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Today I assembled a function generator. It’s a kit that I bought off Amazon and is pretty cheap. I was going to need one to start testing out the oscilloscope (or really learning how to use it), so I figured go with one that had some basic features and save a little money getting a kit. I’m going to be learning how to build one of these from scratch with my own components at some point and I thought it would be good to have a working model first.

Since it was cheap, I got two, so I could verify within themselves.

I know, a bit over-redundant but I need this kind of foundation. I also needed to beef up my soldering skills and this was going to be good practice. I watched this video with some basics outlined and realized that I was making one major mistake: I wasn’t matching lead/lead-free solder and soldering tips. Oops. That’s why I was ruining my new tips. I knew there had to be a simple reason and really I’m glad I found it after only wasting two tips. Rookie mistake but it’s one I can be sure I won’t make again. The results, were pretty damned awesome.

Functional generators will generate a math function, in the form of an electrical pulse. This pulse can be used to send logic messages as binary (or even more complex numbers) which are used for … well … everything. It will help me understand radio frequencies and how to better analyze them, as well as useful in electronic music, specifically modular synthesizers. I’m totally looking forward getting this down to a 1 volt message that I can plug into my Moog and see what happens!

And just for kicks, here are some cool closeup pictures that I took while assembling.