Barncast 28 -- Disorder, tomatoes, and the fair!

This week the show is brought to you out in the woods with a fire crackling away. We introduce a new segment, the Farm Phone! It's where we answer your questions, so call us at (206) 202-GOAT. In this weeks show we answer Tom the Beekeepers question, talk about our new setup, talk about why you should be harvesting your own tomatoes right now, and take you on a tour of a county fair. Please come join us for the ride!

PS: Send, call in, email, what you, your question for Tom the Beeker.

Comments

Charles of Mostly News on 2006-08-21 19:43:53

Hey Andrew, What type of headset mics are you using? I've tried to use the Altec Lansing ones with a 802 mixer and couldn't get them to work. I was told the problem was that they're stereo and the 802 will only accept mono, don't know if that's true or not but sounds good. Can you post a picture of your set up? I like the headset mics and would like to use them with the 802. Maybe I should get a 1002?!? Thanks. Charles

John G on 2006-08-21 08:05:34

Jeana Yeager is the name of the other pilot on Voyager, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan

I thought ethylene gas (C2H4) was used as the ripener for fruit, not CO2.

Organic farming is by far the fastest growing segment of ag-business. I think Misty's comments regarding the Fair entries is spot on--4H should have segments for heirloom varieties and ought to promote diversity of plants and animals.

I love the new ending!

Other Podcasts I listen to: Daily Source Code Hoosier Geeks Cheap Date Diggnation Diffusion Science (2Ser from Oz) Amateur Traveler Commonwealth Club Radio Program Ctrl+Alt+Chicken Culinary Podcast Network Distributing the Future Engines Of Our Ingenuity From the Hills of Florence Frommers.com Podcast GeekBrief.TV Hak.5 Indiana Week in Review John and Elizabeth Edwards' Podcast Living on Earth: Sound Journalism for the Whole Planet Lonely Planet Travelcasts MAKE Magazine Math grad Podcast Nature Podcast New York Times Science Times NOVA scienceNOW P.O.V. - Podcasts | PBS PodAsia Travel & Leisure Program PodTravels.TV - Tuscany [iPod Travel Video] Science Friday - Making Science Radioactive Scientific American Slacker Astronomy Stone Pages Archaeo News Systm (videos) TEDTalks (video) -- [Very Important!!!!] The Science Show Tiki Bar TV Travel with Rick Steves Universe Today Wiggly Wigglers Zee And Zed -- [retired]

andrew on 2006-08-22 15:23:04

Hi Charles,

I assume the Altec Lansing are something like:

http://www.alteclansing.com/product_details.asp?pID=AHS515

Those look way cooler than out $15 radio shack things.

Anyways, no the problem isn't stereo/mono at all. The UBB1002 won't help either. I talked about it on barncast 24 a bit. It' involves getting pretty geeky.

So let's start with the microphone. It's an electret microphone capsule, and it's wired to talk to "sound blaster" computer microphone input. It has 3 wires, signal, gnd and bias (2v-9v). Problem is your mixer has option a) Signal+, Signal-, Gnd. Or option b) Signal+, Gnd, and -40db gain.

Now option a, the balanced XLR jack, has the option of giving you +48v which will blow that little electret into little pieces, which most people consider to be bad. (ok so it'll smoke the fet and you might not see the little pieces) So how do you wire it up?

This web page is great:

http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/microphone_powering.html

It has some simple diagrams and you can buy the parts from radio shack to make a simple box that provides bias power and the cap needed to interface with the mixer. The problem with the mics I've run into is the amount of amplification they need, you start picking up all sorts of hum. They would really like a preamp, see below.

The headphones are pretty easy. Just plug them into a unbalanced output. The control room/monitor output on the 802 works I think.

On the DMCEX with Micheal Carrino talks about making your own gear. This really peeked my interest. I did some searching and found a really cool IC that would make an awesome mic preamp, it even has a noise gate and compression. The chip at digikey is $2.50 or a fancy version is ~$5.00. I think I could cook up a a really cool pre-amp with sliders for compression and noise gate, provide bias power for under $10-$15 in parts, all run from a 9v battery. It would be fun to publish the schematic and see what people come up with.

I wonder, if the less tech savy would be interested in buying a pre-fabbed box with everything made and built?

Food for thought. I hope this helped.

andrew on 2006-08-22 19:11:29

Hey Charles,

You sure don't need the pre-amp. We're doing our recording with 2 of these:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2036282

My "box" that allows me to use the head set contains a 9v battery, 1 cap, and 1 resistor. It's really easy to assemble. I'll post pictures.

Edit: I've sampled a couple of the ICs I mentioned from Analog Devices. Looks like they have a limit of 2 on the website. Grumble. I think I'll put a board together and see how they work. If they're good I'll try and sample some and try building out a couple boards to see what others think. (assuming costs don't rise)