Urban Cricket
Urban Cricket is a small circuit that imitates the call of a cricket, only being powered by a small solar cell.
The idea comes from Reinhard Gupfinger a Linz based artist I met during the Ars Electronica Festival 2011 in Linz.
This circuit here is a altered version of his original circuit.
A video demonstrating the functionality can be found here: Youtube video
Since it is hard to recreate a circuit not having a pcb an a schematic, people who want to recreate the Urban cricket will find the schematics, a layout to create a pcb and a parts list here.
Schematic:
Schematic description:
The Urban Cricket consists of three simple oscillators, a piezo beeper with built in driver and a solar cell for powering the circuit. The piezo beeper has a built in driver which means that a voltage applied will cause the beeper to generate noise not only a short click. It generates a tone at about 2,000 to 3,000 Hertz witch sounds pretty annoying ("piiiiiiiiiiiii").
The first oscillator makes the beeper beep at a variable frequency of about 20-100 Hertz. The beeper controlled by the first oscillator sounds short 2-3khz bursts.
The second oscillator works much slower at about 1 to 3 Hertz.
soon.