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Basic Electronic Circuit

A soldered board with parts on it. It is not a tier or a key: it carries properties, and a machine that can use them works better with a good one. Nothing needs it. A detector with no circuit works, just with more noise.

What it carries

  • Switching elements: how many parts on the board switch (crystals, Relays, Coherers). A circuit with none is a dead part.
  • Speed: the fastest element. A rectifying crystal is fast (galena most), a relay's contacts slow, a coherer's grains slowest.
  • Noise: the elements' own, the traces' (printed is grainier than etched), and a cold joint's. A ringing quartz plate on the board steadies it. Noise never reaches zero.
  • Joints: good or cold, as graded by the Solder rules.

Read them with a Component Tester: hold it with the circuit in the other hand.

Making one

  1. Make a Trace Board, before pasting it.
  2. In a crafting grid, put the board and one part to mount it. Up to 4 per board. A part is a rectifying crystal (galena, pyrite, quartz), a Relay, a Coherer, or a quartz or amethyst plate (the clock: it switches nothing, it steadies the rest).
  3. Paste the board with solder, then solder it with the Soldering Iron or the Reflow Oven.

A good joint gives a good circuit. A cold joint gives a noisy one. If the traces lift the circuit comes out dead, and the parts with it. Nothing refuses to run.

Using one

Right-click a Cat's Whisker Detector with it to fit it on the contact: the hunt report gets quieter, it hears further, and it lets go sooner. Sneak-right-click with an empty hand takes it out (crystal first).

Overrun

  • Heat: past what its traces stand, the traces lift and it goes dead. Baking a finished circuit in the Reflow Oven does it too. Watch the oven with a Thermometer; take it out to stop.
  • Current: a printed circuit on a whisker carries only 0.1 A. More than that and an element fuses now and then; the last one makes it dead. Etched traces carry 2 A, more than the whisker's own fuse ever lets through.