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.
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 !!!!
Very quick tune I put together last night, whilst playing with SevenUp Live and Ableton. It’s the OOTB drum samples, 3 or 4 melodizer loops that have been processed greatly in ableton and a couple of my own loops and one from State Shirt in the MLR part of 7up (oh and an old bird sample I had in some library I downloaded). Great deal of it was improvised at the time of recording, hence it seems a bit disjointed. Consider this my very first piece of Monome music (hell you could say this is the first piece of Music I’ve ever recorded).
Those who are curious a Terza Rima is:
“a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri.”
I threw together a quick video showing my arduinome and my monome both plugged into Arduinome Serial, but pointing at two seperate applications, in this case flin and 64_slide. The audio is non existent and the camera shaky, but hopefully it answers some questions. It makes me wonder why there is an Arduinome Serial and why not just Monome Serial that can also talk to Arduinome’s?
Had the absolute pleasure of coming home to not only 2 full logic and button kits from Monome for my Christmas vacation 128 project, but also 2 Stribe 1’s to add to the festive spirit.
I’ll get some decent pictures over the next day of both and get them on flickr and here.
The stribes look great and I can’t wait to play with them and see what I can do to add them to my arsenal. I do have one “gripe” (I use air quotes since I’m reaching, they are beautifully made and look great). I wish they came with a shield, I’d have paid an extra $10 or so for an arduino shield that I could solder 2 sets of header pins into and pushed straight into an arduino and then plugged the header straight into it. That’s teh one bit of the the whole piece of hardware that doesn’t seem well thought out. You have these lovely sleek perspex enclosed things, and then you have to plug the ribbon cable into a separate arduino that is just hanging out, and then plug that into your computer. I’m toying mentally with the idea of either integrating them with the 128 faceplate, or making them hot plug with the 128 so I keep the arduino in there plugged into the usb hub I’ll have in there. That way I plug the stribe into the Monome and the Monome into the computer, Ideally I’d love for it to be integrated, but them I’m concerned that the two are joined at the hip, we’ll see, long way to go.
Monome kits I’m very excited about, looking forward to having a smaller more nimble friend for my big ole’ Arduinome. I ordered my green LED’s from Jameco, and am now in the hunt for a 128 faceplate in aluminum with no visible screw holes. If anyone has any sources let me know, if and when I find something I’ll post it here. The plan is to try and get 80% of the boring soldering done ASAP – mainly the logic boards. Then hand the partially constructed work to my wife to wrap and tease me under the tree for the next 3 weeks. Come xmas I know what I’m doing.
More info and images coming very soon.
Huge thanks to Tehn at Monome for making the kits possible and to Josh for the Stribes.
