in electronic engineering / with 23 comments /

To create a simple homemade microphone you need only a bunch of common electronic elements and a solder. Today I will present, how this microphone can be built at home.

Below is a sample track recorded by this microphone.

We will use electret microphone, it's cheap and popular but it can't be plugged directly - it requires a simple circuit, that is presented below. R1 polarizes the microphone, C1 removes noise from power source, C2 isolates sound card from constant current in the circuit.

List of elements:

R1, 10k

C1, 220u, 25V

C2, 100n

M, electret microphone

Usually microphones are connected to other devices (for example into the computer) by using a jack plug, the same plug is used headphones, so we can obtain it from old, broken headphones. I presented this also in "Constructing a homemade speaker" article. Below is shown how to correctly connect this cable to our microphone circuit.

The microphone can be obtained from an old recorder, mp3 player or similar device. Rest of the elements can be also obtained this way.

That's all, I hope that it will be useful for you!