Categoria: Maker (eng)

Tutorial authors know that very often would be useful to have a third hand to be able to take pictures while hands are busy. As a workaround I created for my Nikon D5100 digital SLR camera a foot pedal.

A few months ago I bought a toy robot and I wanted to recycle it in some way. I decided to use it as a “container” for a small project with Arduino. Basically when I change a string in a feed of my Pachube account Arduino with Ethernet Shield detects the change, plays the classic tune of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” opens the doors thanks to two servo motors and displays the scrolling message on an 8×8 LED matrix, then closes his flaps and waits for a new change.

A few months ago I published a post on how to make a MIDI Ribbon Controller withArduino. In the meantime I had a few ideas to improve both hardware and software and also felt the need to change many parameters without having toreprogram every time Arduino. Finally I placed the controller in a case, thanks to Laurawho built it. So this is version 2.0 of my MIDI Ribbon Controller, which finally becomes a much more practical tool.

Apple offers for the iPad the “Camera Connection Kit”, a double connector for SD cards and cameras . But many have discovered that you can connect other devices such as wireless keyboards, MIDI instruments and audio interfaces. It should be noted that when you attach a wireless dongle for keyboard and mouse iPad warns “can not use the device – USB device connected is not supported. ”

There are many professional MIDI controller out there: keyboards, drum pads,    mixer, pedals, etc.  One type of controller that interests me most is the ribbon controller because I wanna try to emulate with the  software  plugins what can be done with instruments such as the Ondes Martenot. I think that this type of controller  fits very wellto control virtual instruments such as strings and horns, as it is characterized by aposition and pressure sensitive   ribbon, so you can control in a very intuitive way thenotes pitch and velocity  .   I  decided to do a MIDI ribbon controller using Arduino.

Recently I needed to configure the Arduino midilibrary on my Mac running OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.5. Despite the excellent documentation found on Arduino.cc I struggled a bit to find the exact procedure to install an external library in the IDE. So I thought I’d publish this post to help those who will be similar troubles.

Some time ago, me and Laura needed to develop a software that enabled a user to indicate the completion of a repetitive action pushing a button every 5-10 minutes. The operator generally worked a couple of meters from his computer and each time he had to get close and press F2. Unfortunately there was no chance for placing a wireless keyboard closer to the operator because he is not sitting, so we thought to use a big wireless button to hang by the wall. Looking around I have not found any ready-made solutions, so I decided to modify an old wireless keyboard (unused […]

 In another post I wrote about the Gakken SX-150, now I explain how I created a “giant” controller (50cm) for this mini synthesizer, but in order to make this change I had to first understand a little more about the original control system. The strip on the Gakken SX-150 is simply a resistor of about 75 Kilohom. Looking at the schematics I found on the Matrixsynth blog I could think for an alternative to the control system of Gakken. I used a sensor called Spectrasymbol Softpot parallel to the standard sensor. This sensor is available in various lengths, I bought the 50cm long (the maximum available).

The Japanese magazine Gakken published a special number with a mini synth kit: the Gakken SX-150