robot porn

More Arduino tinkering

This was just a test in LED matrix soldering and multiplexed switching, but everything worked right away with about twenty lines of code. Neat.

Update: Yes, this means I went out and bought an Arduino. Might become a business too, but sssh!

One Laptop per childish adult

My XO Laptop has arrived. After a short detour via Austin, TX (thanks for ordering it for me, big cousin) and almost three weeks of United States Postal Service limbo it finally is mine. (Okay, the German customs had some fun with it which allowed me to sit in their Berlin office for almost 2 hours and watch the painfully slow processing of my packet. Think as east block style agency meeting slow motion village post office. Only slower. Finally I could have it for only 18 Euros of tax after convincing them it was a gift as well as a toy.)

Of all the 400 color combinations of the logo I of course received the one clashing most with the laptop’s green plastic: mint and sort-of dark green, both quite off the main hue, ah well. I’ll learn to love it.

It doesn’t look as small as it is next to my 12″ Powerbook, most likely because the Powerbook is not so big to begin with.

This is more accurate although I may have extraordinarily big or small hands, so maybe it is not so informative as a picture.

So what am I planning to do with it except for showing off? First, there are some interesting programs (”activities”) already installed, the most interesting being the TamTam SynthLab, a Max/MSP based visual synthesizer modeler. Here’s a video of SynthLab in action. There is another activity called Measure which is a very simple oscilloscope. The XO’s audio input accepts a wider range of voltages compared to regular  computer soundcards, so it can be used as a flexible A/D converter.

A lot of improving and hacking of the XO is currently done and all over the web. Some people want to increase the analog input’s versatility by a usb powered probe circuit to enhance the oscilloscope range. On the software side, because the XO runs on an adapted Linux distribution (with custom “Sugar” interface), we’ll certainly see a lot of applications being built for it in the near future. About 80,000 laptops were sold to individuals like me, so a lot of them are now in the hands of hackers and tinkerers.

And finally, the XO may have a lot of differences to regular laptop computers, but in the end it is a computer by design, so even if development for its regular system stalled, there will be someone putting together a special Ubuntu distro. So, no worries that this system cannot be used for something in the end. It does already run Doom.

NitroTracker now first wireless MIDI sequencer of the universe

0xtob has released the new 0.3 version of his Nintendo DS NitroTracker, now with full bidirectional DSMIDIWifi functionality! w00t! The wait for my DS launcher card becomes longer every second now…

Basically, NitroTracker will now act as a wireless sequencer for any software (or computer-connected hardware) instrument. I believe this is a first. It’s not the wheel, but the first wireless MIDI sequencer software evar (though you can use M-Audio’s MidAir technology similarly).
Vice versa, NitroTracker now plays back samples via incoming MIDI note messages. I can’t think of a sensible application for that feature right now, but surely the crazy people on the interwebs will put it to good use.

I’m sure there are legal reasons to consider, but I really can imagine that you could sell a bundled DS launcher card pre-loaded with this and other software some time in the future, say NAMM/Musikmesse 2008. Running homebrew and all that diy fumbling can be a little to arcane to some musicians and I guess there always is a target group that just wants a boxed product.

Nintendo DS = wireless MIDI controller

Tob has just told me about DSMidiWifi — a program for Nintendo DS handheld gaming consoles that sends out MIDI data to a host application on a computer. Play any MIDI instrument, virtual or real, by tapping on the DS’s touchscreen, KaossPad-style. (Actually, you can control anything controllable via MIDI, which is about everything electrical in existance, given the right interface.) Chiptune fans also can have the DS receive MIDI data in realtime and use it as an instrument.

Now I really consider having a DS on my x-mas wishlist…

Tiger Tunes

My 1970 EKO Tiger Organ fortunately worked after a little cleaning, but it was still out of tune, about a quarter note too low. Switching the main power selector from 220 to 240 volts changed nothing about that (which is good), so I opened the case again in search of a tuning knob. There is none.

There are, however, 12 oscillator circuits, one for each note of the octave, and each board has big tuning pots (or maybe variable capacitors; I don’t really know). So although the organ sounded fine when being played because all 12 notes were off the same amount from the standard tuning, I had to re-tune all 12 circuits.

I wanted it to be quite exact, as tuning means opening the whole device, something I don’t want to do too often, so I googled for a tuning program and the first thing I found is Instrument Tuner for Windows, which is shareware but works for 30 days. Having a frequency display that shows how much the current note is off made it quite easy to completey tune the organ in 20 minutes. Now I’m playing “House of the rising sun”.