Beginner, seeking advice

Hello all,

I'm a third-year electrical and computer engineering student and for my Electronics final project, I've decided to build a theremin. I have a few semesters worth of experience building simple circuits on breadboards, two lab sessions worth of soldering experience, and about a month to work on this project.

Do you think it is possible for a novice like me to build (and obtain components for) something like the Etherwave in under a month? Should I perhaps pick a different or simpler theremin circuit? If not, are there any other considerations I should be aware of?

If it matters, I am in the United States and I currently have limited access to an oscilloscope through my lab sessions once a week.

Thanks for your time.

Hello, engineering student—what a great idea to choose a theremin project! Since your time is limited and you only have temporary access to an oscilloscope, I recommend that you don’t try out the Etherwave circuit. Why? You need to achieve a working result within a limited time frame, and there won’t be time for extensive troubleshooting.

You could f.e. replicate a nice, fully functional little project by the German engineer “ElektroUwe,” which he presented here in this forum a few months ago:
https://www.kulturgueter-schuppen.de/books/analog-music-electronic-circuits/page/cmos-555-theremin
 
The LC feedback method ensures stable oscillators with a high enough sinusoidal voltage at the pitch antenna, resulting in a good signal-to-noise ratio for the audio signal. The mixer produces good-sounding audio with harmonics. Ferrit core coils are sufficient for your investigations. The zero pitch can be easily adjusted via vary the voltage supplied to the oscillators.

If the pitch unit is functionable you can involve a loudness control. This is a gate, what opens or close in dependence of the hand capacitance to the volume antenna. Also a nice little project to examine and choice circuits for that. For both antennas use not to small or thin rods. 

Please give here some feedback to your decisions and the progress. 

indecisive

If you’re an electronics geek and your hands ain’t made of butter, then putting together and tuning an electrical circuit, even a complex one, ain’t gonna be no biggie for ya. Trust me, the real grind for guys like us is building the damn casing and all that other junk – the metalwork, painting, finishing, and figuring out a solid design based on whatever scrap you got lying around. I’d say 90% of the time is spent on this non-electronic crap!