2016 Special Festival Pass

How to turn you 2016 Fak’ugesi Festival Pass into a mini music making keyboard synth!

In 2016 we have created a very special festival pass that is actually a working circuit board that then turns into a little bit of music making magic! We will be doing festival pass builds at the festival on the following days. We will have all the components and a group of Wits Engineering students to show you how it is done!

Friday 26th August, Tshimologong Precinct (main festival venue), pop in from 10:00 to 16:00.
Saturday 27th August, Market Hack in Braamfontein, pop in from 10:00 to 16:00.
Sunday 28th August, Soweto Pop Up, pop in from 11:00 to 15:00.

If you can’t make the build days you can get the components and follow the following tutorial made by Tom van Bon from Binary Space!

Fakugesi 2016 Festival Pass Build Guide:

Basic Tools Required:

Soldering Iron
Small Side Cutters
All the right components.
Once you finish building the board, you will have to program it and you will need this programming guide.
- And on of these two code files built by Tom van Bon and Daniel from Bushveld Labs.

Step-by-Step Build Guide:

We will be building the festival pass from the bottom up. This means that the lower profile parts will be soldered first.

Start by taking your 10k resistors. They are marked with the colour code: Brown, black, orange, gold.

Start by inserting them into the board as at the buttons and the programming header as indicated on the photo. Resistors can go in any way (ie. They are not polarized).

Once you have inserted all the resistors, turn over the board and solder them on the back.

After soldering the resistors, use a side cutter and cut the leads that are sticking out.

Congratulations, you have now successfully soldered on your first parts!

Next up is the 1K resistors, they are marked as brown, black, red and gold.

Insert them into the remaining resistor spots (4 of them).

Follow the same method as before, insert, solder and snip of the leads.

Next components are the buttons. Insert them, turn board around and solder. They don’t have long leads that require any cutting. It doesn’t matter which way around they go in.

Next component are the ceramic capacitors. You should have 1 marked with 104 (a 100nF capacitor) and 2 marked with ‘22’ (two 22pF Capacitors).

The two 22pf capacitors go together and the 100nF capacitor goes on the side of the board next to the single button.

You can snip the leads shorted and it doesn’t matter which way around they go in.

Next component is the red LED. This one could be tricky since you need to put it in the right way around. You’ll notice there is a shorter and a longer lead.

You want to insert it so that the shorted lead is closer to the AFROTECHRIOT logo

You will notice the LED has a flat side on the same side as the shorted lead.

Your next component is the 16Mhz Crystal that goes in between your 2 22pF capacitors you soldered earlier.

Same as before, insert, turn board over, solder and snip leads. The orientation of the crystal doesn’t matter.

Next up is the ic socket that will hold the processor of our board.

You will notice a notch on the one side of the socket which is also indicated on the board. Insert correctly and solder in place.

Next up is the transistor and the electrolytic capacitor.

Orientation is important for both these components so insert the transistor (it has 3 legs) component as per the picture (silkscreen) on the board.

Insert the capacitor so that the longer lead is next to the AFROTECHRIOT logo.

Next up is our pin header which will be used to program the microcontroller on the board (basically the brain of our project).

Next up is the audio socket for your headphones or external speakers.

This component only goes in one way, but be careful not to force it as the leads as fragile. Insert and solder it up.

Next up are our potentiometers. You can solder in any amount as required up to 5.

On the picture we show the first 3 soldered onto the pcb.

And finally we insert the microchip into the pcb. Be sure to align the notch on the ic with the notch on the socket. (ie. It should be pointing towards the programming header).