Braska is here still, helping with the hard stuff (posing and getting in the way). When I tell him “get the screwdriver” he always appears with a cocktail in his froggy hand, sipping.

There is a small, lo-fi speaker which [...]]]>

What follows is the destruction of the laughtop. This is not for the faint of heart!

Braska is here still, helping with the hard stuff (posing and getting in the way). When I tell him “get the screwdriver” he always appears with a cocktail in his froggy hand, sipping.

There is a small, lo-fi speaker which I just might keep!

The “mouse”:

This will host a rotary encoder when finished:

Closeup of the lo-fi speaker

Name of frog spelled in Greek: (missing the last α) “ΜΠΡΑΣΚ(Α)”

Lower part done.. now to the screen disassembly

This spring is what keeps the screen in position

Braska sits on laughtop’s screen and brain.

Screen, off

We like “windows”

Well, this is nice!!

Now, some cutting of plastic parts (specifically, the battery compartment) must take place.. I will have to replace the heat sinks also on the sid because they are BIIIIIIIGGGGG..

This is it. It is made like the one I’ve done for the SoundLab beside it. I scanned the panel with the holes, overlayed the picture I’ve made (actually it is just boxes and text) , printed it on glossy paper and then sprayed it with a [...]]]>

Made the panel for the WSG (Weird sound generator).

This is it. It is made like the one I’ve done for the SoundLab beside it. I scanned the panel with the holes, overlayed the picture I’ve made (actually it is just boxes and text) , printed it on glossy paper and then sprayed it with a matte varnish to give it that “professional” anodized look. If you look carefully though, it is still paper on sheet metal.

The big one is for midibox seq. [...]]]>

It is about time me and Braska started making a case for modules/synths we’ve made. The panels for the modules I’ve made are 12×12cm a unit and I have some standard panels made with 16 holes evenly spaced. These are the generique type that may house vcos, filters etc.

The big one is for midibox seq. which slowly but surely manifests on my desk. The others are for the soundlab I’ve finished and for an AVRsynth I’ve repackaged so this is a no-go.

So, the construction started by drilling holes for wooden dowels

… and marking the other wood panel where they should land

.. thus constructing the raw cabinet sized aprox. 72×36cm

The hard edges on the front side where smoothed with a router

.. and then it was painted with four coats of satin walnut finish (Water based, doesn’t stink, washes easily until it gets dry. Quite nice actually)

.. the balcony was a mess (and still is because I started something else

.. and here is after first coat

… and this is its current state, with soundlab fitted

The WSG is the next thing that will be fitted along with a yusynth filter and a midibox Midi2CV

(you can see that it is getting warm here on the white thermometer on the right!!)

I GOT A NIBBLER!!! HURAAAAHHH!!!!

Of course, the first person(?) to grab and test it how comfortable it is to sit on, was Braska:

The nibbler works like this: it passes the metal “jaw” you see in the pictures below through [...]]]>

Some time ago, Collin saw a nibbler in my future and the prophecy has now been fulfiled!

I GOT A NIBBLER!!! HURAAAAHHH!!!!

Of course, the first person(?) to grab and test it how comfortable it is to sit on, was Braska:

The nibbler works like this: it passes the metal “jaw” you see in the pictures below through the metal while keeping it in place. This way there is no distortion on the metal like when cutting it with scissors made for metal.

The jaw has a jagged edge or else it would be impossible to get a grasp on the sheet. It would slide off. So while cutting, it actually works like two pairs of scissors. It removes the middle section. This produces a curly string of material like the one you get when you slide the knife on butter.

To cut efficiently and without any distortion/bending, the upper “jaw” of the nibbler must be in full contact with the material . Otherwise, it would pull the metal up and bend it.

The material used here was aluminum, 2mm thick. It was VERY easy to cut it. It was like cutting a thick cardboard with a pair of scissors. It is extremely accurate too! if you have a guide, you can’t go wrong

Other tests included of cource PCBs that were cut like butter! It doesn’t leave a jaggy edge!

Cutting a .8mm thick aluminum sheet, was like cutting through paper. I found in the local hardware store a 1000×120x1.5mm aluminum sheet which I am going to get TOMORROW!!!

The hardest of all was a 1mm steel sheet. Now THAT was difficult. Thank god I wont have to work with this stuff after I get that aluminum sheet.

Now I can fit all my LCDs behind well (well, better) made panels. There is another thing I have to figure out. The smallest possible diameter that a hole must have so as to insert the jaw completely to start a cut from the inside of the panel.

From what I have tried up to now, it must be just a little more than 9mm in length.

Went today to the electronics shop to get some cheap stuff for the yusynth and saw this box for 6 euros. From what you can see, I got it. It is relatively small with a panel area of 15×9cm.

So I went on to repackage my avrSynth16 I had build sometime ago.

There was a failed attempt [...]]]>

Went today to the electronics shop to get some cheap stuff for the yusynth and saw this box for 6 euros. From what you can see, I got it. It is relatively small with a panel area of 15×9cm.

So I went on to repackage my avrSynth16 I had build sometime ago.

There was a failed attempt to house the synth inside a FIRA drawer from IKEA but the design had some flaws (And it was way to big to have it around).

The first step was to make a 15×9cm layout in inkscape and make objects that were the size of the underside of the components I would use. So I could layout the knobs and switches knowing that they’ll fit. Purple were the knobs, cyan were the switches.

I made the holes with my newly aquired tools that I mentioned in earlier posts (the step drill that is) and had the panel ready for sticking the graphics.

Since the step drill went up to 12mm diameter, the midi socket hole that needed 15mm diameter, got a little help from my old (t)rusty reamer. (I always had that tool! It belonged to my father from what I vaguely remember)

The simple design is always the best. Made in inkscape. (Super drawing program, open source!)

The time of the knob transplant was stressful. A few wires came loose. (The design is not so clean from what you can see)

So it was obvious that it would end like this.. A big spaghetti bundle.

The hardest job was to fit the boards inside the box. It took a lot of careful squeezing and pulling/pushing wires inside the box. This was done while the synth was playing from a sequencer. It kinda reminded me of some brain surgeries you see on TV where the patient is placed on the bed with an open head, and the doctors have electrodes touching his brains to see what is the problem. When the synth stopped responding I stopped pushing!!

You can see that the panel has a slight bulge at the center..

And now the publicity shots!

The AVRSynth has officially its panel. Drilled on a 3mm aluminum sheet sized at 27×21cm (almost an A4). It was a little difficult to correctly align the holes when drilling them because the drill bit had a tendency to drift off and walk away. The result was a random offset of each hole at about [...]]]>

The AVRSynth has officially its panel. Drilled on a 3mm aluminum sheet sized at 27×21cm (almost an A4). It was a little difficult to correctly align the holes when drilling them because the drill bit had a tendency to drift off and walk away. The result was a random offset of each hole at about 1mm (in random directions that is.).

Nevertheless, a panel I had made earlier was printed on photographic paper. To align these two, I punched small holes at the centers of the knob positions and turned it facing down (the paper) so I could see through the aluminum holes that it was all aligned (or at least there were no big offsets). I glued it with simple roll on glue and transfered the buttons and knobs from the cardboard panel they were on, to the aluminum one. Now it is a little mess underneath the panel but nevertheless everything works as planed.

I passed it’s output through MC-909 effects and it sounds wonderful. Even raw, it sounds pretty nice. I might make a demo with sounds coming out of the AVRSynth 16.

The svg file for the panel layout is here

Stay tuned for updates on the AVRSynth 32 + midibox project.

A family photo (extra members not shown

And this is how it sounds (a little tape delay added)

I had once stumbled upon Catweazle’s fractal synth. In the circuit benders forum it seemed that the project had come to a halt. But recently I realized that it was going on elsewhere.! Here.Also, the files can be found in [...]]]>

This is how fractalSynth looks like:

And this is how it sounds (a little tape delay added)

I had once stumbled upon Catweazle’s fractal synth. In the circuit benders forum it seemed that the project had come to a halt. But recently I realized that it was going on elsewhere.! Here.
Also, the files can be found in the forum or in http://www.gjcp.net/~catweazle/PICsynth/
There are two schematics and lots of mp3 samples if you want to hear how it sounds.

I decided against building a PCB in eagle and then etching, soldering, etc. and went for the perfboard. It is a very simple schematic and I pulled through it with relative ease. Just remember to leave a little space around the MicroChip so as to put the simple filter and the voltage stabilizer (a simple 7805 with two capacitors, nothing special).

The schematic mentioned 10K pots but since they are used as simple voltage dividers you can go (as I did) up to 100k with no apparent malfunction. I used a lot of female pin headers on the board (as you can see) and connected the pots and buttons with male pin headers. This is rather flimsy as a connection. You might not be able to go live with such a thing but, it is quick and easy.

The underside of the perfboard is all connected with solder. A difficult to correct method but again, it is quick and I can’t wait

I used a cardboard box because it was the only thing I could find around me at the time. I had some aluminum panels lying around but I would make noise and the kids would wake up. I have mentioned again the problem I have, making panels for my stuff.

Now I have a noisemaker in a shoeBox

I added a simple voltage stabiliser with a 7805 and two electrolytic capacitors and fed the voltage to the chip.

The pots were mounted on the cardboard (a tedious and dangerous job because the cardboard was thin and there is always the risk of ripping it appart.) and soldered with wire and pin headers.

Some special attention was given to the 7-segment LED that connects to the chip. I used 150 Ohm resistors instead of 200 Ohm mentioned in the schematic. The difference is not a big issue. (It would be if 10 Ohms where used for example). The resistors where directly soldered on the led pins because I wanted no other things than the led on the top side of its board in case I wanted to glue it on the cardboard.

So it looked like this:

The whole thing was put in the box after determining which pin of the led went to which pin on the chip. This made the wiring a bit of a rat’s nest.

So the final “product” was firmly closed to hide the ugliness of it’s interior.

The first tests were a reality.. And it WORKED!!!!!

The next step was to figure how it was working.!!

A big thanks should go here to Catweazle (you can find him in electro-music.com forum) for releasing the source code as well as the schematics. I put a programming header on the board so as to try some things myself.

The next thing is to put the shoeBox fractalSynth through my MC 909 and make a tune out of it !!