vblank
Offline
Central Pennsyltucky

Hey all,
I spent a few hours last night breaking into the Bliptronic 5000, provided for $43 from Thinkgeek. Reviews are everywhere, but the consensus is.... the synth sucks, and a comparable button-matrix in an enclosure would cost 4 times as much.
So... I've done a little reverse engineering to determine the pinout and control mechanism here:
http://www.straytechnologies.com/bliptr … utton-pcb/

It looks like this will mate up nicely with an arduino to make something in the monome/arduinome family for under $100 with the enclosure.

Drop me an email wil [at] straytechnologies [dot] com if anyone else is working on this.

Lazerbeat
Offline
Tokyo, Japan

Its out of my league on the technical side but very interested in this as an A_SID (proud owner) controller as mentioned in the bottom of the post. Ill be keeping an eye on this.

Also any news on the 25 dollar chip synth you were brainstorming a couple of weeks back? Its a very interesting project and im curious where it goes.

- edited about 25 spelling errors in two sentences...

Last edited by Lazerbeat (Jan 13, 2010 4:56 pm)

LastKnight
Offline
Middlesbrough, UK

Oh i love that.... ... finds noobs guid to arduino

vblank
Offline
Central Pennsyltucky
Lazerbeat wrote:

Also any news on the 25 dollar chip synth you were brainstorming a couple of weeks back? Its a very interesting project and im curious where it goes.

Yeah.. I always have a few balls in the air. I'm still mulling over it, but right now waiting for an FTDI chip to prototype it. Expect 4 or 5 weeks. will be using the YM chip as discussed. Likely usb only in the first version.

matt.nida
Offline
London, UK

I'm very excited about this. I've done a few Arduino projects in the past, but the Arduinome has always looked well outside my comfort zone given the expense of getting all the materials together. This looks like a solution that could be both simpler to assemble and cheaper. Looking forward to seeing more!

low-gain
Offline
Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA

i'll be working on one of these very soon. i'm hoping to get 2 of them going for a show.

vblank
Offline
Central Pennsyltucky

ok,
got some more work done on the bliptronic...
Here's some video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE_L_EOiFuU

LEDs are all addressable from the Arduino, and there will definitely be room for 3 potentiometers.
Samuel Hurst is already porting the Arduinome code, and posted it on my site:
www.straytechnologies.com/forum/

If anyone can help sort out the buttons, it'd be a great help. Diode matrix with no pull-down resistors.. I'm at a loss at how this works for the Bliptronic's original software. All the button lines are floating & very noisy.

Should have it sorted out in a couple more weeks.

vblank
Offline
Central Pennsyltucky

Finally got the Monome software ported over, and running on the Bliptronic.
Here's the first full test video and blog info:
http://www.straytechnologies.com/arduin … onic-5000/

Software to be posted after a few minor changes.
Can't wait to get this running the usb YM chipsynth!

Dweeble
Offline

Does that mean it'll run all those different programmes people use on their monomes?

If so..swish!

vblank
Offline
Central Pennsyltucky
Dweeble wrote:

Does that mean it'll run all those different programmes people use on their monomes?

If so..swish!

Yup. I'm running 3 of them in the video sample there . nerdscroll, soyuz sequencer, and a midi-controller test patch.

ant1
Offline
uhajdafdfdfa
Dweeble wrote:

Does that mean it'll run all those different programmes people use on their monomes?

If so..swish!

I think the programs don't run on the Monome, the Monome is just controlling something on a PC/Mac (maybe I'm wrong though).

vblank
Offline
Central Pennsyltucky
ant1 wrote:

I think the programs don't run on the Monome, the Monome is just controlling something on a PC/Mac (maybe I'm wrong though).

That's true. The Monome is just an empty programmable controller. The Apps and things you can do with it run on your PC/OSX box/ Linux box.

That said, the software is all open & free with very few exceptions. I'll be using it as a visuals controller eventually.

low-gain
Offline
Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA

very nicely done vblank. smile
My buddy Tim Kaiser is giving me his bleeptronic, i might have to do this to mine.

Dweeble
Offline
vblank wrote:
ant1 wrote:

I think the programs don't run on the Monome, the Monome is just controlling something on a PC/Mac (maybe I'm wrong though).

That's true. The Monome is just an empty programmable controller. The Apps and things you can do with it run on your PC/OSX box/ Linux box.

That said, the software is all open & free with very few exceptions. I'll be using it as a visuals controller eventually.

I should have said what I meant a bit better..if this mod essentially turns the bliptronic into a monome then is epic wins smile

Also; Tutorial when it's finished plox heart

Last edited by Dweeble (Feb 14, 2010 9:53 pm)

vblank
Offline
Central Pennsyltucky

After a long couple of days, I've released the "Bliptronic 5000-to-Arduinome" conversion firmware! GPL'd with build instructions.

A final test video with 4 ADCs, source code, and pre-purchase info for a kit version is available here:

http://www.straytechnologies.com/bliptr … -released/

Now back to the usb YM synth!

enjoy!

pixls
Offline
Philly, PA, USA

vblank you are a freaking genius,
i'm gonna have to make these at some point.