Rich Decibel’s Kequencer

It’s totally excellent when a simple concept results in something inspiring and fun. [Rich Decibel]‘s Kequencer is a good example, starting off as many projects do: “I had an idea the other day and I couldn’t decide if it was good or not so I just built it to find out.” Be still our hackable hearts!
[Rich] built this sleek little sequencer from scratch and while the design may not seem very novel to begin with–eight square wave oscillators with on/off switches and pitch knobs, played in sequence–but the beauty of it is in the nuances of interaction and the potential for further hacking. From watching the video you can see how the controls can be used in very interesting ways to create and mutate adorable chippy tone patterns. Check it out after the crossfade.

Make your own solenoids, then play the xylophone

Learn to manufacture your own solenoids and then use them to play the xylophone by watching the tutorial video after the break. [Humberto Evans] and the team at Nerd Kits do a great job of not only manufacturing the coils, but the xylophone itself. The bars are machined from some aluminum stock and they take you down the rabbit hole with they why’s and how’s of engineering the keys.
We’re unlikely to replicate this machining process but the solenoids are another story all together. Starting at about 3:30 you can learn about designing, building, and using these little marvels. They’re basically an electromagnetic cuff with a metal slug in the middle. The solenoid seen above uses a body milled from HDPE and wrapped with magnet wire. The slug in the center is steel, with a few rare-earth magnets at the top. When you run current through the coil it repulses the magnets on the slug, witch then strikes the xylophone key. Using a MOSFET and a protection diode, actuating them is as simple as sending a digital high from your microcontroller of choice.
We’ve seen solenoids used to play a vibrophone before, but those were commercial units. Making your own hardware is far more hardcore.

Homebrew Mp3 player with some bonus features

When [falldeaf] set about making his own homebrew Mp3 player, he ended up at the same place we most do while looking into the subject, the wonderful Minty Mp3. Basing the design on [Adafruit Industries] popular board, we are presented The Mp3 Garbler.
First change of the project was to replace the sometimes difficult to find ST013, or the more expensive ST015T Mp3 decoder chip, and the CS4340 digital to analog cconverter with a single vs1001k, which we have checked out before. And while yes VLSI says that the 1001 series is a discontinued product, and it may be a bit hard to find now days, they also offer an updated model on their website, which should suit the application fine.
Next up is a useful LCD display sporting a Sparkfun lcd backpack, that shows us all the important to know music info. And finally there is a 10×14 led matrix display, that can be used to display all sort of user feedback icons, and is driven by a MAX6953, which we think is a pretty spiffy chip.
While there is no schematic, there are brd files, and source code available for your PIC18F452 or similar micro controller to complete your own

MIDI input for the Kaossilator

This isn’t strictly a MIDI input hack; [Furrtek] pulled off an alternate input hack for the Kaossilator that he’s currently using with a MIDI connection. In its unhacked form the Kaossilator is a small touchpad-based sound manipulation tool. [Furrtek] sniffed out how the touchpad data is read and used on the little device. He then purposed an ATtiny2313 as the core of a circuit that spoofs those signals. The microcontroller now listens for incoming MIDI data, looks up the proper signal translations in a table, then outputs them to the Kaossilator.
In the video after the break you can see that it works perfectly, with no lag or noticeable problems. As we alluded to at the top, there could be so much more done with this. Since the ATtiny2313 is merely translating MIDI into touchpad signals, the input could be anything. The first thing that comes to mind is a dance floor that changes the music based on how many people are out there tearing it up. Read the rest of this entry »