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I wanted to share a few pictures of the things I saw at Maker Faire UK a couple of weeks ago. It was my first Maker Faire and I was extremely excited. I’d been hesitating whether to go for a while but decided the week before I’d book the train tickets …
Whilst thinking about the upcoming promo video for Bitchwizard I came up with the idea of using a Strobe for some of the footage. As any other maker/hacker would do I wanted to find a way of creating one using things I already had around the house. Being lazy I decided to use an Arduino to control the Strobe – I could have used a 555-timer or even a simple capacitor flashing circuit. But I wanted more control over the strobe – and to possibly add MIDI control to it.
Last week I ordered my first laser cut acrylic to start making my arcade button controller. I ignored the advice to create a mock up and even get it cut in a cheaper material before ordering which I’m now regretting.
Teensy and Arduino are great platforms for creating controller projects. But one of the most appealing ideas behind creating your own controller is being able to have as many inputs as you need/want. The Arduino only has 6 separate analog inputs for example. What do you do if you want more than 6 knobs or faders?
Components can be expensive – especially things like knobs and buttons. I have quite a few things lying around that I should have thrown out ages ago. Instead of just throwing them away I decided to recycle them by removing the components that would be of most use. In order to do this you either need a desolder pump or a desoldering iron.
If like me you don’t have much patience then a desoldering iron is a great investment. Before I used one I was skeptical that they would be any good. But afterwards I was left wondering why I’d not bought one years ago
It’s been a long time since I’ve updated the blog but I’ve finally got round to adding the cross fader to by DIY mixer. Incase you didn’t read my previous blog post; I created a DJ mixer out of an old MIDI keyboard. The final steps I carried out were to attach and secure the cross fader.
I’ve wanted to upgrade my laptop to SDD for a while now. SSDs are faster, more reliable and perform a lot better than standard Hard Drives. This means increased read/write speeds which obviously have benefits for Audio applications. Another up side is that SSDs have no internal moving parts. This means they are less likely to break should you ever drop or knock your laptop.
Making music, recording or generally making digital media can result in lots of unorganised files and folders. This either means you will have to spend quite a bit of time finding your files or take the plunge and sort out all of your files. Not wanting to do either of these I wrote a VB Script to take care of this. The script looks at specified files in the same folder and then sorts them in to YYYY\MMM folders.
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This February I will be taking part in a Open Data Hackathon. The idea is to use open data to create an interactive soundscape. Organised by the folk over at Bitjam it will be broadcast live online and is shaping up to be a very exciting day. The whole idea behind open data is to encourage the adoption of open data world’s local, regional and national governments. Showcasing exactly what can be done with open data will hopefully advance the adoption of open data worldwide.