40106 Making Waves

I have been playing around with the 40106 hex inverter chip. It is the basis for one of the simplest VCOs you can build but it is also remarkably versatile. In this short video I show how you can build VCOs that produce square, triangle, saw, reverse saw and/or pulse waveforms with no more than 4 components. Also, I give a brief demo of how they sound. This is not a build video as such but I hope it may encourage you to take these ideas and build your own version of a 40106 VCO.

[@BirdYoumans]

❤❤🎵🎵

[@pbartmess]

I love the low tones in the triangle! Nice no-talk impactful demo. I like the high-pitched robot voice in the intro too.

[@CuSiSound]

Triangle bass lines are great 👍

[@garaughty]

Lovely work on this CuSi !

[@stephenlife5196]

Thanks for this. Great stuff👍
Going to see what else I can add to it, like CV, FM and filters. I want it to have just the one potentiometer. Should make for a decent VCO. You can also get an inverted pulse from pin 4.

[@CuSiSound]

The waves taken from the inverter input will need buffering and maybe some amplification to get a usable output level. My Quadrone circuit is one example.

[@stephenlife5196]

Cool. I have a spare 4069👍

[@CaalamusTube]

Nice right angles on that Square! :]

[@RikMarshall]

thanks for this video!!! was wondering what kind of diode you were using in the circuits?

[@CuSiSound]

I used 1N4148 diodes.

[@tomasbarra433]

can you power it with just a 9v volt battery?

[@CuSiSound]

Yes this will run from a 9v battery but you will need to buffer and possibly amplify the waves coming from the input side of the inverters. My Quadrone module uses one example of this that should work on 9v or check out this from Elliot Williams hackaday.com/2015/03/09/logic-noise-sawing-away-with-analog-waveforms/.

[@Choober65]

At least it's less annoying than Kier starmer 😶‍🌫