Sunday, January 17, 2016

Contribute


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By Gabriel Staples
Written: 16 Jan 2016
Last Updated: 18 Jan 2016

Related Pages:

-Are you benefitting? Consider giving back.
-Is my website, code, information, etc, valuable? Consider contributing.

Hi, occasionally I get emails from people asking how they can contribute. Tools, equipment, & time cost money. Your contributions help me pay for more projects, buy better tools, get more equipment, have a higher quality of life, better provide for my family, and ultimately produce better content, to benefit you, more often. So, today I am setting up some mechanisms.

Before I continue, though, I thank you for your support!

Background:

I do my best to give you useful information, knowledge, understanding, and help on a variety of Radio Control, Arduino, and electronics topics. I strive to write outstanding articles, at a high quality, that are thorough, clear and accurate.

By supporting me, you improve the quantity and quality of my content, while saving yourself valuable time and learning interesting things along the way. I try to share useful information and project knowledge that might otherwise take you many hours to figure out on your own (it certainly took me many hours). I also frequently share and post code samples, and sometimes even full libraries. I save you time, while enhancing your life. Your contributions help me do this. Thank you!

How to financially contribute:
  • Paypal: 
    • 1) Choose an amount from the drop-down menu, then press "Add to Cart." You may then modify the *quantity* to get variable amounts. Ex: add $10, then change quantity to 3 and click "update", to pay $30.

      • Amount
    • 2) Or, click this button, then manually type in an amount on the next page, and click "update" before checking out.
  • Gumroad:
  • Patreon
    • Become a patron. Patreon allows you to pay a fixed amount for each new, significant website article or YouTube video I produce, optionally up to a maximum, fixed amount per month that you specify! This way, you only give me something if I give you something. It allows me to get a more steady income so I can improve both the quality and quantity of the content I produce: https://www.patreon.com/eRCaGuy 
  • Bitcoin payments (coming later)
  • Flattr (coming later)

END

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Saturday, January 16, 2016

One of my current projects: Arduino police siren w/simple, custom transistor amplifier/speaker driver circuit


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By Gabriel Staples Written: 16 Jan 2016
Last Updated: 2 Oct. 2017
History (newest on top):
2 Oct. 2017 - link to source code added
16 Jan 2016 - first written

A Few Other Articles:
So, a few days ago I got a car horn *and* a car audio speaker to play a siren sound!

In these two videos, I do a quick desktop demo of playing a siren sound through first a "fixed frequency" car horn, and then through a standard car audio speaker, rated at 120W peak, 60W RMS, and 4 Ohms. Using an Arduino, a relatively simple, custom transistor-based amplifier circuit, and the Arduino core tone() function in my code, I drive the horn and speaker to play a siren sound by sinusoidally varying the driving frequency.  I also show the signal to the devices on an oscilloscope, and briefly discuss and hook up a Schottky diode in a "snubber diode" configuration to knock down the inductance-induced voltage spikes created each time the square wave has a falling edge.

First, watch the "fixed frequency" type car horn play a varying-frequency siren sound:



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