First revision: Arduino Control Voltage

The recent holiday brought into my possession a shiny new Arduino Duemilanove board, my first real project with it? Control Voltage output to control my self titled Uranus synthesizer (based on the Voice of Saturn synth). In any case, after a couple long nights I cam up with the sketch bellow, I've tested it and it seems to work with a little adjustment from the pot on the output.

I have yet to attempt at getting the thing tuned, but by runing the PWM output of the Fading sketch (a steady ramp up and down from 1 to 255) i was able to verify that it does indeed control my rather excentric synth. Thoughts, suggestions and critics welcome.

NOTE: The capacitor in the lowpass filter at the bottom is 470 uF, apologies for not adding the value.



Arduino Control Voltage by Dana Simmons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at code.google.com.

Got boxes? Got Drums!

Inspiration often strikes in peculiar ways, lately, I was struck to bang on random resonant packaging materials and record the sounds they make. I assembled them into a hydrogen drum kit [download drumkit][Broken link now fixed] and composed a simple little percussion piece to demonstrate. Hurray for percussion!

Check out the Waxy Ear myspace and listen to the resulting BoxJar Jam song

Build Pics: Home LAMP server

As promised, I've uploaded some pictures of my latest project: A home network LAMP/Backup/Print server. Details on configuration and ub3r tweaks next time.

I chose a micro ATX case, for slim compact size

Time to roll up the sleeves and get dirty!

It's a GeForce 7050M Motherboard

The three hard drives which will handle all the data (two 500 gig sata, one 80 gig ide)

One of the two drive trays to hold the RAID 1 array

It's coming together!

Installing Debian. (Before I realized it was much simpler to do a net-install via usb flash drive)

And that's that. This little workhorse has proven to be a very valuable investment. Besides backing up my main workstation every night to the RAID 1, It runs TorrentFlux to manage bittorrent downloads and also servers as a CUPS host to my home network for printing.

Prelminary descrete circuitry guitar amp.

Above is pictured a very simple and wonderfully bad guitar amp circuit. The output is weak and horribly distorted but it works and can sound quite interesting.

After doing more research I noticed a striking similarity to my circuit and an NPN based Fuzz Face circuit

New Linux box!! Hurray!

Just like the title says, I put the finishing touches on a new home network/backup/print/file/misc server box this past week. Of course I took lots of pictures (to be posted soon) but I've included the specs for the new machine below.

- GeForce 7050M mobo
- AMD Athlon64 1620 cpu
- 512 MB ram
- 2x 500 gig Maxtor SATA drives (RAID 1 backup system)
- 1x 80 gig Maxtor IDE system drive
- Micro ATX form factor
- Debian 64 bit operating system

Pictures to come soon!!

AIA Edition, stuff I do

AIA Edition Show 5


Just one of the broadcasts I've been a part of over the past months. AIA Media is a student run news/digital media/digital film group based out of the Art Institute of Atlanta. It's a fantastic group of students who have chosen to turn their talents in video and audio production into a career. This video is one of our many productions and there are many more to come.

Headphone/Monitor Switch in a can

Frustrated with having my monitors and headphones amp on separate outputs. I cooked up this wacky and simple switcher to select where to send the main outputs from my desktop workstation P.C.

Basically it is just a DPDT switch wired up to a set up 1/4" TR inputs, fed from outputs 1 and 2 of my sound card. The switch can either trow the signal to the headphones amp or the monitors. I simply grabbed the closet empty semi rigid container I could find  (I.E: empty soda can) to house the wiring and such. In the pictures below I've only completed 2/3 of the wiring as I still have to add a second set of outputs (I ran out of female 1/4" TR plugs). Thus, in it's current state it simply acts as a glorified on/off switch. Once I get some more TR plugs I'll put it all in a proper enclosure and it will find a happy home on my desk. Build pictures bellow.

I scavenged some 1/4" female plugs from an old mixer. Bellow are all the build materials (minus two female TR plugs of course)

Here is the can with the holes punched out, I just used a flat head screwdriver and a little ub3r skill to cut "X"s in the aluminum, then simply folded the corners in.

Soldering the TR plugs:

Inside the can after all the TR plugs are installed

After the switch gets installed

And finally 2/3 of the finished project

Studio Production Pics

Some random pics from a recent video production shoot:

Lighting
"Looks good in the monitor"

Extra lights

Portable Apps + Mini CD-R

So you need to check your email, but the computer at the office/library is locked down, so you can't install your thumb drive loaded with Portable Thunderbird and Portable Firefox. What to do? If all else fails. It is possible to burn a "Portable Power" cdrom, with all your portable apps set up and ready to go. But who wants to toss around a full size CD-R, why not go all out and make a "Portable Power" pocket disk. Pocket disks are about half the size of a regular CD-R, and have a storage capacity of about 210 MB. This makes them the perfect size for installing plenty of portable apps, giving you back the power to take your life on the road [Lifehacker: Carry your life on a thumb drive]

Phillips Scope Repair (Done)

Like the title says, I've been able to successfully repair my PM3217, with a lot of help from a friend. Turns out there was a broken strand of wire that was part of an induction coil in the vertical amplifier, after a quick re-solder the C.R.T is fully functioning. The next step was to recalibrate the beast. I managed to find a service manual, which included the much needed instructions and schematics for the process. Several nights of tedious measuring and adjusting and everything is back in order. The finished product is pictured bellow, not a bad deal for $60 odd bucks on ebay after all.

Is Auto Tune evil?

Ran across this interesting article in The New Yorker today, which addresses the possible over use of Auto Tune in music.

Of course the article also made it onto the Tape Op message boards

Happy Reading

Phillips Scope Repair

I finally decided it was time to buy an oscilloscope. I ran across a Phillips PM3217 on ebay for what seemed to be a good price, the seller couldn't test the thing because "he didn't have any probes", so it was offered as is. The two traces were confirmed to at least display and move about, "what could possibly be wrong with the thing", I thought. So I get it in the mail and the first bad sign is a notable rustle of what sounds like something broken. I open the shipping box and the front cover, which is supposed to protect the front panel controls, has been shattered into many plastic pieces. Also, the distinct smell of burnt electrolyte fills the air.

Long story shortened, There was a blown capacitor on the power supply and the trace could only be displayed in the bottom third of the CRT screen. *sigh* Lessons hard learned: Taking risks on eBay is rarely worth it.

Linux Cluster = Awesome Power

I ran across this little article while perusing the Hack A Day feed, in which Janne of Svensk Film Effekt built a networked Linux cluster of ub3r proportions. Using a modified Ikea Helmer cabinet and six maxed out motherboards, running at a combined 57.6 (six quad core Intel cpus) GHz and utilizing a combined 48 gigabytes (six motherboards holding 8 gigs each). Needless to say, animation renders previously taking hours would take only several minutes using this beast.

Remix your favorite tunes

Ever wanted to remix Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody? Or maybe you have some killer guitar you want to add to some of Nine Inch Nails' songs? With a little creative googleing that is very possible. Collections of raw takes from The Beatles to Marvin Gaye are available for your remixing pleasure. There is even a website dedicated to Nine Inch Nail remixes [NINRemixes.com]. I've included some screenshots of my Killer Queen remixing below. If you've got some free time, and some multi track software, you can be a producer for Queen.

Truecrypt release for OS X

Arguably the most popular disk encryption tools has now been updated with an OS X (intell and ppc) version, solving the problem of having to fuss with different programs and formats to get disk encryption to work through multiple operating systems. If you aren't already using truecrypt to protect your sensitive information, you no longer have any excuse because now you can protect it and take it with you where ever you're hacking heart desires.

Truecrypt.org