monotrino IS HERE

2013-12-16 dada No category

Wooohooo! Yeah! PARTY HARD ALL NIGHT LONG!!! Ok, sorry, this is really a PR stunt. I still have to write basically all the software, but the hardware, the making part, is officialy FINISHED.

Well, actually, almost finished… ok, I cheated a little. But take a look at this, and I’m sure you will understand, if not justify, my excitement.

I managed to add the buttons, activate the LCD, add a nice yellow LED that lights when a note is played, and screw the panel to the case. I also swapped the Arduino, although you probably can’t see the difference because of the blue power LED (damn it, wish I could easily turn it off).

The LCD, in case you are wondering, displays the note currently played and the values for the 4 knobs (Attack, Release, Cutoff and Glide). Just a quick hack, but a very functional one.

The almost is because, well, the 8 red buttons on the top right are not connected. I only snapped them in for the photoshooting. But those are the pattern selectors, and for now I don’t even have a sequencer, let alone pattern storage, so… no haste :-)

But for the rest everything works pretty smooth. I spent another ~8h hours in total. I had to “debug” a problem with one of the knobs, which suddenly was always reading a steady 0. Turned out one of the connectors wasn’t properly soldered, and moving it back and forth caused a false contact. Considering that I wired up something like 100 connectors, a 1% failure rate is more than satisfying :-)

A few more dramatic shots:

Phew.

I must really admit, the sense of accomplishment when building something in hardware is a bazillion times bigger than with software. Half a bazillion, if you want to be conservative. And I feel tired. Very tired. As if, just by looking at the object, I could feel the weight of all the hours spent on it.

Yuck. Better stop now, before I get pathetic.

I’m going to take a break over Christmas, since I will be abroad and without all my tools. But next year, I’m gonna write some ass-kicking software and have some serious fun!

See you in 2014. Happy making.

cheers,
Aldo

Don’t Shoot The Pianist Klaatu Barada Nikto!