Making Today

Made Today

For Christmas, the missus gave me the limited edition Lego record player. Yes, you can build a 1/4 scale(?) model record player out of standard lego bricks and other bits! It needs a home in my creative space. A shelf near my lego Mars rover, Perseverance. Close to my guitars. (Real ones!)

The studio/workshop already has more amazing stuff than Willy Wonka's factory, ranging from power tools, through the electronics workshop, camping and cycle touring gear storage, racks of components. Then, into the studio, there's a burgeoning collection of EDM gadgets, including a modern reproduction of a Roland TR-606 "analog" drum machine (it's mostly digital electronics tbh), a Korg Volca Bass (sorta Korgs answer to the Roland TB-303), may aging Alesis SR-18 digital drum machine. My wall of guitars, my compact, 1550 watt, compact, double three-way audio system, my red tolex Australian designed, Chinese built, Strauss guitar amp, clad in red tolex, that screams modded out, 1980s, AC-30 tones. Where to put the baby turntable homage?

Build a shelf, for the side of one of the workshop shelves! This is that shelf...

lego turntable sitting on the completed shelf along with the lego technic mini helicopter

A bit of srap ply and pine, a few recycled screws. I especially love the edge rounding, done with a bench sanding disk. Job done. Another will be added in a few weeks.

Ongoing Builds

There's my eBike solar charger. This is a pair of 36 volt, 3 Ampere Hour LiFePo piles charged via an ISO rack mount MPPT controller, driven by a 100 watt, 18 volt (MPP) solar panel that's about the largest I could legally carry on a bicycle. I may be upgrading to a recumbent tadpole trike this year, so second 100 watt panel could be added as shady roof. The dual battery management and MPPT box is built and has been tested against short and open circuits. Yet to hook up the panel or batteries to it. It charges one while the motor is powered by the other. Flick the main power switch to center, then the other side, and it'll charge the second battery, while the motor drinks from the first. Not something I plan to use everyday on the bicycle, but is intended for use cycle touring. (Bikepacking to North Americans.)

My CNC build is coming along, albeit a bit here, a bit there. Not much more to add. It'll be a while before it cuts plywood or thin aluminium sheet. The printer works, I print a part. The printer fails, I assemble already printed parts to the growing fram of V-slot and right-angle gusset castings.

Another ongoing build is Solébot, the MIDI controlled, solenoid operated (Solé...), robotic (...bot) drum kit. Apart from giving EDM beats an acoustic sound with natural "Room Feel tm" and human-like swing and latencies, it's also an accessibility option into live drumming when hooked up to my 606 clone. The electronics work, the 3D printed parts fit the electrical parts, the master control box is built up, I just need to finalise a workable hi-hat mech and wire it all up. Doesn't sound like much... Yeah, I know, right?

My EDM workstation has made some limited music. No jams I'd record and share, yet, but the MIDI chain works, the 606 clone is current master clock, I just need one of those Behringer Pro-800 desktop synths for my YouRock midi guitar, which leads me to...

Design Works

The eGtr. I have a YouRock MIDI guitar from 2010/11. YouRock went broke bringing this thing to market and barely a handful of these hybrid MIDI/game controller instruments survive today. The system support app won't run on Apple Silicon Macs and can't be downloaded from anywhere, anyway. This leaves me with a YouRock stuck on MIDI channel 1 and default touch settings.

So, I've embarked on designing a 3D printable, polyphonic MIDI controller that you play like a guitar. I could get a Fishman MIDI pickup for my Ibanez Blazer, but maybe a kilo of PLA filament, a custom printed circuit board, a little hardware, a set of strings and a bit of clever arduino code will give me a combo of a playable guitar and a guitar MIDI controller for a bit less than a Fishman setup. Maybe I'll just buy the damned Fishman, there are some real hurdles to making a playable guitar that works well as a button-style MIDI controller. Meanwhile, trying to solve the electro-mechanical difficulties is an interesting puzzle.

Wrap-Up

That's pretty much it. Apart from design ideas that are always coming and going, at least. Not much other than that, really.