CIRCUITRY KEYBOARD
ELECTRONIC CIRCUIT EXPERIMENT KIT
BASIC TROUBLESHOOTING
• Most circuit problems come from the physical connections.
• Check your connections at the spring connectors. Is the bare metal of the wire touching the spring? If the coils are only
connection and current cannot pass along the circuit. In many cases, this happens when two or more wires are inserted
into the same spring connector. Take an extra moment to put the second wire in between a separate coil, or maybe on
the connector.
•
WATER AND THE TOUCH PLATE
• Circuits 7, 17 and 26 use the Touch Plate located at connectors 19 and 20. It requires a drop of water to operate.
• DO NOT pour water onto the Touch Plate or allow water to contact any other portion of the circuit board.
•
• Have a dry rag or paper towel on hand to wipe up any spills and to wipe the Touch Plate dry after testing the circuit.
EXTENDED PLAY
• Once you’ve completed all 39 circuits, go back and take a look at the earlier ones with the new knowledge you have.
• Experiment by changing which LED is connected, or even add an LED or another switch to a circuit.
• If your new circuit - or even one of the ones listed - doesn’t work, don’t get frustrated. Check your connections, make
sure you have both ends of a component connected to a circuit, or try another approach. Carefully change only one
thing at a time to try and resolve the issue. Most discoveries happen after a lot of trial-and-error.
SPRING CONNECTORS
Most electrical circuits have their components
connected by melted metal in a technique called
least amount of resistance. Since you’ll be assembling
and disassembling your circuits many times, you’ll be
using spring connectors. No hot, melted metal required!
To Connect Wires:
1. Bend the spring over to make a
gap.
2. Insert the bare wire into the gap
and gently let the spring back.
IMPORTANT:
The bare wire must be
in contact with the spring, not the
insulation.
DID YOU KNOW?
You can think of an electrical circuit like water in a pipe.
The
wires
Current
would be the diameter of the pipe and
Voltage
can be thought of as the pressure that moves
