steve cooley presents

I was able to test out synthseqr live with my band Haptic Synapses, the night we also played with Antacid Crew, and it was a lot of fun! I posted a video of us playing and synthseqr is in there, but I wanted to make a new video to show the progress I’ve been making. Derek Scott is also working on some great functionality coming soon, and of course he’s the chief architect of Steppa, which synthseqr runs on top of. So check it out and let me know what you think.

Ok, so I know I’ve been severely radio-silent for the last 6 months or so.  We had our second baby, I got a 3d printer, and decided that I need to get back into a regular exercise schedule.  So free time at night is scheduled very tightly. I know I previously stated that the 3d printer wouldn’t be a distraction, but I was way wrong. It’s a huge distraction.

Anyway, between it all, I have two nights a week that are explicitly scheduled for development of beatseqr and other related projects. Enter: synthseqr.

Synthseqr

About two years ago, I started to think about what would be next, once beatseqr was up and running, and it seemed fairly obvious that a complimentary tool would be something for melodic sequencing.  At the time I hadn’t consciously intended to copy the interface of anything, but it turns out that the idea that was new to me, of course, isn’t a new idea at all.  I love the 16 step sequencer workflow. It seems very natural to me for the kind of music I like to make, so I wanted something to help with synths while I rock some beats with beatseqr.  Synthseqr is intended to play that part.

Frankly, it’s just not working yet, and there’s an insane amount of work left to do to get it ready to show off the way I want to.  But I wanted to post this to let you know that I’m still here. I’m still working on projects.  If you’ve emailed me, I do intend to get back to you about a time frame for beatseqr availability.  I won’t make any more excuses.  I’m just working at my bandwidth limit. Whew, have you ever had two young kids?  I need a nap.

I ordered a thing-o-matic. It should arrive in a month. Then another month to build it. Then I can get on to the important task of making beatseqr keychains.

No, but seriously, I think I can prototype top panel layouts and button arrays using the 3d printer. That could be a welcome change from the seemingly endless cycle of wasted time and money while producing new… things. Crap. I’m supposed to not say any more, aren’t I.

That’s a lot of beatseqrs!

It took a few iterations, but I think this works. Oh. Haha. I just realized how similar this look is to the version 3 acrylic cases. That’s probably why I like it. Anyway… I know the whole world is collapsing, but I’m pretty much done with research for version 4.51. I have a few of these boxes, then capacity for about more 10 boxes. Then I start to run out of some parts that are end of life’d, and I’ll have to re-evaluate my options.

What I do need to do is set up some customer relationship management infrastructure. But, I can do that behind the scenes.

Interesting. Took a *long* time. Food for thought.

I’m going to test out a laminated paper artwork overlay. Here’s a first pass. Actually … Second pass. First one sucked bigtime. This one feels pretty good. I’ll post another photo when it’s laminated and mounted to the case.

Alright, this jig I made to hold the dremel flex shaft horizontally worked *beautifully*. I hand-programmed the gcode, and I obviously have some more fine tuning to do, but overall, I’m on the right track!

Here’s the nice clean hole the jig produced. Adjustments required, but almost there.

Here’s the jig that’s holding the case down.

Video of the jig in action:

Alright so one of the last hurdles to jump before I’m ready for production is being ready to cut holes in the sides of the enclosures for the USB cable. I’ve been doing this by hand with a dremel with *extremely* variable results. :-/ So, when my pal Jim was up for a visit earlier this year, he helped brainstorm on some ideas and this was the concept we ended up with. Using the dxf files for the cnc machine, I was able to locate the hole pattern and design a new piece that will bolt on to the existing z axis gantry. This new piece, with the help of some shape lock, securely holds a flex shaft attachment for a dremel… Which in theory should let me jig a beatseqr enclosure to the table and cut nice clean square holes without and problems or sloppiness. In theory. But man, I’m getting really close to having the infrastructure in place to do what I want. Getting pretty exciting up in here!!

When I have a bit more time, I’ll post a video, but I just couldn’t locate mechanically fastening LRF’s to the specs I need. So I drew up a concept on some paper, redrew it in illustrator, exported it to dxf, imported it to sheetcam, and cut a casting mold. I used the smooth-on shore hardness 40 silicone since I’ve decided it’s too tough to work with for my buttons… Turned out pretty good! Maybe a little too tall. But it will be easy enough to slice off this mold and try again. I’m loving the time from concept to iteration. Very fast!! And I’m not committed to hundreds of failed designs. Just a couple few. I’ll even use these for experimental projects.

Pretty good! This case is a “scratch and dent” kind of situation, so I feel pretty good about how the silicone buttons turned out with the new casting mold.

Research and development continues with cutting (and recutting, and recutting) the new silicone button casting mold. I’ll be verifying the dimensions tonight, but things are moving along nicely. I may be able to get one of the new v4.51 boards close to fully assembled. Which I am very
much looking forward to. The last major task is to engineer a jig to hold a dremel flex shaft that will attach to my cnc machine. This will let me cut a hole for the USB jack with precision and repeatability on the case. After that, I’ll be able to kick into a higher gear for producing units and kits. Whew!

Fail.

a sea of machineable wax chips. This mold would end in disaster.

Present and future casualties of my learning process

Try number 3. This one went well after 5 days of chipping away at it.

Smooth-on dragonskin-30, a two part a/b platinum cure silicone, in the happiest place on earth: a beatseqr button mold

It. Looks. GOOD!

version 4.5 has been submitted for a limited test run. Here are the improvements:

0. using eagle cad pro, so that means I now have schematics!
1. highly rectilinear PCB component placement. Obey the grid.
2. surface mount headers for critical pins on the arduino mega. assuming I can get them soldered easily, this will solve the major assembly problem I was embarrassed by on previous versions. (H/T: Kevin… thanks for bringing these to my attention)
3. improved hackable mini protoboard area.
4. improved hackable pins on arduino mega headers.
5. holes for support legs on faders.
6. improved spacing of ledtacts and associated resistors.. should make assembly a little easier.
7. moved the arduino mega’s USB port closer to the edge of the board.
8. WAY improved beatseqr branding on the board.
9. silkscreen on both sides!
10. improved extra pin access to faders and potentiometers.
11. squeezed a piece of art onto the board. It is contained inside the LCD cutout area, so as long as I don’t plow right into it, it should be a really cool limited edition. (5 pieces)
12. included holes to mechanically affix the arduino mega to the board. The units I’ve shipped so far have had problems staying plugged in, and this should solve that problem.

Otherwise, this version, pin-out-wise, is the same as version 4. I’ll be working on changing some things from here, but this version was designed to get me back up to speed on my new tool set.

No jokin’ around. I barely have a clue what’s going on with Cadsoft Eagle. I had never used it for anything before this version of beatseqr, so I have no idea what the results are going to be. I’ll have to retool just about every other aspect of production as a result of making the switch from Advanced Circuits’ PCB Artist on windows to Eagle CAD on the Mac, but I think this is going to pay off in the long run. I want to start making mutations of this board, and I just couldn’t see the way forward any more with PCB Artist. Ironically, Advanced Circuits still had the best price for the PCB fabrication needs I have at this time, so not a total loss for them.

So, now I wait for my submission to clear DFM checks and head into production. Then I wait for my boards to show up. Then I need to build one out and verify everything works. If it does, then I have to redesign the CNC tooling for the PCB cutouts and the case completely, then redesign the silicone button mold and produce it in machinable wax. I have no idea what the state of my silicone parts are in, so could be ugly on that front.

There are a couple few other things I need to figure out too. I probably need to reorder some parts. I haven’t found LRF support that I like. Nothing seems to stick to this PCB case, so I’ll have to source some I can mechanically fasten to the case or, much worse, fabricate a solution myself.

Anyway, three of these units will be probably be available for USD$349 plus shipping and export duties where applicable. It’s going to take me a while to dial all the fabrication steps in, but hopefully by the end of april 2011, there will be some units available.

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Woohoo! I’ve been working on trying to get this monolithic button array figured out for months, and I finally have it all dialed in.

So this, along with the major progress (as seen below) I’ve been making with the new cases, I’m feeling pretty good about beatseqr version 4!

If you’re really interested in how I make my silicone buttons, I wrote an extensive article on my fine art blog about it. Check it out!

Almost done! Just need to go buy a couple of knobs. I’m getting a really good feel for what materials work and how to use them. Woohoo!! Also, i did this track with it, using reason:

Serial number 8 final assembly test by stevecooley