xiwi
Offline
Brooklyn, NY

Hi friends,

I made a relay-based circuit-bending system for my NES. An arduino receives digital out information from a step-sequencer in Max. Maxuino and Firmata are used to facilitate the data translation.

-------- VIDEO --------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeRbeZSn … OhHAZv17mg                               

I'm cooking up a plan to make a kit version that will used some CD4066s, maybe digital pots, microcontroller, rotary switches, and MIDI IN to control bend points. You'd be able to house the circuit and all the hardware within the NES case. The kit would cost somewhere between $50 - 75.

Would anyone be interested in this? If not I'll probably kill it.

Last edited by xiwi (Nov 12, 2013 5:51 pm)

e.s.c.
Offline
IL, US

yeah, this looks pretty cool. i'd probably grab a kit at some point

Jazzmarazz
Offline
Michigan

So I watched the video before reading your post and was going to suggest the Quad CMOS Bilateral switch (4066). BUT YOU ALREADY THOUGHT OF THAT! HAHA...They will be faster, smaller, cheaper and more available to people.

Puke_Flytalker
Offline
Maine

that is really cool man.. looks like ill have some investments to make when i get paid

kineticturtle
Offline
Matthew Joseph Payne

Very cool! I have something much like this that I built with Eliot Lash's help awhile back. It's the little black box in the middle of all this with red, yellow green and blue banana connectors on it.

It's based loosely on the Arduinoboy code, and also uses mechanical relays with the idea of switching to solid state later. The neat thing about ours is that it can accept LSDJ master clock signals directly, as well as read audio info. MIDI clock was a planned addition that we never got around to.

Here's Eliot's page about it, including a link to the code: http://www.eliotlash.com/works/triggerboy/

The idea of a kit is rad, and I think that will make it super accessible! You might consider audio reactivity with audio filters as a thing to add that might make it more useful for more people.

Last edited by kineticturtle (Nov 12, 2013 8:18 pm)

xiwi
Offline
Brooklyn, NY

@kineticturle
whoah. total vj boner.
that's rad. i'm guessing you use the same patch bay/relay machine for the genesis? what is that thing? what's the other thing right next to it?

i found about 12 bend points i liked on the nes. it looks like you've found at least twice as many as that!

this is awesome though. i'm totally inspired to get this thing up and running and packaged as a simple, but super fun vj tool. next step is flashing custom roms to cartridges so i can control the color pallete/general movement of the screen. think no-carrier's work shouldn't make that too much of a problem

kineticturtle
Offline
Matthew Joseph Payne

Glad you like the rig! If you want to talk about using nocarrier's awesome awesome software to make fun stuff, get in touch with me on facebook or email or whatevz, that's something I love doing and I've found some neat tricks!

The box with the arcade buttons is just a box with patchable arcade buttons to turn glitches off and on. The NES and Genesis share those two patch selection tools, yes. The NES is actually just all the damn video memory chip pins I could get connected to banana connectors. Not all combinations are useful. I have a few that I often come back to, but I'm always finding new stuff!

nordloef
Offline
sweden

Awesome!

Alley Beach
Offline
clovis CA

id like the code wink

xiwi
Offline
Brooklyn, NY

Here's the documentation link...
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/46izdrruncqw … /Doomtendo

The readme file contains most of the interesting stuff. Check out the link to Casper Electronics to find documentation on NES bend points.

Nothing too fancy going on here. Anyone who is thinking of building this, I'd recommend holding off until I have some time to post the solid state version with CD4066s. But if you want to turn a bunch of light bulbs on and off this will do the trick!

radian
Offline
Brighton

Looks fun.
Might grab one.

xiwi
Offline
Brooklyn, NY

Hey all...

CD4066 was a bust. The internal resistance on the chip around 500 ohms cancels out making a solid bend point connection. It works, just not the same way a relay did. Going to try MOSFETS and reed/photo relays to get better results.

Here's an update video though!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nXMtKh … OhHAZv17mg

kineticturtle
Offline
Matthew Joseph Payne

Bummer! Yeah I think solid state relays are really the way to go. My clicky clicky relays have been doing a great job, but I wish they were faster and I REALLY wish I had socketed them so I might have been able to replace them with a compatible solid state more easily...

I love your control scheme though! The rotary connectors are a great idea.

vblank
Offline
Central Pennsyltucky

Very cool Brendan! You may want to look into "photocouplers". They theoretically light a tiny LED in an IC which triggers a tiny phototransistor. They're very simple (wire it just like your relay), super cheap, and have little visible resistance on the work side, and come in a WIDE range of output voltages.

I used these in a design to trigger a wall of 100+ DC light bulbs from a microcontroller at the Rangers ballpark in TX:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/e … -ND/739601

(They'll work at 5v too! ) -- but you will lose the awesome tap-dance clicking!

dc6v
Offline

Had some really nice visual effects going on there! Easy to see where so many live visual arts come from