Bend Points Active Even When Not Physically Touching

southboundpachyderm · Joined: Jan 03, 2020 Posts: 3 Location: California

I found an interesting bend in a children's toy, and then realized that it still works even when the leads are just close to each other, but not physically touching. In fact, the sound is a bit different that way from when it's a physical connection. Has anyone run into something like this? I have no idea what could be causing it. Some kind of electromagnetic interference, maybe?

It creates a great sound, though, so I'm trying to figure out how to include it in the project and be able to control it in a more predictable way. Since I can't use a toggle (the two bend points wouldn't be far enough away), I was thinking I could use a couple of RCA jacks with some distance between them and just patch it, although I'm not sure that would work. Is there a better way to handle this kind of thing?

cslammy · Last edited by cslammy on Wed Jan 15, 2020 9:40 am; edited 2 times in total

PHOBoS

hmm tricky,. it could be caused by inductive coupling, capacitive coupling, maybe the wires working as antennas picking up some other
electro-magnetic noise or a combination of all of them. Without knowing the exact cause it is going to be very hard to do it in a controlled
manner. You could try putting a (very small) capacitor between the leads to see what that does although I doubt you'll get similar results.
btw how close is close ? I wonder if you could have some fun with a set of adjustable antennas like these.

Be careful though, adding open connections can cause frying of circuits but that is of course always a risk with circuit bending.