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Music…

Thursday, April 11th, 2013

Let me tell you I am very busy at the moment although I am sometimes not quite sure what I’m doing :)

As always I am trying to make [Diskokugel] happen and I am confident that I will finish it this year. Seriously, I need this off the table. I’ve ordered new [pcbs] (keep you fingers crossed) and am in the process of preparing 200 connector cables to mount the speakers. I am also preparing another [Quäkmonster] workshop, this time at [c-base] on May 11th. 21 aka [picture that sound] will be on display for 96 proposals at the [Marburger Kunstverein] until May 30st. I am also teaming up with two other Felixes to get an electronic prototyping and production business running.

So much for news. While I let you wait for results let me share with you what keeps me entertained. During concentrated work [Solitude] keeps me focused, especially with his ambient dubstep mix vol. 17. Looking for heroes of my past I stumbled over a mix from The Panacea featuring oldschool jungle galore. Also on heavy rotation is [The Nextmens] album “Join the Dots” albeit it is hard to get (only on amazon with their proprietary downloader – WTF?).

 

Diskokugel Eyecandy

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

To motivate myself (and to keep you entertained) I’ll show you some pictures of the recent progress.

With my bold head glittering from cold sweat I took a soldering iron and separated my nice round [Kugel wireframe] into segments again. Luckily that went well, if I ignore that I had to buy a new power iron because the old one broke for no apparent reason(it was exactly one! day over its warranty). To those elements I attached my freshly cut [mirror balls]. I also took the [useless PCBs] as dummies and attached the to the icosahedron inside. I then tried to figure out a pattern how to attach the speakers to the PCBs inside, which was a bit tricky because the cables wont be distributed evenly.

Anyway: having a party in our place there was a need to clean up and make things look good. As it turns out, putting a light inside the existing object makes it quite flahy. But see for yourself…

Mixer 0.1 Video on YouTube

Friday, January 18th, 2013

I made a video of my beta version of a controller. Check out the full article here

 

Diskokugel Ballroom

Thursday, January 17th, 2013

Pushing the [Diskokugel] forward, I cut 120 christmas balls in half to serve as bodies for the speakers. It took quite some time, but they make for some nice self portraits :)

cutting some balls

I love patterns and textures...

Me, a landscape

Home Improvement

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

I used the time around christmas to build a little workshop into my 3sqm closet. I used the parts of the wardrobe that stood in there to build a rack and a workbench.

No more drilling into my desk :)

before...

...after

Better not an Omen

Friday, January 4th, 2013

Well, here’s for a happy new year: for christmas I ordered myself a series of pcbs to finally get the [Diskokugel] running. After spending 5 hours getting the goods out of customs I had to realize that the pcbs have no solder pads. Instead, they’re coated in paint entirely. I tried to get the paint off with acetone and a steel brush, but there’s no way I can use these…

I wish you all more luck in the new year ;)

try to solder this...

 

Rest in Pieces…

Sunday, December 2nd, 2012

A dear friend of mine passed away yesterday. He was there whenever I needed him, always helping out when things needed fixing. Steinel glue gun died in service, choking on its own output. Apparently the glue hardened in the extended glue tip I used and I applied too much pressure on the glue feed, which made the glue search for another way out.

Steinel Gluematic 3002 will be missed (at least until my Reichelt order arrives with a substitute).

 

Couldn't handle the pressure: Good Guy Steinel

Micro Rivets for Soldering

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

Etching your own two sided boards is quite a hassle. Apart from getting your foil print right,  having both sides in line and doing all the drilling, I found making vias with wires quite tiresome. The wires tend to leave the holes again whenever you try to solder something surrounding them. Especially when working with fine tracks (which is mostly the case with me, nowadays) this can be very annoying.

Luckly I found a forum where someone recommended to use small copper rivets for this. These rivets are only 0.6mm in diameter. Getting them into the holes is a bit tricky, but the its easy to open the other side with a small chisel. There exists, of course, also a special press for this, but the mindset of someone who actually will pay € 160,- for such a thing will forever remain unknown territory to me…

 

0.6mm is indeed very small...

Here, the rivets are used to conduct heat of a 3W LED to the back of the pcb.

Building Controllers 0.1: Progress

Thursday, November 8th, 2012

I’ve continued on my Mixer project, adding 8 per channel as meters. Currently, each meter circuit consists of a 4094 register attached to a uln2003 transistor array. The idea behind that was that it’s actually possible to control each led individually this way. However, the wiring of these two is pretty space consuming and besides the two chips also each led would need its own series resistor. I tried tow hack myself around that by controlling the leds voltage with pwm from the arduino I use to control and read the mixer. Unfortunately this leads to the pwm leaking into the whole circuit and thus screwing with my fader readings. No good…

For the next version I will use an MC34063 instead. It takes an analog control voltage to light up up to 10 leds and already provides the series resistors inside. Since I will not use the pwm outputs of the arduino for anything else, it seems convenient. The 34063 is a bit pricey though (€1,35).

Apart from all that, the setup worked nicely and I’m looking forward to having it all save and sound in a case to actually start playing with it!

There was no space left on the board for the uln2003s, so they needed to be attached with cables. Sisyphean task...

This board is seriously overhacked...

The raw mixer...

...looks much nicer once you put a lid on it :)

Quäkmonster Workshop for KOMA Elektronik

Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

KOMA Elektronik asked me to host a workhop making Quäkmonsters for DE:BUGs “Musiktechniktage” last week. It was quite fun and we got some very nice results. With this positive experience, stay tuned for more to come!

The Original, waiting for company

Some bodies are made for antennas :)

These two came out great!