This project is based on the workshop "Deconstructing the Scientology E-Meter. Re-Creating Apocryphal Technologies" conducted together with Jamie Allen Nov 2015 in Montreal. The workshop was about re-constructing, re-composing an old galvanic skin resistance measurment circuit also used by new religious movements as a control technique. It also reflected upon the media archaelogy of these media technologies and psychophyscial circuitry, which Jamie calls apocryphal technology. Check our course material here (pdf, 61.5MB). The project has been a highly fruitful learning process. Starting with the theory of basic instrumentation amplifiers, electrodermal activity, psychogalvanicresponses and biosignals in general, I have been translating a basic amplifier circuit into eagle and a PCB design, that we can DIY-print via the so called "toner transfer method". Designing PCBs was easy, but the most tedious part is finding the correct parts. Since we have been etching the PCB by DIY-methods, I needed to adjust the design of the parts a little bit and also hand-correct the autoroute and ground plate (here some useful links: General linking; use the ripup command; changing padsize; basics). A single sided layout is quite difficult with a slightly complex circuit like we used, so I used some hidden wires instead of a second layer.

Thanks to Moritz Greiner-Petter for providing the final twist to the board and thanks to Robin Michel a student from Institut Kunst for helping me. Check the github for the eagle-files, the schematic and other PDFs.