Category: Making
These are posts about making in a variety of forms.
This project was built from a kit that I got from fellow electro artist Michael Victor at EM2014’s swap meet. Michael had the unbuilt kit in the original shipping envelope, a special edition model from Steim’s 2011 run. The kit went together pretty quickly with few issues, but I do ...
At the end of August I built the SparkPunk Sound Kit, and used an EHX 8-Step to trigger the kit via control voltage. Not long after this, Sparkfun released their own sequencer, which I promptly ordered, hoping it would arrive before the next electro-music festival. The sequencer kit arrived well ...
It has been a while since I built something, so here’s a little project that was a lot of fun, and has opened up some new noise maker territory. Sparkfun is one of the top suppliers of parts and kits for the electronics hobbyist, and while I still prefer Adafruit ...
Moving on to smaller platforms, I tried out the Gemma device that Adafruit puts out, and built the inner workings of their Chirping Owl project. I wasn’t very interested in the owl part of this, and the sounds are not very owl-like to start with. It was more about testing ...
The SensorMote project was educational, but I found Zigbee to be a bit difficult to set up, and wanted to explore other wireless options. My search led me to a variety of CC3000 boards, in both shield and breakout form. At the time (April 2014) Xively.com was offering free Internet of ...
The TV B Gone can be used to turn off just about any screen from a distance. Lots of fun. This is a kit available from Adafruit and a number of suppliers. I’ve had a lot of luck with Adafruit products and service and their tutorials are really good, so that’s ...
I’ve been returning to my Arduino projects in the past few weeks, and have been taking a course in Processing (the basis of the Arduino IDE) to help with the programming side of things. Back at EM2013 , I acquired a Teensy 3.0 micro-controller and two Wii NunChuck controllers (pictured above) courtesy of Gordon Good. ...
My quest for an easy-to-use, high-quality audio board pretty much came to an end when Adafruit released their Audio FX Sound Board, available in both 8MB and 16MB versions, with and without a built in amp. Interestingly, this board uses the VS1000D codec chip, unlike many similar boards thast use ...
Next in my exploration of Arduino-compatible audio boards is Adafruit’s compact and multi-functional VS1053. This board came out earlier this year just as I was getting preoccupied with moving, and I only recently discovered it. I got this board for Christmas from my dad, and put it together as soon ...
SensorMote Project 3/31/13 After watching the Distributed Environmental Data: On the Ground at the Data Sensing Lab video I was inspired to take on a larger project. I also thought it would be a nice distraction from my other projects. Up to this point my focus was audio, but sensors ...
3/6/13 Rugged Audio Shield – Session 1 The Rugged Audio Shield can function as both a sound generator, and a recording/playback device, with an advertised 44.1 khz/16 bit output. It includes both a line input and microphone input, along with stereo output with a volume control that can be mapped ...