my trusty HR-16 (or one of them at least) has bit the dust. think i have a fault in the master reset circuit, according to the service manual.

it was the one with the led’s as well. what a waste.

i shall be circuit bending a seal! (cheers phil!)

no seals were hurt/damaged during the making of this clip… and before i get any comments about animal cruelty, i wouldn’t even get it past customs shoved down my pants in the first place, unfortunately. ;O)

although i am intriegued as to what the fuck they do with the blow torch in the dying seconds of the clip!

sorry about that folks, but we’re back in action now…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

some thoughtless tweaking…

well they are finally here, check them out.

well, i have a fair few things on the old bread boards just now, and lots to build for various folk, here’s a quick run down of whats coming up.

analogue dub siren – 555′s just dont cut it and seem so very popular for these things for some reason, god knows why. anyway, the pcb’s are off for fabrication as i type, so kits and units will be ready in the next month.

amdek pck100 clone – the pck100 is a wonderful little analogue drum/percussion synth, and with a few mods it really kicks out some nice sub bass noises with huge decays!

roy gwinns guitar effects processor – throbbing gristles chris carter made this schematic hugley popular and was part of their signature sound, but again, why just clone it when you can modify it! the bread board prototype is great, and with the use of a wave shaper lfo instead of the original lfo from roys schematic, it really cranks out some cool sounds. (mervyn, i’ll have this finished for you soon, i promise!)

pattern synths – the first batch are being finished this week and should be ready for sale, and samples, videos and a whole page of their own is coming. some of jamie and lenny’s tunes with these things are fricken quality and should be out on industrial strength records at some point.

sequencers – a simple and effective way of building sequencers for resistance controlled oscilators, such as the simple oscillators in the synths section and the weird sound generator by ray wilson. 4, 8 and 16 step versions planned with forward/reverse and pseudo-random counts, which can be easily adapted for control voltage.

and if all thats not enough, an open source, arduino based modular midi controller.

why are there only 24 hours in a day, and why do i have to work for 8 of them?

i’ve been updating the synth pages with some schematics for cmos based noise boxes.

synth pages…>>>

Lots of lovely PCB’s for the pattern synth! (finally)

ROHS compliant and ready for building, hopefully at a workshop i have planned, and a few for sale as finished units and kits.

this is something that i, and countless other people, have been working on for years now, but, as my experiments and hard work continue, i have found that 13 hours sleep, 3 bacon rolls with brown sauce and several cups of tea have done sod all to cure my hang over.

Guilherm asked to see a schematic for the IR sensors, so i’ve knocked a quick one up in Eagle for anyone else who’s interested. In the circuit, in its most basic form, the IR led is always on, connected to 5volts with a suitable resistor for the IR diode you are using in relation to the power supply.The IR sensor is connected in the same way, i found a 10k resistor worked in this case, but play arround with different values as it will affect is performance.

Both the IR led and sonsor should be connected to ground.

Between the resistor and the sensor, a jumper wire is connected to what ever you are using to read the sensor. This can be an analogue comparitor connected to an led circuit, or in my case in the videos below. an analogue input on the Arduino, either directly or via a demultiplexor.

Simple arduino code to read sensor and send to serial/USB.

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop()
{
Serial.println(analogRead(5));
delay(20);
}

Simple Arduino code to read sensor and switch on an LED connected to Pin 8:

//works between 200 and 300 threshold with 5mm perspex.
//direct light triggers sensor and sensor only works with perspex when inverted, trigger = off.
int ledPin = 8;      // LED connected to digital pin 9
int analogPin = 5;   // potentiometer connected to analog pin 3
int threshold = 300;

void setup()
{
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);   // sets the pin as output
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop()
{

if (analogRead(analogPin) < threshold) {
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  // turn LED ON
} else {
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
Serial.println(analogRead(analogPin));
}

}

In this code, the led is switched on when the sensor value exceeds a certain reading, but could be adapted to dim an LED using PWM very easily. At the moment i have 16 sensors connected via two 4051 demultiplexor IC’s, connected to two analogue inputs on the arduino, and several digital pins to control which pins are read on the 4051. The Arduino then pumps the sensor readings out to a TI 5940 led controller as PWM signals to control the LED’s.

Hope this helps  Guilherm!

While trying to decide what to do with 10 of these 4052b demultiplexers I bought by mistake, I stumbled upon an interesting method of creating a squarewave step sequencer! Its perfect apart from the fact there are only 4 steps, but the method works, so 8 and 16 step versions should be no problem at all, even if it does involve a shed load of diodes…

The issue with these cmos oscillators is the fact they aren’t voltage controlled in the normal sense, so using the standard Baby10 style 4017 sequencer wasnt really an option, until now! So far I have a tempo control, four individual step pitch controls and a master tune control, all running off of 2 oscillators and a handful of components and IC’s.

I love these cmos IC’s, they are like Lego building blocks for noise!!!

Video to follow when i find the camera…..