Trombone Controller Fail

The beautiful distance sensor box that I made yesterday only has one problem. It just doesn’t work. When you put the tube over the distance sensor you get a fixed distance reading. I think it is something to do with reflection off the end of the pipe. Above you can see what happens to the light on the sensor, perhaps something similar is happening to the distance signal.

Oh well. Perhaps I should have tested this approach before I designed and printed the box, but I was concerned that to test the sensor I really had to have it mounted and aligned just right, and a proper box was the best way to do it. I just have to move the sensor outside the pipe and create a target. And anyway, it’s only a failure if you didn’t learn anything from it.

Made a box

The weekend is when I work on my PICO Trombone Controller. Don’t you? I’ve designed and printed a box to hold a PICO controller and a pipe and mounted the distance sensor in the pipe. Rather pleased with it.

Pipe dreams

So, I’m making this trombone controller for the PC. As you do. This meant I was down in the local DIY warehouse yesterday looking at plastic pipes. I’ve got this cunning plan which involves putting one pipe inside another to get a nice slide action. These two sizes seem to work quite well, although I’ve a feeling I’m doing the easy bit at the moment.

New forum for MIDI Cheesebox and Crackers Controller - etc

I’ve been asked the question “Why don’t we have a forum for PICO MIDI devices and other music stuff?”. Well, we do now. If you want to talk PICO MIDI controllers, Pure Data or future directions for the MIDI Cheesebox you can head on over to here and get cracking.

Akai MidiMix

A long time a ago Andy, a very wise friend of mine, explained why so many computer people were also into photography. “You see” he said. “All computers do pretty much the same thing. Once you’ve bought a computer it is hard to convince yourself to buy another one, since it will do the same stuff as the one you already have. But photography is different. There are no end of lenses, tripods, filters, case, straps flashes and whatnot that you can hanker after”. He was right too. But I think I’ve found something even worse than photography. It’s called music.

For me the crucial difference is that I can do photography (a bit) but I can’t really do music. So I tend to hanker after new music kit just to avoid facing the awkward truth that I can’t actually play any of it.

Anyhoo, enough of my neurosis for now. I’ve just got myself an Akai MidiMix MIDI control surface that I can use to twiddle the settings in my synthesizers. It turns out that you can get an awfully large number of knobs and sliders (and even a few lights) for what seems a pretty reasonable outlay. And I’m going to investigate what else I can control using MIDI messages. Which should keep me off the piano keyboard for a while….

Overthinking MIDI Connections

I want to connect my venerable QY-100 to the computer, and so I’ve got myself a USB to MIDI connector cable. The design is quite simple. One wire plugs into a USB port on the computer and there are two MIDI plugs labelled IN and OUT on the other end. The QY-100 has two MIDI sockets, also labelled IN and OUT. So it should be simple to plug them together…..

And then my brain started overworking. Are the plugs labelled with their role, or are the markings on them telling me which socket to plug them into?

Fortunately it doesn’t do any damage if you plug them in the wrong way round, but after some experimentation I can confirm that a plug that is labelled IN is an input and should be plugged into an output. And vice versa. And now I need a lie down.

Playing with Launch Pads

A while back George brought along a device to the Hardware group that I’d not seen before. It was a panel covered in buttons and lights.

That’s buttons and lights. Awesome. He said it was called a “launchpad” and you used it in music production. I wanted one.

Fast forward to this week, and I’m thinking of getting into making music and stuff. And if you want to do that you really need a copy of the Ableton Live software suite. Which is expensive. However, it is possible to find a cut-down version of this software bundled in with music devices, including launchpads. Add to this the fact that Amazon had the Launchpad Mini Mk2 (including software) for a tempting 38 pounds at the moment and I figured it was time to make a strategic purchase.

It arrived today. The hardware is very nice. A matrix of 64 buttons which can display one of four colours (the latest model can do lots more colours but costs a lot more) . It also comes with a licence card that gets you a copy of the latest version of Ableton Live.

You just plug the device into your computer and it shows up as a MiDi device. You can use it in Ableton to trigger sound effects and music sequences. There’s even a low power mode that turns the led brightness down. This allows you to use it as a controller on an iPad via the iPad USB adaptor.

Plus (and this is really interesting) there’s a library on GitHub that lets you use the launchpad with Python programs. I’m thinking it might be a really neat way to manage robots if I ever get round to making the robot rugby game work. The buttons colours could show player status and also allow them to be started and stopped.

It’s a nice gadget and, if you can pick one up for the price I paid, well worth a look. The music stuff is fun, you could use it to trigger sound effects and whatnot as you record podcasts but it also makes a neat user input device too.