My Sloths works but is weak as shit. lol
The LED does nothing and the signal will produce CV enough to alter an oscillator but will not trigger a LPG.
I have a feeling there is an error in my old strip board design - also - this was well before I knew how cheap some of his pcb’s are lol.
I won’t do it to save a few bucks. Or else I wouldn’t buy Sam’s PCB either.
I’m learning KiCAD, and I need a few simple modules to set up the whole process from drawing schematics to assigning footprints to laying out the PCB, making the missing symbols and footprints, drawing/laying out the Panel, generating the Gerbers, and ordering everything (OK that part is sorted (*)…)
Including discovering the quirks of the different height of all Panel components (jacks,pots,switches,etc…) and multi-PCB designs to overcome them.
It is more fun if the resulting modules have at least some use.
The Sloth has the added advantage you can make a few with different speeds to use more than a single PCB of the 5 you get… It has the disadvantage (for my use case) of having only jacks (and LEDs), or that may be an advantage after all for a starter project…
(*) kind of… my last order has been send back by the post-office, claiming the address was incomplete.
JLCPCB sent me a picture of the address slip, it is perfectly legible and exact…
Sure, that makes sense. For my first “real” PCB design I did something like that, using an existing circuit I could be reasonably sure would work without breadboarding, in my case one of the Music From Outer Space modules. I made mistakes like getting some of the pots backwards and there are things I’d do differently today, but I still ended up with a functional and usable VCF.
The Sloth Chaos does have a pot. Its utility isn’t very clear, but it’s there! I think KiCad has all the symbols and footprints you’d need for it, not that you can’t come up with custom ones if you want to.
With the footprints you made for the tayda-jacks, I think everything is there.
The project I started with is a simple mixer, that gets you right in the “multi-story” PCB problem. you can also use a few of them in a synth… if the design is OK
The pots got me scratching my head for some time too, I hope they are right. But, if not, it’s just a small PCB with only the pots and “logarizing” resistors to redo, and it can be tested by soldering a single pot.
I think I have it all sorted out, but I haven’t ordered them yet, I’m still glancing over it every two or three days… Definitely will go in my next order. And with a Sloth design then…
@analogoutput Some PCBs of your design (busboard, MikroKosmos, Quantizer) were also in the returned order, as well as blanks designed by @d42kn355
Right, if you want to board mount the jacks that’s a non standard footprint. That plus board mounted pot would mean a 2-PCB design; if I were doing it I’d just panel mount either the jacks or the pot — but maybe you want a simple 2-board design for learning purposes.
Yes, right now I’m in the learning process.
I’m in love with MOTM Panel design
So once the process is all sorted out, the next modules will only have the pots/switches/LEDs PCB-mounted, and the jacks at the bottom will be wired to headers.
But that’s for when I’m really confident, as these modules will be bigger, will take more time designing, and be more expensive.
If the mixer or the sloth don’t work, that’s a TL07x, a few resistors and caps, and a pot (you can test the mixer with just one pot soldered… add the others only if it works), not much if it goes in the bin.
This is a killer rig, man! Can you talk a bit about that integrated Noise + SH? I was thinking about making something very similar to that. Also, do you have a quantizer?
I will direct you to this -
The Gerbers are up on my GitHub - but please note that there are issues with it - the bug fixes are pointed out by @ChristianBloch
I have @analogoutput 's Dual Quantizer, I just have not built it yet
Hey Sebastien,
I also have an arduino boy + mgb set up that I would love to be able to add some extra potentiometers to. I would love to take a look at any schematics and/or code you have for that project. Also, I never liked how MGB wants a different midi channel for each oscillator - does your version play all 3 wave channels in unison on one midi channel? Cuz that would be dope.
Really cracking stuff! I hope some of you guys open up online stores, it’d be great if there were some hobby-commericial Kosmo kits/modules out there.
YuSynth also has a Noise+S&H module: https://yusynth.net/Modular/EN/NOISE/index.html
Have you checked out KOSMO Format Builders Community Thread ?
Hi WesleyV,
You can have a look am my code changes here:
Schematics is just a minimal version of the original arduinoboy, I left out the buttons and LEDs, because I only use it with MGB. The additional potentiometers are configured as voltage dividers and connected to available pins of the Nano (so for each pot the left leg is connected to GND, right leg to 5V and the middle leg goes to the arduino analog in).
I have not changed anything with the midi channels, but it should be relatively easy to implement. But I am not sure if playing the three channels in unison will have the effect you imagine, because they are digital oscillators, hence “perfect”, so all their outputs should be the same if you play them in unison, meaning the sound will only get louder… That’s why Sam built the triple oscillator and added the clock rate modification. But thinking about this, maybe it has an effect, because the Gameboy sound chip might not be perfect… Also you could set up different wave shapes for the three channels or add just a tiny bit of detuning (maybe with some randomness over time…) I need to think about this, but maybe we can collaborate to make a cool unison mode?
Thanks for the link, Sebastian, I’ll have a look at your code. I am using a TeensyBoy Pro from Catskull electronics, which has slightly different code but it should be relatively easy to port over. I planned on adding some pots that would control detune (via pitch bend) to solve the problem of the digital oscillators being perfectly in phase. I’ve tried setting up the whole rig using ableton (sending notes on midi channels 1, 2, and 3 simultaneously, with slight detune applied to two of the channels) and it does sound nice, but the solution is so clunky I can never be bothered to use it. I’m also mulling over the possibility of breaking the stereo output into two separately buffered channels with adjustable gain so you can control how hard you are hitting the filters or whatever effects come after the gameboy in the signal path. I feel like at that point it would be way easier to integrate MGB into the rest of my rig. I’d be more than happy to collab, but I must admit my skills are limited, hah.
One additional question Sebastian - do you have your dmg set to run from your rack’s power supply, or do you use the battery?
Cheers,
-Wes
I have added a 7805 to supply the DMG with 5V from the 12V from the modular supply. I have a second 7805 for the arduinoboy (nano) and the ltc 1799. Maybe I could get away with a single, but I just did it with two
Did some much needed cleaning and re-organizing in my space over the weekend. Snapped a quick pic. The stripboard power rails have pink and UV LED’s on them giving it that backlit glow.
That’s awesome. I’ve been trying to hunt down some guides on how I can do the same - I’m a little reluctant to just tear my gameboy open and poke around. Do you happen to have links to any resources that helped you on that journey? Sorry for the barrage of questions.
No worries, always happy to share!!
I can make some photos again, but it is very simple: just connect the 5V from the regulator where the +pole of the battery is connected (disconnect the battery before of course ) tomorrow I will find some photos and stuff!