Hi there, this is a bit of a long post so I thought I’d make it here instead of cluttering up the main 1222 thread, hope that’s ok.
Not long ago I decided to start work on building a modular synth using the Kosmo modules Sam’s put together. I found Sam earlier in the year when I went looking on Youtube for videos about modded Furbies, I wanted to know if anyone out there had ever hacked a Furby with some custom firmware to make it say different lines or something (do Furbies even have firmware?), but instead I found the Furby Organ video and was blown away by it, and I instantly got hooked on Sam’s videos. I’ve always had this impression that technology’s something you can’t really colour outside of the lines with, like if you try to go your own way with it you quickly realise why the way was there in the first place, but I’d never seen someone with the mad scientist energy Sam has to just pull a crazy idea out of their head then be all kinds of unconventional to make it happen and come out with something functional and unique in the end. The combination of pure creativity and techno-wizardry got me itching to give this a go.
This is my first time taking on an electronics project, or anything involving soldering, and to be honest the dunning kruger effect had me pretty good when I looked at the 1222 kit and thought “yeah, this looks like it’ll be easy enough for a beginner, a handful of resistors and capacitors, some chips and some knobs, simple." I really didn’t realise what a journey assembling this would be. I didn’t want to just read through the component spreadsheet and buy each item like a shopping list, I really wanted to learn what each component was, what all the unit measurements were, what parts I could find in kits, then realising I needed to build a PSU for this thing, learning about soldering irons, multimeters… I’ve spent many hours diving down rabbit holes on this thing and it’s been great fun.
So here are some pics.
Here’s my workstation I set up; note the tactical string used to suspend the fan for better ventilation.
I made some minor tweaks to my build; firstly I used a 6 position rotary switch instead of 12; my OCD just didn’t like the idea of a switch only using half its capacity, plus I like the chunkier ‘click’ of a switch that has more travel, gives it the vibe of a knob on an old TV.
Second I installed pin sockets for the 7 segment display and the LED lights. At first I did this just to elevate the display a bit so that it was flush with the front panel, but then I decided to do the LEDs as well so I could experiment with different colours.
In the end I went with a green theme, using a SC56-11GWA display (pretty much an SC56-11EWA but green).
And the finished product:
The green on the display looks a lot less yellow in person. I installed egan’s code onto its Arduino which works great, it can be found here.
I wasn’t sure when I would have the space to build a proper case to house this and future modules in so I did something a bit silly using the resources I had for the time being. I present to you, my mono-module modular synth!
It can hold as many modules as you want, as long as you remove the one already in it.
I “built” this out of a magazine holder you can buy from an office store and a dremel.
Finally, here’s some video of it in action. I’m cheating a bit by applying some digital effects from the stereo just to make it a bit more interesting.
So that’s that. I’ve just finished assembling a Dual VCA and a Safety Valve and I’ve got a Performance Filter and VCLFO on the way. I’ve really enjoyed this project so far. My dad introduced me to a lot of synth music when I was growing up, he was a big fan of Gary Numan and I still listen to that music and think back to those times. I remember my dad showing me the inside of computers and VCRs, showing me what a capacitor was, explaining that computers have a thing in them called a ‘transformer’ which I thought was cool as. So the opportunity to work on a project that involves both circuitry and synth music has been sort of special to me, I know my dad would have loved this stuff if he was still around today.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed checking this out, even if you just scrolled straight to the pics 
catch y’all later.
Hahaha… well I’m a creature of habits having sent a couple dozen or so ancient minimoogs out on rock tours after precision rebuilds of the oscillator boards and CV’s, So I figure I’d spend $12 per VCO module on these 4 10k resistors. The results are dead on and I’m happy about that. I also used a 2.5% tolerance WIMA cap where the cap was discussed in a different thread. That one wasn’t as pricey.