I’ll post some code and details of how it’s setup later tonight when I get home.


int signalPin = 8; //servo signal pin

Some useful reference sites, but be aware that neither of these I could get the code to work, but probably more my issue than the code:

http://principialabs.com/arduino-serial-servo-control/
http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Labs/AnalogIn

Next step, aiming low, I want to get a button in max that will trigger the servo movement:

http://www.cycling74.com/forums/index.php?t=msg&goto=165203

Once I have that, I just need to replicate the action with the 6 other servos, work out how to attach hammers to them all, and then add some sort of step sequencer in max so I can have a 6 note analog drum kit.... that is until my xylophone arrives.

Finally found some time in between flu forced naps to finish off the display portion of the knobome idea. Now all I need to do is stuff this into the small looking enclosure I have and then work out what I’m planning on doing for an input. LyodMilligan has some very promising ideas over on the other post. Although he very quickly got me out of my depth in terms of technical know how, so I’m hoping he’s going to throw me a lifeline before I start drowning. I also suspect I might run out of room. For that reason I’m thinking I might go with a simple 2 x 8 position rotary switch and a small momentary switch.

Twist the 2 rotary switches to the 8×8 co’ordinates you want and press the button to trigger a press.

I should be able to get away with that with nothing more than some imaginative wiring and no additional components – but we’ll see.

Then I might approach the knobome enclosure slightly differently.

Original inspiration for the knobome is the orange keypadless monome (except if I’m correct Tehn’s has no monome input, other than maybe ADC or ENC), video of his in prototype.

Update, it took a great deal of trimming, pushing and bending, but it’s all inside the enclosure now. Absolutely no room for switches or knobs. So this one will become a viewNome. Knobome will need a bigger house.

My issue wasn’t with the shield soldering or my pin selection, is was that I’d stupidly used Arduino v12 to compile and upload the firmware, and as we all should know by now, that won’t work, you need arduino v11.

So I was able to crocodile clip a couple of pins as per Unspeds response on the forum…

IN
15,13,11,09,07,05,03,01
16,14,12,10,08,06,04,02

OUT
02,04,06,08,10,12,14,16
01,03,05,07,09,11,13,15

(the positive side of the led’s to the SEG pins on the max72xx chip)
connect led matrix pins: 5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12
to arduinome pins 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16 on the “IN” connector

(the negative side of the led’s to the DG pins on the max72xx chip)
connect led matrix pins: 1,2,3,4,21,22,23,24
to arduinome pins 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16 on the “OUT” connector

Now I just need to find a nice solution to wire up to the led matrix, I think I’ll end up just soldering directly to the matrix a pair of ribbon cables.

Now once I had my matrix working with the test, I fired up monome_test to see out of curiosity what would happen if I wired one of my potentiometer between the two pins that used to be wired to a button. Well stuff happened, not really what I want, but it was interesting. I’ll take a video and post it over the weekend – not easy to explain.

Suffice to say I need some ideas for plugging 1 potentiometer per row and getting full left to full right equal 0 – 8 column button presses. Any thoughts?

Unsped Shield Parts.

LED Matrix from Sparkfun, and 8 pots.

The idea is to use the OOTB unsped shield. Wire the LED side of it to the matrix, which I am assuming should be fairly straight forward. Then find a way to wire the 8 pots so that each one controls a row with the full left to full right turn being equal to columns 1 – 8.

One issue I’ve already thought of is the serial is expecting button press and button releases, the pots can only register a single value, unless I can find some way to “fire” an on/off signal, this might need a tweak to the serial (which may or may not (I expect may) be a show stopped for this project).

The wood is a little dinged, and I’d probably say that the plywood base makes it look very prototype, but it’s an enclosure and that’s really all that matters right now. All I need to get the project finished is my type-A to type-A usb cable (due any day). Then I can start playing with this some more.

When we first put it together we used the full height of the side wood, so it was about 1.5″ higher than it needed to be. I just trimmed it down an inch, but it seems that with the height of the inside panel and the headers and idc cables I’ve not left enough room for it to fit.

So I’m left with two options. This weekend, I either cut a new box – which now we have the right tools and a first pass shouldn’t be too difficult, or I stop using the Unsped shield in it’s mounted format and try and find some connectors so I can have them side by side. I think I’d rather do that – it’s just a matter of finding an easy way to do the connections. If that fails I’ll cut and glue a new box, ready for spraying.

The box is currently 3″ deep, so I’m thinking of trimming an inch off the bottom to reduce the height. The aim is to spray it with a non slip black spray I found – which seems to very closely match the finish of my black mac book which it will be paired with. Combined with the black faceplate and bright blue LED’s I do have to say it’s rather dandy looking.

My next step is to start working out which apps I need, and start familiarizing myself with them – so expect a fair amount of 101 style write-ups and walk thrus over the next few weeks.

In parallel, I think I might start soldering the second 64 set I have, but in a 4×16 arrangement.

I’ll get some pictures of the box tonight.

Hopefully this will be of help to someone.

For that reason I decided tonight to whip out the dremel and try to slice up some thin particle board to at least have something to hold everything together.

I have a copy of the machine collective PDF with the sparkfun dimensions. I printed a copy out at full size, trimmed off the excess paper, and my idea was simple. Just cut the holes out with the dremel. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to have the buttons fit through the hole and not interfere with the up and down action.

As you can see, this is clearly not going to be the 20 minute job I thought it would be.

My initial idea (due to my lack of tracing paper) was to poke holes through the paper that I could then follow as a guide. I couldn’t see them due to the very speckley nature of the particle board.

So I figured I could just cut through the paper as a template. 2 minutes in with a bunch of holes and drags I thought I wasn’t far off.

Turn it over and, yeah that won’t work.

I’m now fairly confident that there is no such thing as a quick faceplate. It requires time and effort. My battons idea quickly turned into a measuring nightmare.

The only solution I think would be somewhat easy for quick faceplate would be to find batton the width of the ones I have, but half the height and then stick the horizontal onto the vertical. You’ll have a faceplate with two levels, but it won’t need any measuring or cutting and it will hold the buttons in place. I can’t however find such a pre cut thing. All the dowels I could find where square – so I’d be into cutting batons (and I’ll b back at the beginning).

I have ordered a faceplate kit from Machine Collective. I’ve asked for one with a thicker top plate made out of black Perspex™. Hopefully it will come quickly (if I’d planned ahead my parents could have brought it over to the States in their hand luggage for their visit on Wednesday). As it is I’ll pay postage and hope I get it mid/end of next week.