Happy Birthday with Norns

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norns kit.png

It’s my birthday today. Go me. I tend to sort out my own presents. Except for the chocolates of course…

I’ve fancied getting myself a Norns device from Monome for a while because I want to write some code that makes music. However, the Norns, while very pretty, is also very expensive. But now they do a Norns shield kit which you can attach to a Raspberry Pi 3 or 3+ to make the same device only cheaper. And you get to do some soldering.

I ordered a kit on Tuesday from Monome in New York. It arrived today. Amazing. Happy Birthday me. I spent a happy half hour this afternoon soldering it together. I made an image of the operating system on an SD card and fired it up. It worked. Really Happy Birthday Me.

norns.png

So far I’ve managed to make some very trippy sound loops and stuff. You can attach your browser to the device and write Lua scripts to control what it does. You can also write sound generation code using a language called SuperCollider. The Norns also has an audio input so that it can be used as an effects processor. It’s going to be a fun thing to play with.