First half

The steadicam project has progress. Constant design changes nearly but solutions are being found.

Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Second life

No I'm not referring to the site of seemingly endless cyber real estate but to my new blackberry.

Now, once again I can regularly and nearly effortless update this blog on the go. What a wonderful and apparently indispensable part of hardware.

New adventures await and I can't wait either....
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

progress, step by step

still working on the steadicam. hopefully the jig for cutting the holes for the bearings happens soon. i love working with aluminium....

not all is lost

but mein blackberry is. So hence no regular updates except this one. but more to follow soon

Hard pressed

You know you're hard pressed for money when you dream you have an extra electric guitar you don't use, and you plan to sell it to finance another music project.

Oh ArduinoBoy if only I had the money to finish you by buying a programmable cartridge and a cable. At least the main electronics are soldered and waiting. Sigh
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Close but so far...

Now my monome works and the stupid FTDI windows driver won't. Its heavily annoying but I guess someday soon I'll have another crack at it. Right now I just wanna finish my arduinoboy and that needs a gameboy cable and a programmable cartridge. Funding that is a pain though. Oy poor student days really suck.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Long overdue

The MIDI box 128 nears completion, just a pity I lost a drill bit in the process cos now the LCD with the cable already attached needs 3mm holes to get mounted.

I'll have to see how I mount or join the neck to the brain box but seeing as today is Arduinoboy day I'll worry about that later.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Tricky for me

Sometimes I think that having this bad wiring or crap hand eye co-ordination really screws up what I want to be able to play musically, but then I find ways around that lot.

I'm really glad my voice doesn't need coordinating and whistling a melody into the blackberry's voice recorder is great for saving the inspiration.

Now if I can just get my makeshift Ztar/MIDIbox 128 working with a good tactile feedback, (hopefully not too clicky and a shallow touch) I'll be geared to sequence up a storm.

it would also be great if the sparkfun buttons in my monome had a shallower touch but I'm also just glad its working and finally finished.

Now if only monomeserial would behave and actually work.... Oy.

SID synth and makeshift Ztar... You're next, and when the java practical exam is done in a few hours I'm mentally freed to do a few undone things. Mmm better get my Reason 4 serial number if I'm going re-install.... So much to do and only one life... Limited time... Never rolls at the speed we want :)
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

The next in line

Is my gameboy / arduinoboy project and today the arduino part arrived. With the exception of a cartridge programmed with mGB I'm nearly there, well.... Almost now to buy commponents and lay out the design on prototype board.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

One down a few to go

And here it is the finished monome.... Finally. Not as neat as a waterjet cut but it works, and that's my first concern.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

new turns

So the waterjet cut never happened, but, my java unit 3 project is done. So now its a little studying that's past and hopefully my projects can partially resume.

Now if only I can get enough money for the aluminium blocks for my steadicam. I wonder about the idea of prototyping some parts with wood ....mmmm
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Waterjet cut and its done

This week sees a waterjet cut plate for the monome and hopefully a cartridge for the gameboy mGB hack. I'm looking forward to the arduino brain arriving. Should be about 10 days..... I hope
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Tools tools tools

If you don't have the tools you can't do the job....

For the first time in my life I now feel I have enough tools to finally begin doing something, and, making some money.

Steadicam, drum sander, SID synths, monomes and MIDI will now soon scream ahead....

I just need some help re-arranging the workspace and getting it all up and going.

Oy, again, sooooo much to do....
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

More spring

Actually currently its like more autumn. But the change of season is refreshing and I steadily face new changes, some welcome some not.

Parts continue to collect for the steadicam and it becomes steadily more a lathe issue...mmmm
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

More bits still...

The steadicam project gains speed, or more specifically parts.
Now I need my lathe going and some aluminium and about 16 skateboard bearings, amongst other things.

It seems like I might crack this quite soon. That however does depend on the abundance of parts.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Drill time -1024 holes

So I've been lazy but now its within reach. I just need to drill holes where I punched and the cut out the remaining polyethylene.
Not the best material, cos it scratches but it was cheap and hopefully makes triggering easier because I went with a 10mm piece. So this will be the plate inside "the box of tricks".

Then I suppose its java coding time with the skymonome library,
and I can do it but right now I'm soooo lazy.

Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Another option

Finally some extremly kind soul made a hack to turn a bliptronic 5000 toy synth into a usable monome.

I'm thinking using more than one of these can make the coolest ztar but with LED feedback. I'll start with one bliptronome and see the size of the button matrix first(cos I've got big guitarist paws.. LOL)

Although my longsuffering monome build is now finally within reach I still want a more compact solution for a 4 octave wearable and programmable ztar device.

So now again much much more excitement and kudos to Wil for his work enabling this. You're the man dude!!
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

And it was cracked wide open...

I've been struggling with java wondering what my grand purpose learning it is.

In scratching through the java API I've now just found java.sound.midi and the familiar midi info I've sought for soooo long.

Now I can finally begin using java the way I want to do something useful with MIDI. Now just gotta crack the making my own digital in/out devices... I needed some excitement and its finally, finally here!!! Party on!
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Almost there

Finally I am approaching the end of building my monome. Just gotta do a drawing for having the faceplate waterjet cut and then bridge 3 damaged tracks.

Then hopefully its play time.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Monome day

Its has finally come, I'm collecting my monome's button pcboard and getting a sheet of 10mm perspex for the face plate, then its all funky amber LED's and a little soldering.... And we maniacally raise our mad scientist hands and scream "its alive!! its alive!!"
And so another project if realised after 3 years.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

As one project is completes....

As I wait for the final monome button board, which I hope arrives or happens friday, I begin to contemplate anew what's next.

Mmmm well I'd have to say simultaneously, a monome 4x4 foot controller, various steadicam pieces and a new rackmount flight case where my Alesis desk can be on top.

Then after that perhaps finish the SIDs one thru 4. Just depends if I get a suitable power supply.....
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Build it and it will work?!?

So little time its seems. Well currently anyway. I have 2 springs to use for my steadicam build but I'm thinking I may need another 4 to properly accommodate the full range of motion.

But first I'll try the 2 pulley single spring version. When is the question....
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Spring into action

More about another idea here. Making a wiimote haken-esque controller -interesting. Making a 3-axis controller with more tactile feedback that a mere perspex sheet -waaaaay better.

So right now if anyone has about 600 odd 20mm springs of a 4mm diameter and 0.4mm wire with about 200g yield and 11 or 10 turns....that they don't need, gimme a call.

But again its a case of hurry up and wait -aint got no cash, aint got no style, aint got no honey to make you smile but don't worry.... Be happy.....until you can just go buy it :)
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

The ultimately customisable and expressive music controller

So a while back I had this idea.... from watching Dream Theatre's "score" dvd and in particular Jordan Rudess playing the intro to Octavarium.

Its there that I first saw what's now become known to me as a Haken continuum controller.

It was a marvelously emotive and inspiring musical performance and I too coveted such an expressive controller.

I doubt that I'll ever be able to afford one AND the Roland V-Synth though.

So after some email to and from Lippold Haken about vertical scaling, (he was most kind and helpful, so if you can afford a continuum, buy one from him)and potentially setting up the continuum to play scales vertically like guitar. He very kindly replied saying a continuum is not conducive to such a setup.

That was a bummer for me because I've been musically liberated by guitar, and its from that I cant scale horizontally on any keyboard.

So as usual, I got thinking with my improvisor brain. And then my improvising brain said "hey there are some interesting hacks and controller possibilties using the IR camera in a wii remote together with a programming language.

So the idea was partly born of an improvised need, people like Johhny Chung Lee's foresight about wii remote hardware potential, and my fascination with things like FTIR, the Reactable and multitouch surfaces.

So what we have here is... an endeavour by myself, new to programming and specifically Java programming, to write a program for all platforms, where you like me, can gain the expressive performance capabilties of something like a Continuum from a little DIY, a wii remote and my software.

So what can you do with it? Well here's what I want to be able to do with it, but first an explanation of what you will need to make it work.

1. One or two Wii remotes.
2. A USB bluetooth dongle OR built in bluetooth hardware(unless you wanna go the hardwired I2C route) 3. A bluetooth driver or stack(more on this later).
4. A glass or perspex frame on a stand with an IR LED frame (or an IR LED array with a center hole for the Wii remote to poke through)and at the bottom of the frame an adjustable mount for Wii remotes to see the surface.
5. A glove of sorts that will reflect IR.
6.A rear projection solution if you want visual feedback.

By the way, I'm going the instructables website route of removing an old LCD screen from its casing (because its backlight is broken, and placing it on top of an overhead projector. This I intend to then rear project onto the surface above the wiimote for visual feedback.

I want to be able to use this musically as well as to control and animate things in realtime in Autodesk Maya (via digital puppeteering-again, but more on that later, mostly cos that's also a wiimote/mocap software idea)

So musically here's the list.
1. A multi-touch controller outputting MIDI through virtual ports as well as out from my Edirol USB MIDI interface.

2. OSC output.

3. support for near enough the whole MIDI spec.

4. Through timed pulsing groups of LED's (like embedded in a resin puck and connected/synced via zigbee WIFI, a fiducial recognotion type functionality.

Okayn now consider that by having a four or three LED's embedded in a puck, seen by the wiimote below the glass/perspex surface and pulsing at a set rate with other pucks all in sync via zigbee, you can track the puck as a binary number and more pucks at the same 100 times per second but have (I hope), position AND rotation values for each.

So going the fiducial route one could control Reason like the Reactable but with cheaper processing overheads than a normal camera/rear projection processed feed.

Visual feedback will require building into the program a visual output module, I'll get to that when I have more java experience..

So normally a single Wii remote can track 4 IR points 100 times a second via bluetooth and 200 times a second by hardwired I2C, I'm led to believe.

So if we pulse all the LED's sequentially(which will need syncing probably) hopefully the number of tracking points can be increased to 16 points 25 times a second.

Also by hardwiring 2 adjacently aimed wiimotes and pulsing the IR LED's on the surface above, in a synchronised manner, we can get 32 multitracked points 25 times a second.

And by faster pulsing AND hardwiring wiimotes to the PC via I2C we can hopefully improve on that too.

Well that's loosley what I wanna do and I've made a start. As time goes on and I learn more about Java and things like arduino and I2C, zigbee etc. these listed things will become a reality I hope.

But hey, its MY idea and you read it here on my blog first.

So this will be my free software gift to the world(if you like me, can't afford a continuum). I already have psuedocode written and detailed features listed (for the software design) to offer a functionality like a continuum but it will also allow vertical scaling and guitar-like features.

But hey if it empowers you like it will me consider a donation please.

If anybody is interested and wants to be involved, get in touch. Many hands make light work.

Onward!!
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Time

Another weekend approaches and the question is what to do.

Not that abject boredom is a problem but that I inherently feel pressured to spend my time wisely. Must be the pressing studies and the insane schedule.

I think some guitar playing is called for and perhaps even work on the lathe.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Software advances

Studying has been quite challenging at times but I'm starting to feel more confident as a programmer.

Its really an exposure and practice thing. Problem is as always, not always being motivated enough to get started......but today I worked like a demon... And enjoyed it.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Piece by piece

Finally I have the active guitar circuit I sought. I've started the ball rolling for the new monome pc board.

Now I need the money to drum sand the fretboard of my new guitar and pay the rest of the artwork costs on the monome board.

Yet again patience is called for....
Oy...
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Which one first??

Apon further contemplation of the garage door motor, I thought I'd make a remote controllable dolly/jib for my little camcorder and shoot my damn film alone on DV just to get it out there.

I'll have to make another list I think. Prioritise and begin...
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Hum drum

So I now have no shortage of potential parts and motors for my drum sander. I just need time to build and finish it. Now having cracked the first Java exam that may happen.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Tools

Next step is getting all my stuff back, starting with my lathe. Then hopefully I can complete my drum sander. I just wish people would answer me.....
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

We are empowered...

Its great to have tools that just work. No fuss, no mess, no drama. Blackberry. Man I love my new 8520 it really is a great upgrade from ye olde 7290. Pictures included from now and big smiles all round....on my part anyway.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!