Just saw an awesome link on the main uCreate blog post I made a year or so ago. The ucreate by mattel has such huge potential for such a cheap toy, but due to it’s locked down system that potential hasn’t been exploited to it’s fullest.

Someone at mattel really needs to understand that these could become the next speak and spell for circuit benders and diy music nerds and they’d shift tens of thousands of units, if they’d just leak or open up the communication protocols for “hackers” to create new interfaces, load their own samples and create their own audio filters.

Well until Mattel gets with the program we have a new hope, and that’s Marbs, go check out his site, bookmark it and follow along as he works out how to unlock the full potential of these awesome little toys.

http://marbs-online.blogspot.com/2011/02/ucreate-proof-of-concept.html

Marbs has been getting some help from Scragz http://scragz.com/ who was able to provide him some of the files before his uCreate arrived after being shipped half way round the world.

Wishing them both good luck with their endeavors.

Finally finished up my midi retrofit of the Casio SK1, and I’m very happy indeed with it. The HighlyLiquid UMR kits was a breeze to assemble, and if it hadn’t been for my initial soldering on the kit to the Sk1 board backwards it would have been an afternoon project.

For those repeating this process, triple check the numbers on the ribbon area of the SK1 that you solder the kit to, the 12 is on the left (depends on which way round you’re looking at it, so DOUBLE check).

I have some issues with the sample recorder, sometimes the SK1 needs to be turned on and off to get it to record again and it doesn’t seem to store the sample thru a power cycle (it might never have done this so I can’t fault anything there).

I can see this becoming a pretty useful part of a LIve improv type session, with a laptop, Monome and Sk1, running long Polygomé style midi from the Monome thru the Sk1 using samples recorded there and then.

I’m probably going to look at picking up another 2 or 3 of the SK’s this year, to expand the collection and have some for redundancy.

I’m also still toying with adding some bend points. Though I’m thinking I’ll take it one step further and use digital potentiometers to make the bends automatable from a computer. So it might take some time to work through.

In the meantime, my next Midi retrofit will be the Ace-Tone keyboard that I recently picked up. I’m hoping the 2 octave retrofit will be pretty simple with the MD24 kit from highlyliquid. If it becomes a nightmare I might step it back to retrofitting one of my stylophones instead.

Sorry to say, but I think the diagram on the MFOS site is wrong for the kit parts they are sending out (either that or I can’t read diagrams).

The diagram in question is this one:

That to me looks like ground to the top, middle left alone, bottom gets the out. In that wiring however I got nothing.

Once I switched the bottom “out” wire to the middle everything sprang to life and everything works peachy now.

Interestingly enough I was actually able to find someone else who had the same issue and had blogged about it. Sean over at Bearly Sounds had the same issue with his WSG construction.

When I first powered on the unit nothing happened. I decided to test for voltage first. First I checked the battery. I know it sounds stupid but how many times have you had something not work only to find out the batteries were dead? Then I basically traced the voltage. Everything looked good. As it turned out, I soldered a wire to the wrong post on the 1/4″ jack. Once I corrected that problem the WSG immediately started making weird sounds! Woo hoo!

As always, I am concerned that my aggressive debugging of the last 3 hours might have screwed something up, but everything seems in shape.

The WSG is now sat in a whole cut in a cardboard box, ready for oak case construction after the Christmas break

EDIT: See the next post, this issue is now fixed.

Finished my weird sound generator kit over the weekend, and it was one of those soul crushing moments in electronics where you finish the meticulous soldering and excitedly plug it in and it makes no sound at all.

I had a quick poke around and was actually able to make it make a sound, but I’m somewhat at a lose as to the reason.

If I short point A on the switch, to B the ground (I put all my ground down onto the plug since it was bigger than the location on the pot in this diagram. Anyway, when grounded, it makes weird sounds, but the left “Oddness Filter” doesn’t do anything and it seems like most of the pots in Voice A don’t work. So clearly I’m just by passing something.

I reheated all the points in pcb and no difference. I need to double check all my capacitors are the right way round, and my resistors are in the correct places. Beyond that I’m at a lose. I’ll take some pictures of the boards in case someone can see any obvious issues.

Ucreate Music Sample Track by madebyrobot

Recorded into the 2.30 memory that it has built it, using only the OOTB samples none of the ones available online.

Been a while since my last update, but I’ve not vanished off the planet just been busy with some “life” things and experimenting with an influx of new toys.

Recently added a Roland Sh-32, tr-505 & tr-626 an Alesis Micron and a Moog Rogue to the collection of musical junk.

The sh-32 is a knob twiddling synth I plan to use as a backup to Ableton and for some support roles.

The tr-505 I’m planning on circuit bending, although I’m sorry to say I’m not a huge fan of how most circuit bent instruments sound, (the whole 8-bit scene still confuse me). But I’ve found some more subtle tweaks I can make to just make the drum sounds more interesting and less chaotic and noisy.

The tr-626 I got silly cheap, so I don’t have a reason to have it other than I’m a gadget collecting freak.

Micron was a present from my wife, and I love it already, amazing analog synth, capable of so much, I’m going to use it extensively with ableton and retrowave (on osx). It needs some serious time investment.

The moog was the cheapest I could find, that still seemed to have a genuine sound. It sounds better than I imagined. I guess it’s age and condition have resulted in something that sounds amazing. Like an old leather faced tuscan farmer, their faces are not pretty, but they have such amazing character. My plan is to add midi in with midiJack, and then use it as a character bassline generator. While open to add the midi, I’ll give it a good clean.

Oh and I almost forgot I picked up an 80′s icon the Casio Sk-1. Which again, I had no reason to get, but the price meant I couldn’t say no. Planning on adding midi in to that as well using the highly liquid system.

Add to all of these the fact that I still have a sx-150 I’m supposed to be midi retrofitting, all the bits for another arduinome, a xlyoduino that is 95% finished (just needs the stands), and a set of 4 joysticks I need to convert into a midi input devices. Busy busy busy.

I also need to move my office into the basement, but that means adding a new wall and 30 power outlets. More news on all these projects as soon as I have some. I also really need to get back into the music making habit – since this is what it’s all about.

Xyloduino from JP Sykes on Vimeo.

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

RPM Challenge

10 songs in the month of February, I’m 2 songs in with 3 days down, so I’m ahead of schedule.  The album will be called Binary, and is a mish mash of stuff (so far at least).

Ableton to Max to Arduino to SX-150

I’m working on finding a way to make my sx-150 a black box synth.  The aim is to end up with a box with only a phono out and usb in, no knobs, buttons, or input.  First step will be trying out Mrbooks arduino control setup for the sx-150, the second step will be using a few digital potemtiometers to allow the arduino to control, what used to be controlled by the rotary knobs.  Then all I’ll need is a little max patch with those controls and I’ll have a digitally controllable analog sythn, for less than $50.

Ableton Midi clock to Max to Arduino to Music Box

This ones a little more adventurous.  The aim is to get a punch card music box, with a motor controlling the turning of the handle, this motor would be variable speeds to match a midi clock from abelton.  The music box will use something like guitar pickups to get the sound back into the computer for tweaking.  This project is largely influenced by Mapmaps awesome music box setup – just with an additional twist.

Monome™ opened up sales of 128′s to the general public. Last week they finished off supplying the long standing waiting list. Brian said they had 70, and he was pretty confident given the economic climate and the fact that they were going on sale 2 weeks after Christmas that sales wouldn’t be brisk and availability would be there if people wanted on.

At 1.00pm EST the “buy it now” link was published.

At 1.02pm they were sold out.

Amazing demand. I think it’s a strong sign of the clear difference between the DIY monomes and the ones produced by Monome Inc. That even though you can build a Monome clone for less than $300 with almost no waiting time, people will still fight to the death for an $800 piece of equipment that does the exact same thing.

I’m one of those people. In fact I have an arduinome, a Monome Kit, and I still managed to scramble to pick up a legit 128 from the originators. I just had to have one. It never felt right using the other two.

I will continue to use the other two, one is going to my daughter, the other I will use as a secondary controller. My spare 40h kit, I’m selling back to the community at cost, just so someone has a chance to use it.

I can not wait to get my 128. It’s the best Christmas present I could have wished for. That’s Brian and Kelli !!!!

Having ditched the idea of making a Knobome and instead resigning myself to the possibility I’ll just have a Viewnome, I’ve now decided that I’m back in the hunt. But I’m simplifying things.

My plan now, due to the lack of space and the huge complexity that seemed to be coming from the previous discussion, is to build almost an “etcha-sketch” type of interface.

In my current state, I have two sets of 8 wires, that come from the IDC headers. I know that shorting any wire from 1 set with any wire on the other set will fire a button press in the Serial.

So my plan is simple.

I will attach 1 set of the 8 wires, to the 8 legs of an 8 position rotary switch. I will attach the other set of 8 wires to the legs of another 8 position rotary switch. I will then take the single out from the two switches and join them together at a momentary switch.

So using this little box, you will turn the two switches to the coordinates you want, and press the momentary button. That will trigger a button press at that coordinate.

Yes I know it’s simple. That’s really the aim. I can see this being useful for things where pressing lots of buttons isn’t the important thing and where change a row’s value at a time might be useful – like sliders or triggers.