I teased this in the Mail Day thread last week. It’s my first professionally-made PCB and I’m really happy with the way it turned out. It’s an Arduino Micro-based 8-pad capacitive-touch sensing CV controller and sequencer. In this video, it’s more or less emulating a “Baby 8” in sequencer mode, but the hardware is configured to allow me to program it to record up to 64 (128?)steps and rests and play them back:
I’d like to finish that programming this weekend, and then I might have another set of the PCBs made to correct a few little flaws (like that I accidentally made it 5.25" high instead of 5.125" so I had to take a table saw and file to them, and I’d like to get rid of the backwards silk screens and invert the name, things of that nature) but I think this unit is “production ready” and it’s definitely the best D.I.M. piece of musical kit I’ve ever made! Clearly the design owes a shout out to Sam’s Arduino Sequencer Keyboard but I’d like to think I brought a few of my own touches to it already.
The colors were chosen to complement my Buchla Red Panel units, though they don’t appear in this video (and they’re also not really red, so it’s just conceptual.) Also red has been my favorite color since childhood.
If anyone is interested, I’ll have the Gerbers and sketch files in this git repo once I fix the annoying things.
Wow, I had guessed that it was a sequencer and that those were capacitive pads, but this is just so cool! And I really like how the components are integrated with the panel!
Hah, THT components on the front panel! I was thinking about doing that with a panel I was working on, but I had too many jacks on the panel and I’d’ve had to make it about twice as wide. Of course I still might.
Mostly because I like the aesthetic (it reminds me of the Buchla 218 and 112/113 this way) but also because I did it in Fritzing and it tends to stretch my SVGs into strange shapes when I try to import them as custom parts.
No, no it did not. I’m assuming it would be a lot more dependable than what I built though. I note that it’s quite similar to the LifeForms Touch controller, but without the onboard clock and two fewer control rows at the same price. I haven’t tried using the Lifeforms with the 0-Coast yet though for fear that they’d burn like holy water on a witch.
