Lots of things have happened including my laptop failing when I plugged it in when I was in Berlin recently.  I guess the power supply was not as universal as it was supposed to be.  Back up and running, thanks to my extended warranty on my Dell.  A nice fellow came out to fix it.

My wife Sally and I had a great trip to Berlin and Hungary.  We were invited to a symposium on “Light Art” in Pecs, Hungary. More on that in a later post.

ArcAttack had their run on Americas Got Talent.  They did amazingly well considering they did it with very little money!

I assisted with  a few things including some new more powerful LED arrays for the drum set and some woodwork for the Lightning proof MIDI guitar and the platforms for the last show.  It was great fun to throw in to help.  The creation of the Midi guitar in such a short time was truly amazing.  Here is a link with some more detail: Gizmodo

Here are a couple of photos from my phone:

I have received a number of inquiries about the availability of a drum controller kit. I am working on it. The kit will include a midi decoder board and 1, 2 or 3 FET driver boards depending on the number of output channels you need. Each FET driver board has 8 outputs.

Percussibot Kit

This photo shows the MIDI decoder, one FET driver board,  LCD and a set of menu buttons

The kit will include the assembled PC boards, LCD display with cable, three push buttons, ribbon cables and a “wall wart” 12 volt power supply(US only).

Documentation will include schematics, parts list with sources, instructions, suggestions about the use of the kit and a description of how it works. Source code is not included but hex files for programming your own PIC’s will be provided upon request. You are free to write your own code of course. The midi board can be programmed through an ICD connector on the board. Each channel on the FET boards use a 12F683 to generate independent PWM signals. These PIC’s need to be programmed off the board.

All IC’s are DIP socketed.

I’ll be selling assembled and tested boards to avoid issues with assembly problems.

The prices will be as follows:

Midi Decoder board $275

8 Channel FET board $325

(The prices do not include shipping.)

All spares can be ordered through Digikey.

I am not taking orders yet.  I’ll be ready to accept orders in a couple of weeks.

Please leave a comment or email me  if you would be interested in purchasing a kit.

The following is not a link. You have to type it in.

]]> http://www.resonancestudio.com/craigsblog/?feed=rss2&p=327 0 http://www.resonancestudio.com/craigsblog/?p=322 http://www.resonancestudio.com/craigsblog/?p=322#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:14:42 +0000 admin http://www.resonancestudio.com/craigsblog/?p=322 Lots of water under the bridge since last posting, sorry for the delay.

Sally and I were well absorbed in two events. The East Austin Studio Tour took place November 14th – 27th.  Sally was also preparing for a show at the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center in San Antonio.

Our studio was open both weekends for the tour. (ours was number 59) It was a lot of work to get ready.  I was working on new photos from our California trip and I built a new set of actuators for a new drum set to join the one I made for Arcattack. I rented another drum kit and John DiPrima programmed some songs. I also helped Sally with framing her work.

Photo from Don’s Photo stream:

In between the two weekends of the E.A.S.T. Arcattack played a gig at UT in front of the Tower. At least 1500 students showed up. We had the two drum sets in front of the stage. I say we but I didn’t help set-up but I helped pack it up at the end.
Search on YouTube for “Arcattack UT” and you can find some video of the event.

I’ve added two new videos to the Gallery so take a look.  These were the sequences played during EAST.

Sally’s show in San Antonio is up through February 13.  You can see more about the show here.

Cheers!

I hauled my 4×5 camera with me.  It’s a custom camera I built years ago, based on a 75mm Schneider Super Angulon lens and some surplus camera parts.  It’s a compact camera for a 4×5, but it has no shift or tilt adjustments.  It has a rare helical mount made specifically for this lens by Schneider.  It took me about 4 months to get the part when I ordered it.

Here is a Photo from the trip and a shot of the camera.  I’ve spent most of the day scanning about 20 shots from the trip.  I scan the negatives at 3200 dpi so they end up about 475 megabytes per shot.  Lots of pixels!

I’ll put up some of the photos in my blog gallery in a few days. (I do sell prints)

I hear the guys are happy to be touring after the long gig in the desert.

Check  Here for show dates.

This one is from an English language newspaper from Abu Dhabi, The National.

ArcAttack arrives in Abu Dhabi

Looks like a bunch of happy guys.  The band is assisted by a great local audio team and an AWESOME sign.

July 6 – Got a message that all is going well in Abu Dhabi.

The new kit has all metal components and attaches quickly to any drum set.  The controller is now more compact and contained in an off-the-shelf LMB chassis.   I now have a full set of drawings for the actuators and the controller design and a full parts list.

My goal was to finish it in time to ship out to Abu Dabi with the Arcattack crew. I had hoped to shoot some nice photos and a video before it had to ship out but I ran out of time.  That will have to wait till September when they return from their Europe tour.

Check out ArcAttack’s web site for show dates.

Here are a few pics from my phone camera: