Nostalgia Neon Blinky Tree!!!
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- Опубликовано: 31 дек 2020
- Another retro build project that was popular back in the 1960's because you could build it completely with cheap Cold War surplus parts - and in keeping this tradition I used ONLY stuff that I had in stock in my bins to build this relaxation oscillator tree. I packed this video with all the info you could want, (and more) and hopefully I answer all the questions you'd want to ask... so Enjoy!
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This is such a beautiful and mesmerizing electro-sculpture. It should end up in an art museum! I love the unexpected blinking rate too, don’t change it!
I totally agree! And, CuriousMarc & FranLab, you keep up your cool projects, both of you!
The next videos will be : Marc tries to fix Fran's scultpure with some vintage gear.
But first, let's shoot 15 videos to repair that lab tool ;-)
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I'd watch them all anyway.
I love drawing electronic schematics! Always reminded me of Egyptian hieroglyphs! I hope you have a Great Year Fran! Always warms my heart to watch you work!
Great build, I made one of these is the 1970's with normal and 'green' neons, and with the cool looking stripy mullard capacitors (tropical fish), all running off a stack of out of date 9v batteries clicked together, All in a very tall spaghetti jar, it had much more interconnections and the flashing was totally chaotic, I am very pleased to see you have made one too.....
Note to viewers: Always watch Fran's videos to the bitter end - after the Patreon credits - so you don't miss the occasional fun surprises.
A bit like TechMoan's videos where he very occasionally has his puppets.
Hope she doesn't get a copyright claim, for her do-do-dum-dum jingle-bell performance. :-O
@@davelister796 I think that would be considered a "cover."😋
EEK! I've been missing out! Like on the Hydraulic Press Channel, I used to leave when he crushed the blue playdough guy..
@@davelister796 Jingle Bells (1857) is public domain, so no sweat.
The random and frenetic nature is still somehow relaxing and definitely entertaining. 😎👍🛠️🏁
A festive build, I'm off to make a coffee, pour a Whisky and some chocolate. Ready to watch. A fun build Fran, it came out in a delightful anti-Que way. In the words of the famous Bob Ross: " There are no mistakes, just happy accidents". Loved the end. Stay well, stay safe.
Congrats Fran...that is AWESOME!
"Please don't blow up!" That is my mantra every time I power up a build :)
Made a funky one with just three neon lamps two poles. Built it in a chicken feather flower. Parts and wires all over the place. Used a miltary surplus battery that had a B+ voltage. Sat on a shelf everyone would always look at the sucker. Battery lasted for ten years. Thanks fran for the reminder that funky is fun. Best Regards Jack Hreha.
Fran, a few things about the soldering issues you raised in this video:
- You need more heat transfer and more wattage because of those big heatsink bus bars. You can pick up the classic Weller soldering guns (e.g. the classic D550) for less than $50 in any hardware store or online, and it will make quick work of these heavy solder joints. An electronics soldering station is outclassed by this situation.
- You have minimal thermal contact between heat source and object to be raised to soldering temperature; the rounded iron tip touching the round bus bar at a single small point; this is worse than the normal situation of soldering a component lead to a PCB pad, which the iron and its tip are designed for. Holding the iron's tip at a flatter angle so more of the side of the tip lays parallel-ish to the plane of bus bar will help.
- Moving the iron all around while trying to solder such heavy joints only makes it more difficult to achieve good thermal transfer. Keep the tip in once place and only move it a bit if you see a way to maximize surface contact area.
- To improve thermal transfer, you can try to flood the area between tip and bus bar with a big ball of solder, but this is not an ideal way to do it; should be avoided if the other techniques do the trick.
The biggest issue that strikes me is that she is not making a proper mechanical connection before soldering. Seeing how the legs of the resistors meet each other and the uprights at 90° angle the wires of the components could easily have been one side j-hooked. She did it at 7:32 when soldering the 820k bleeders to the legs of the electrolytics. Why not follow thru?
I used speaker wire to tie the leads to the uprights on my project simular to that. Then I used a micro torch to get things hot enough for the solder to work. That calculator was the same exact type I was given in high school and told I would never amount to anything because I couldn't see math in my head. Back then, calculators in class was considered cheating. No one was allowed one. My how things have changed! My dad used to have boxes of old neon tubes and the large foil type resisters and what not. I loved making little projects back then. I ended up taking a short wave radio class in high school and got my licence. Funny how THAT happened being I was a math dummy.
So the word for the blink rate is ... Franetic?
Yes, Franetic blinking from "relaxation" oscillators.
No, it's 'Fran-tick'.
You can add clicky sound effects to a neon blinky by using a piezo sounder instead of/ as well as the cap
Thanks for the idea, going to have to try that.
@mikeselectricstuff Clickety clicks and flashy flashers ? You wan't to drive us loco ?!!
@@trespire And Bells and Whistles, Too! :-)
Needs like Geiger counter clicks
I was thinking the same. :)
The TI 30 brings back memories
Excellent work Fran. That's a real sculpture you have there.
Wow, that looks amazing. I bet it looks crazy in the dark. If I saw that in a store, I would buy it. Pretty sweet.
Wishing you a Härlig New Year!
old skool point to point electronic circuitry...wonderful!!
Jingle bells as the end was awesome with the tree. 👍
Fran... you rule :) thank you for the content and please keep sharing
When I was an apprentice at Marconi, a guy in the office built something very much like that with neons :-) took me back
Very cool build, really fits the aesthetic of point-to-point circuitry!
An aesthetically pleasing arrangement of parts, full of Fran-style artistic touches. Very cool. The blink rate isn't too fast, considering the pace of the times, and the video isn't too long, considering the thorough explanation. Especially like the look of the bleeders soldered directly around the capacitors. Thanks for this and for all of the hard work making these videos entails. And, of course, Happier New Year.
Awesome Fran, one of your best vids ever, and you are so happy.
Idk maybe it's just me but i think the hodge podge construction and mismatched components gives it a ton of charm.
That is just Coolio! I like it a great deal. Thanks for sharing.
Fran. You are so lovely, and this idea/construction is as beautiful as yourself. I am so amused. I am very familiar to these components, as have used all sorts of them, by building tube-amps.
Also I envy your Texas calculator. I happened to have one myself in the 70-ths, but it was too greedy for batteries, so I bought a Canon F-44 LCD one, that served for all years until 2020. It was so clever buttoned, with an exclusive PI button, and all other seccond function were the inverse of itself. Just what I needed. My current scientific one is incomprehensible stupid, by ridiculous buttoning. It takes me ethernities, to find for example PI as an inverse of A EXP. Others are hidden behind statistics, and other junk, where Excel and such are the first choice.
Nostalgics say: "It was better before", and agree. Analog is funnier than digital. I wish you a healthy life 2021, happiness, and nutritious food. Warm hugs from a Swedish fan.
The relaxation oscillator I built in junior high had two NE-2 bulbs and would up as the eyes of a plastic dinosaur.. i ran it on 14 9 volt batteries wired in series...
This is a cool video!
It looks like a robot "brain" from one of those 1950's sci-fi movies. I like it.
I found your channel 2 years ago during a heath-kit new years build. These are always enjoyable and I hope to see many more in the years ahead. Happy New year and stay safe!
That’s a work of art.
Thanks Fran, and Congratulations on the funding 🎉😄 you are very inspiring
P.S. Great theme tune
Wow, it's a SteamPunk Orac! Super cool.x
I remember neon blinkies. If you add a metric crapload of capacitors between every neon then the flashing will always repeat in order instead of random, but too many capacitors are needed for more than 3 neons. So now it's much easier to clock a 4017 chip with a 555 and connect it to 10 LEDs.
I remember making a “neon blinky” (5 neon bulbs) from an old Radio Shack kit (back when there WAS a Radio Shack - ahem). It used a one or two transistor oscillator and a step-up transformer to create about 120-180 VDC from the secondary with a half-wave rectifier diode. The instructions included two variants you could make with the parts included; either a “random” or “sequential” blinky. I wish I had kept it, and the instructions. 🥺 This one though, looks much more cool; though the solder connections make me cringe 😬. Pre-tinning the leads definitely helps with this point-to-point, “dead bug” style of wiring. Oh well, as long as it works. 😊
Looks sorta like the "brain" of those old sci-fi robots.
Danger!
Etc.
@@Roboprogs IL Series droid from Battlestar Galactica?
@@underserf “The Robot” from Lost in Space. “Danger! …” was one of his recurring lines.
@@underserf oh, those had blinken-light heads, too (BSG robots)
I really love this! More builds! So cool!
I love your Neon Tree it's beautiful
Cool, Fran! Your power supply is a little overkill. Half-wave Dc would work fine so you did not need the filter caps. I've made 2 of those in my life. At age 9, from the Radio Shack kit in the red and clear box that ran from a 9v battery and used an oscillator and transformer to get the voltage it needed. Took it on vacation and left in the back window of the car one afternoon. It twisted in the heat but continued to work. The second, the last day of Junior College sitting bored in the lab. That one was mains powered and hung in my room blinking for about 5 years before the antique NE2 bulbs conked out. I "etched" the circuit board with a dremel, and left a fragment of copper, so on first try, it BANGed!. Replaced the main diode and it worked. Neither were as artful as yours.
Yeay!! I love this circuit - and this build is a work of art!
Watching you drill the holes in the base using tape as a depth guide!
My dad was a toolmaker and that was one of MANY tricks he taught me.
I like those kinds of projects where you have a couple things and think, "What can I make with this?" 🤔🤗
That’s a good quick way of doing things (and I’m glad your dad taught you some tricks and you aspire to make some projects).
If this is the Harbor Freight drill press I’m familiar with, there’s a feature on the left side of the collet - a threaded rod with a nut or two that can be adjusted to stop the depth. It’s really only worth using if you’re doing a LOT of holes.
Never stop being curious or learning!
It's a cool trick. Gotta make sure to wrap the tape in the proper direction though, or it unwinds if it touches the wood. Found that out the hard way. 😁
@@kenmore01 Good point I’ve never really considered: wrapping in the right (or is it left, I mean correct) direction. For those situations, I usually make a “flag” which spins around ridiculously, but is easier to clean off, though it wears out faster than a tightly wound piece of tape.
I built something similar back when I was in High School in the 1960s. You have made the circuit a work of art. As the R/C circuits age it will definitely cause the blink rates to diverge which in this case is a good thing.
High school in the 70s. Learned to be careful around voltage multipliers ;)
This is a cool old skool electronics project.
Thanks Fran. Lots of possibility to personalize the sculptures, stages, shapes, heights, additional verticals could be added with insulating separators to carry signals to other stages.
Hi Fran. First - Happy New Year! Thank you, as always, for an interesting build. It looks fantastic. (Frantastic?😊) And thank you for the outro, post patreon, singing to the lamp(?).
Here's to a healthy, safe, prosperous 2021. So glad to hear you've made the 100% funding, and your subscribers are up again to 149k. What a greatb way to end a horrible year!
Gorgeous! What a masterpiece!
I always look forward to this build every year!
Just did something similar for a New year's Rube Goldberg Junkyard Wars competition. High voltage capacitor, multii-megohm resistor as a bleeder, an n-channel MosFET and a relay. Works a treat!
I love it Fran. I'd like one flashing away in my place 👌
I love it! Please make more videos like this!
Lovely New Year!
At 8:46 so nice to hear you use that term "condenser" for the caps, like most other European languages do routinely, actually... It gives the piece of art the sense of a more mysterious piece of machinery methinks :-)
I have a similar Heathkit capacitor substitution box, it's model IN-22 & labeled "CONDENSER SUBSTITUTION BOX"
That is fucking adorable
it certainly is.
Ah, this brings back memories. In the mid 70's I built a similar thing with 6 lamps mounted in a small closed project box. I called it my "Sweet F*** All" box. Somewhere in time and physical moves it disappeared but now I have the urge to build a new one! Happy New Year
Fran, love your builds, reminds me of so many investigation I did with the parts I had have around my work shop. Just loved this mains project, rc time delays escape allot of the arduino kids. I used to use this so discharge idea with relays using one side to switch what ever, the other to short the ramp charged condenser that relaxed the relay -- sound action attraction. Thank you for the fun
That is absolutely beautiful! Your workership is quite good! Happy new year :3
Beautiful!. Nice job!
this video is such a treat!!
Wishing you a Happy New Year and fun new builds or classic restorations.
I love it, it looks great.
That's really neat Fran. Instead of a HeathKit, it's a FranKit. I love the ending.
Ohhh, takes me back to when I was a little nerdling! I built a neon fireplace with big wax-paper capacitors (spray-painted brown) as the logs, and then made and painted up a cardboard-and-plaster mantel. There were a couple of 45V telephone batteries in the base. Used that for a few years, then the caps started to fail and the batteries started to be hard to come by, and I was headed off to college anyway. The orange of the neaon made for nice flickering flames.
Happy 2021, and good riddance 2020!
I would like to build something like this using multicolored diodes and LEDs for switching up different modes for blink rates and patterns. I really love the hour glass look. You could build a modern vrs retro styling with a separate module for tweaking how it flashes. Very nice ideas and seeing all the components on a tree like structure is so cool.
Thanks, Fran! Great way to start the New Year.
its so beautiful to look at
Love it what a piece of art
That's a super neat project and practically a work of art.
Hi Fran, nice project, I used to make these years ago and have a suggestion. If you want to make it flash more randomly try this. Connect one end of the capacitors to the junction between the resistors and neons, Tie all of the other ends of the capacitors together (that is, don't connect them to ground or to other neons). The neons will then all flash randomly :) I saw this in a very old copy of the 'radio constructor' magazine.
That is pretty cool Fran..
Couple years ago I went to Menards and purchased a bunch of 7' garden spikes and green chicken wire and made an outdoor Christmas tree....bought 3000 LED lights....and presto !
I LOVE IT!! That is so awesome, Fran!
The arrangement of the series resistors is really neat
This is a fun one worth the wait!
Happy New Year!
Nice Job. Happy New Year to ALL, from Karachi, Pakistan.
Loving this tree
And great to hear about the billing
And most of all great to learn how this oscillation works cuz at first I didn't get it at all, how a cap could oscillate a light but now I have both learned this and finally understand neon bulbs.
You're great, and all the best for the new year and many more.
What an interesting build!! Great work, @Fran Blanche!
As we say here in Sweden. Gott nytt år. 😁
Didn't try the single capacitor / multiple parallel neon flicker - I was amazed at how that worked when BigClive did it (helps if the neons are grouped by testing first as it can start with one hogging for quite some time
Happy New Year, Fran! Flashy neon New Year's Tree. Excellent!
Very cool build!
Very cool! Worthy of prominent display on any shelf.
Thanks Fran! Thats beautiful🙂
Thanks Fran .
Pretty cool Fran.
It's lovely. I want one! The only thing i would have done differently is too make a notch in the uprights where the components attach to make those joints a tiny bit cleaner and maybe solder better.
Nice neon Christmas tree Fran!
Happy New Year Fran, and many more. Stay safe there in Philly.
That is so neat.
So amazing you are love the history and the lesson behind how you explain
Very cool :) I enjoyed this :) Take care and I look forward to more videos
Very Cool and a tempting build! Happy New Year, Fran!!!
Happy and good new year Fran!
Great bit of low tech!
I love it!!!
Pretty cool, what a way to leave 2020
Happy New Year!
Awesome tree!
I love building these, Clive first got me into them. The world of Neon logic looks intresting.
This looks awesome Fran. Happy New Year!
What a work of art! It’s beautiful! Thank you for sharing this, Fran! Happy New Year!
It's ALIVE!
This is SUPER cool and with quintessential 'Fran' style. Thanks for all your videos and sharing with us! :D
Awesome retro project, was great fun to watch :)