DIY Microphone @multimedia-1a03-blog - Tumblr Blog

Conclusions & Next Steps

Overall, our microphone does need a lot of improvement, however it did produce sound just like we had hoped it would! It could make an interesting noise monitoring device or spy toy for kids (although we do not recommend that children try to make one of these!)

Sources of Error:

- Having the right kind of lead cables would have probably made a world of a difference in the quality of the sound produced by our microphone.

- It was extremely difficult to document the device making sound as it was not safe to plug into a laptop or phone using an auxiliary cord due to the electrical current running through it.

#Conclusions

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We decided not to stop at our minor success, so we tested to see whether using smaller pieces of lead, as shown below, would yield different or hopefully better results.

It proved to be unsuccessful, as the smaller pieces of lead did not really produce any significant sound.

Success!

When tapping on the box and moving the diaphragm of the microphone around, we were able to produce a sharp noise within the headphones.

The noises weren’t necessarily in response to the vibration of sound hitting the diaphragm, but we might just be hearing the changes in electrical currents passing through the pieces of lead to the headphones.

#success

Attempt #2: Copper Wires

Everything was set up with the new copper wires attached.

We used a hot glue gun to attach the wire to the alligator clip which I’m sure is not the recommended method used by electricians, but it seemed to be working effectively so 👍

We’ll just see how it goes.

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Yes, that is the sound of nothingness ...

So our attempt at using headphones as lead wires didn’t work as well as we had hoped.

We did end up finding some copper wire in Mikayla’s dad’s collection of household repair items ... here’s to hoping that attempt #2 is successful!

#failed attempt

The Building Process: Step 5

After finishing all the pieces needed to complete our device, we started to assemble our device!

We attached the alligator clips to the end of the lead, and connected the other end to both sides of the battery.

We could not find lead cords anywhere so we dangerously decided to improvise, cutting up a pair of old headphones & attaching them to the battery & device ...

#diy #microphone

The Building Process: Step 4

In this step we decided to be creative and use old headphones as wire!

We separated the headphones, broke them into pieces and cut through them to expose the wire.

We then connected the wires to the alligator clips and used tape to keep them in place.

#diymicrophone

The Building Process: Step 3

In this step, we were now ready to start putting everything together.

We poked four holes in our box for the lead pieces.

We then cut the pencil lead piece into 2 equal pieces and fed the pieces through the holes in the box.

We cut a smaller piece of lead to lie across the two lead pieces in the box. This piece will act as the microphones diaphragm which will vibrate against the lead and essentially create sound!

#diy microphone

The Building Process: Step 2

To prepare the pieces of lead, we used an X-Acto knife to cut the lead out of the pencils.

We probably should have added goggles and gloves to our list of required materials, because there were pieces of wood flying everywhere.

The Building Process: Step 1

We began constructing our microphone by preparing the sticker box.

The sticker box was completely enclosed, so we had to cut the top off.

After we cut the top off the sticker box seemed to fall apart. To make the box strong and sturdy, we used a hot glue gun to glue the edges of the box so that they remained upright.