SpringTime4 was inspired by something my former student Maks showed me, which he called a Victorian Amp. I couldn’t find any good info on it (Oops! I should have looked up Victorian Synthesizer instead) but since I still had a large speaker left over from the Sonic Titan build I decided to build something similar.
Instead of paper clips (or solder) I used two stretched out springs to complete the circuit. This worked well, because as the speaker coil energized the top spring would bounce up and break the circuit, then fall and complete the circuit again.
To make things interactive, I added a button that could be pressed to start the device. This allowed people to interact with it, and also added another piece to complete the circuit. The whole thing is powered by a 9 volt battery, which I also left exposed, so people so see what provided power. I didn’t want a full enclosure that would appear to hide things.
I used alligator clips to connect things, which allowed for disconnecting the button unit from the speaker, which makes it a little easier to transport.
I took SpringTime4 to the Madison Mini Maker Faire and I really enjoyed watching people interact with it and then asking them if they knew what was happening. Some people sort of figured it out, and for those that didn’t quite get it, I explained how it worked. I think as a maker you tend to forget that even a really simple device can be difficult for people to understand, depending on their familiarity with things like electrical circuits.
One of my favorite parts was when an 8 year old kid tried to makersplain to me how I should improve it. It’s nice to know that even kids think they’ve got great ideas about how someone else should do things. ;)
The one improvement I’ll like to see is making it louder (if possible). It’s typical that I test things in my shop and they are fine but when I bring them into public and the environment is noisy, it’s hard to hear things. Since the visual component of seeing the springs move around is a large element of the piece, if I can’t make it louder it’s probably not a huge deal.
Here’s a short video showing SpringTime4 in action. Enjoy!