The following skills I’ve required over the past years, and besides my personal daily practices, I teach them during workshops or classes for education facilities, maker spaces, meetups, and various other events. Ranging from learning the basics of soldering and how electronics work, to understanding different electronic components and how to use them, electronic instrument prototyping, digital and analog interfaces design, circuit-bending, schematic reading, hardware hacking, and also working with various microcontrollers and sensors.
Besides Acid Solder Club I teach these subjects at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU) and the Sandberg Institute (SI) in Amsterdam with seminars, workshops and classes to students.
Basics of Electronics and Soldering
Years of first-hand experience and trial and error about soldering and electronics make sure that I know how to work safely and efficiently with electronics. From knowing how to set up a soldering station, safety rules, dangerous hazards, and proper ventilation to component testing, circuit measuring, hardware debugging, and how to keep your spirits up when making mistakes.
Sensors and Microcontrollers
With microcontrollers, I work mostly with Arduino, Teensy, Bareconductive, and MakeyMakey. But in the past have worked with RaspberryPi and still understand this to some degree. Sensor data reading and working with motors, solenoids, LDR, and capacitive touch are the things I recently work with and I enjoy programming microcontrollers for interactive installations or DIY synthesizer projects.
Hardware Hacking and Circuit Bending
Circuit bending and hardware hacking are some of the most fun and exciting ways to work with electronics. Even without extensive background knowledge about the workings of each component, you’re still able to re-create and rebuild amazing instruments and machines with just basic components. It’s thrilling to see new creations come to life from obsolete or broken electronics, and is an easy first step into getting familiarized with electronics.
Instrument and Interface Design
When you’re looking for advice for your (interactive ) electronic installations or instruments and you need some help with co-designing the design and electronic infrastructure of your instrument, feel free to contact me about ideas, builds, or collaborations! I can give advice or help with tools or references to what you need and what things to look out for when designing all kinds of machines.
(Modular) Synth DIY
A few months back I’ve started building my own DIY modular synthesizer, and since then I’ve taken a deep dive into the basic building blocks of a synthesizer.
On the instagram you will find some of the modules I’ve built and where I sourced the information. Also with tips and tricks about DIY modular, soldering and testing, where to get parts, buy your kits, how to re-purpose a lot of components and how to build cases.
Schematic reading and PCB Design
Besides building circuits, I also teach in Reading Schematics, learning Electronic Components and their functions and how to design Stripboard layouts in DIYLC and make Printed Circuit Boards (PCB’s) with various software such as Fritzing and (soon) KiCad!
Veerle Pennock 