of controlling the voltage 0-2v?

[ElectricDruid]

Could you stick a diode or two from the LCD ground to the true ground? E.g. Bump its ground up by a diode drop or two?

Then you'd need a voltage between 1.3V and 3.2V to control the LCD. That might be easier to manage.

[stallik]

Thanks Tom, elegant suggestion. Unfortunately, not effective on the panel but I did find an interesting effect. Depending on the diode, the shutter operated in slow motion. Not what I want for this project but a useful observation. Will have to get some sleep before I can work out why it's happening

[PRR]

It's probably "zero" current. Use a pot from a 1.9V source. Got 5V? Use 150k fixed and 100k pot series.

[stallik]

Thank you Paul, 0 to 1.89

Vout = Vin x R2 / (R1+R2) been doing homework - one day, this stuff will sink in

[EBK]

A few more ideas:

1) a pedal with a coin slot.  Should probably be a bit crusher or something else retro-video-game-like.  Up to you whether the coin slot is functional.

2)  A pedal in a Rubik's Cube. 

3)  a clean blend pedal that combines a picture of Mr. Clean with the exposed metal skull and red eye of The Terminator.

[duck_arse]

A few more ideas:

1) a pedal with a coin slot.  Should probably be a bit crusher or something else retro-video-game-like.  Up to you whether the coin slot is functional.

....

I have a coin-slot panel thing "pulled" from a moon buggy table machine, ~1984.

[garcho]

^ the way the "subscription model" is taking over software, maybe soon we'll be lucky enough to have subscription guitar pedals. Forgot to put that 25¢ in the slot? There goes your overdrive, should have used automatic deduction!

[EBK]

^ the way the "subscription model" is taking over software, maybe soon we'll be lucky enough to have subscription guitar pedals. Forgot to put that 25¢ in the slot? There goes your overdrive, should have used automatic deduction!

I could see it being useful for a band wanting to rein in an overly showy guitarist.  "When your quarter runs out, your solo is over!"

[ElectricDruid]

^ the way the "subscription model" is taking over software, maybe soon we'll be lucky enough to have subscription guitar pedals. Forgot to put that 25¢ in the slot? There goes your overdrive, should have used automatic deduction!

I could see it being useful for a band wanting to rein in an overly showy guitarist.  "When your quarter runs out, your solo is over!"

You just *know* they'd turn up with a bag full of quarters like someone making an international call from a payphone used to do! Ker-ching! Ker-ching! Ker-ching! Ker-ching!

[bluebunny]

I could see it being useful for a band wanting to rein in an overly showy guitarist.  "When your quarter runs out, your solo is over!"

Brings to mind this anecdote. 

[Fancy Lime]

Just had the following brain fart:

a delay with envelope controlled delay time, such that loud is fast an quiet is slow. The envelope follower would need to be set with a fast attack and very slow decay, so that a single short chord would be followed by several echos with the delay getting longer with each echo. Might be interestingly spacey. Has anyone tried that? Does it exist commercially? I'm cut off from my breadboard for the foreseeable future but if someone is bored, I'd really like to know how that sounds. Would probably benefit from a bit of distortion and high cut on the echos for a degraded tape echo simulation. Probably best implemented with a PT2399.

Cheers,
Andy

[EBK]

You would get some weird pitch shifting as you change the delay (might be quite unmusical), unless you are planning to use a bunch of delay chips set to different delay times and cycle between them.

[Fancy Lime]

You would get some weird pitch shifting as you change the delay (might be quite unmusical), unless you are planning to use a bunch of delay chips set to different delay times and cycle between them.

Yes, the pitch would droop progressively in the echos and they will not be very harmonious with the original signal. That's what I meant by "interestingly spacey". Letting the echo output and feedback run through a band pass should help keeping it from producing too much sonic mayhem.

Andy

[bluebunny]

Envelope-controlled <insert effect>.  Sounds like the kind of thing Rich would (may have) come up with.

[anotherjim]

Would work better if the times change in a stepped fashion to get the delays without a constant pitch sweep. Not necessarily from the envelope, but an attack triggered staircase LFO that steps each complete delay cycle. That means counting the VCO clocks of your PT2399 for something like 44000 or whatever it is and increasing the delay each count. The works might be best done in a small MCU with a 74HC counter reducing the PT2399 clock out rate to a suitable speed for the MCU. The Attack trigger could simply be the input signal getting high enough for a logic threshold into an MCU pin.

[garcho]

Has anyone tried that?

ever check out the Clari(not)? Might be a good place to start.

https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=74294.0

[iainpunk]

Just had the following brain fart:

a delay with envelope controlled delay time, such that loud is fast an quiet is slow. The envelope follower would need to be set with a fast attack and very slow decay, so that a single short chord would be followed by several echos with the delay getting longer with each echo. Might be interestingly spacey. Has anyone tried that? Does it exist commercially? I'm cut off from my breadboard for the foreseeable future but if someone is bored, I'd really like to know how that sounds. Would probably benefit from a bit of distortion and high cut on the echos for a degraded tape echo simulation. Probably best implemented with a PT2399.

Cheers,
Andy

doesn't this pitch shift dynamically? and wouldn't it become some sort of wall of differently pitched notes randomly flying through each other while being pitch shifter differently for every repeat, essentially creating a harsh noise wall?

[Fancy Lime]

Just had the following brain fart:

a delay with envelope controlled delay time, such that loud is fast an quiet is slow. The envelope follower would need to be set with a fast attack and very slow decay, so that a single short chord would be followed by several echos with the delay getting longer with each echo. Might be interestingly spacey. Has anyone tried that? Does it exist commercially? I'm cut off from my breadboard for the foreseeable future but if someone is bored, I'd really like to know how that sounds. Would probably benefit from a bit of distortion and high cut on the echos for a degraded tape echo simulation. Probably best implemented with a PT2399.

Cheers,
Andy

doesn't this pitch shift dynamically? and wouldn't it become some sort of wall of differently pitched notes randomly flying through each other while being pitch shifter differently for every repeat, essentially creating a harsh noise wall?

It would not be a very universal effect that would sound "good" with many different input signals, for sure. Finger picking country licks would certainly become a dissonant ruckus. Bot for certain slow material like short single notes with lots of space between, I could see that sounding interesting. Still dissonant but interesting. No?

Has anyone tried that?

ever check out the Clari(not)? Might be a good place to start.

https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=74294.0

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. That is indeed not too far off what I was thinking, conceptually.

Cheers,
Andy

[EBK]

I may be willing to make a clean SVG of this if anyone wants to use it as a pedal graphic.  I found it on an oxygen absorber packet in a bag of jerky.  Not fully sure why I find it so amusing (maybe because it makes me think of PacMan on a diet), but I do.