Home-made battery-less AM radio receiver
During the last summer we want to get into AM radio receiving. We wanted to create an AM receiver that was cheap and easy.
It was a great opportunity to learn about antennas and AM signals.
We found a very nice tutorial about home-made AM radios, and after some basic purchasing of components we were able to create a working AM radio receiver!!!
Check out the Video section if you are in a hurry.
This was the tutorial we read:http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/radio/homemade_radio.html
It is a really cool and fun page about home-made science projects!The most important thing we can say about our experience is that the antenna is the most important part of the project. If you manage to build everything and is still not working, it most surely is because your antenna is not adequate.We had the luck of having an unused phone cable going out to the street. We don't know the length of this cable, but is long enough and straight enough. We later tried with a 30 mts long cable, but it was a little bit curled and it didn't worked. We tried connecting it to long cables and bars, but none worked.So, find a really long and straight cable, the longest the best. We know that you can do some stuff in the radio to use small antennas, but none of them worked for us.
It was a great opportunity to learn about antennas and AM signals.
We found a very nice tutorial about home-made AM radios, and after some basic purchasing of components we were able to create a working AM radio receiver!!!
Check out the Video section if you are in a hurry.
This was the tutorial we read:http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/radio/homemade_radio.html
It is a really cool and fun page about home-made science projects!The most important thing we can say about our experience is that the antenna is the most important part of the project. If you manage to build everything and is still not working, it most surely is because your antenna is not adequate.We had the luck of having an unused phone cable going out to the street. We don't know the length of this cable, but is long enough and straight enough. We later tried with a 30 mts long cable, but it was a little bit curled and it didn't worked. We tried connecting it to long cables and bars, but none worked.So, find a really long and straight cable, the longest the best. We know that you can do some stuff in the radio to use small antennas, but none of them worked for us.