Welcome
to the SPARKTRON
Web Page!
The
Art of Electronics
and Engineering
I
am Steven --
KA9VNW
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Updated 03Oct24
Added
28-124 "Electronic Heads/Tails Game" Kit
Added some gallery pictures too
Check
out the P-Box page!
Thanks
to all of you dedicated P-Box Kit fans out there!
(I
now have some of the hi-res copies up on the site!)
Thanks
to all of you folks who take the time to
send the hard copies to me via snail mail!
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This page shows a few of my starting points in web surfing. As
you can
probably guess, I am very much into things technical and electronic.
I am
particularly interested in things to do with ham radio - especially AM
medium
and long wave, VLF, and whistlers - electronics using tubes, music
synthesizers,
and such. I am also a big Commodore 64 fan and love to keep
the oldies
but goodies alive and well via emulation and other tricks.
What I love most about things technical is that I can use electronics
to create
and add to things artistic. I find an open breadboard with
blinking LEDs
or tubes aglow to be in and of itself a work of art. But to
those who
cannot see this, I am equally comfortable designing neat things and
effects
into "conventional" avant-garde art. I have designed sensors,
sounds, and displays for pinball games, pachinko games, Christmas
displays,
Halloween novelties, centerpieces, and other such things. I
have designed
light shows to be incorporated into museum piece displays. I
have even
provided design concepts for lighting wax sculptures! If you
are an
artist wanting to find ways to incorporate sound, light, and sensors
electronics into your masterpiece, I could be the person you are
looking for to
help make it a reality for you!
Check
back from time to time to see what's new. Please feel
free to link my
page
to yours.
If you have any comments or suggestions for this page, please send me
an e-mail
. I will update this
page from time to time as I discover neat things to put here and when I
learn
new HTML tricks. Enjoy!
S...
V..._
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Special Features ~
I am a
retired electronics designer - I love to create products
involving electronics as all or part of their features. I
especially love
to design things that mix and match many different technologies -
analog,
digital, audio, music, etc. I am also an inventor.
My Inventions: Here are some of my inventions for which I
have won patent
recognition.
-- Patent # 5529294 - LED
Lighted Stand Up Target for
Pinball Games
-- European Patent # EP0722754A1
- LED Lighted Stand
Up Target for Pinball Games
-- Patent # 6212679 B1 -
External Control of V-Chip
Functions in Institutional TV Sets
-- Patent # 6661471 B1
- Relocatable
"ON" Position for Institutional TV Sets
-- Patent # 7135664 B2 -
Method for Adjusting Multiple
Light Sources to Compensate for Variation in Light Output that Occurs
with Time
-- Patent # 7173383 B2 -
Lighting Apparatus Having a
Plurality of Independently Controlled Sources of Different Colors of
Light
I have many others pending and many others not yet applied for.
P-Box Kits : This is
one of the
things that fired up my interest in electronics - the Radio Shack,
Science
Fair, P-Box kits. There were about 30 of these things back in
the early
1970's. My first one was an electronic metronome.
I do not
seem to have the instructions for it (or the kit) any more, but I
remember it
as being a single transistor,
hartley
type audio oscillator. As I find other manuals, I will add
them to the
list.
Synthesizer Circuits & Stuff
: I have always
had a passion for music - especially jazz and things off the main
stream.
Naturally, synthesizer music caught my attention. It was this
that made
me sure I wanted to do something with electronics for a career!
I lived
for making electronic music. I arranged my college degree to
emphasize
acoustics and electronic music. Credit to Walter Carlos –
Switched-On Bach for
first whetting my appetite for electronic music and ultimately my
foundations
of music theory. I am an amateur musician, playing oboe,
bassoon,
recorders, and am a tenor in several choirs.
If you do that facebook
thing, check out the
Paw Paw Community
Chorus.
Ham Radio : As a
natural outgrowth of my love for
electronics, I became interested in amateur radio. There are
lots of
reasons why different people do ham radio. Some like to talk,
some like
the technical challenges, some like contesting, some like helping out
in
emergencies, some like
fox hunting. For me - it
was always because I love to build things!
VLF : One of the
forgotten cousins of ham radio is
all that goes on below the AM radio band. I particularly like
to
experiment with this art because the circuitry and theory is much more
like
audio than it is like RF. Consequently, "building stuff"
requires little worry about layout issues and the gremlins associated
therewith! You can also use op amps and other easily
obtainable, readily
substitutable parts to make things - no weird, impossible to find
transistors
or capacitors, no silver solder required!
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Common & Favorite Links ~
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Computer Software |
Electronics Suppliers For Hobby-ing |
News
& Info Sites |
| Tucows | Digikey | Breitbart |
| Funnet Software Downloads (FTP) | JDR Micro | Victory Channel - Flashpoint |
| Gibson Research | Mouser | Victory News |
| Pocket PC DOS | SparkFun | Rush Limbaugh |
| MicroChip-PIC | Drudge Report | |
| Grainger | Lucianne | |
| Arnold's C64 FTP Files | ||
| Heritage Foundation | ||
| NewsMax | ||
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Ham, Regen, And VLF Sites | Entertainment |
| Commodore Cables | ||
| Mancow | ||
| ARRL | Stardate | |
| METV | ||
| METV
RADIO |
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| Emulation | Theremin, Synthesizer, and Music Links |
Sheet
Music Links |
| PAIA | Mutopia | |
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Theremin World Schematics | |
| Good Theremin Page | ||
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Piano World | |
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Great Midi to Notation Software! | |
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On-Line
Tools & Interesting Info |
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Last Update: V2.07 03Oct24
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