Synthseqr – this might be fun.

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Ok, so I know I’ve been severely radio-silent for the last 6 months or so.  We had our second baby, I got a 3d printer, and decided that I need to get back into a regular exercise schedule.  So free time at night is scheduled very tightly. I know I previously stated that the 3d printer wouldn’t be a distraction, but I was way wrong. It’s a huge distraction.

Anyway, between it all, I have two nights a week that are explicitly scheduled for development of beatseqr and other related projects. Enter: synthseqr.

Synthseqr by Beatseqr
Synthseqr

About two years ago, I started to think about what would be next, once beatseqr was up and running, and it seemed fairly obvious that a complimentary tool would be something for melodic sequencing.  At the time I hadn’t consciously intended to copy the interface of anything, but it turns out that the idea that was new to me, of course, isn’t a new idea at all.  I love the 16 step sequencer workflow. It seems very natural to me for the kind of music I like to make, so I wanted something to help with synths while I rock some beats with beatseqr.  Synthseqr is intended to play that part.

Frankly, it’s just not working yet, and there’s an insane amount of work left to do to get it ready to show off the way I want to.  But I wanted to post this to let you know that I’m still here. I’m still working on projects.  If you’ve emailed me, I do intend to get back to you about a time frame for beatseqr availability.  I won’t make any more excuses.  I’m just working at my bandwidth limit. Whew, have you ever had two young kids?  I need a nap.

makerbot thing-o-matic y axis drift video

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My makerbot thing-o-matic has a problem with a drifting y axis, but only when a layer is complete. There’s lots of vague advice about how tight or loose the timing belt should be, but I’ve tried a dozen different tension guesses, and nothing seems to work without shifting the print mid-way through.

edit 2012-02-01 : my voltages were set to the makerbot motors, where the should have been set to the moons motor voltages. :-

This is not a distraction

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I ordered a thing-o-matic. It should arrive in a month. Then another month to build it. Then I can get on to the important task of making beatseqr keychains.

No, but seriously, I think I can prototype top panel layouts and button arrays using the 3d printer. That could be a welcome change from the seemingly endless cycle of wasted time and money while producing new… things. Crap. I’m supposed to not say any more, aren’t I.

A slow march

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The new baby in our house is almost 3 months old. We’re still on a pretty unpredictable sleep schedule, so doing much in the garage has been next to impossible. I have, however, acquired a couple of work desks to make my production environment more official. Doesn’t look like much, but it’s a huge step up from what I was using previously.

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I really can’t say when I can kick back into gear, but there have been signs of progress lately beyond the desks. I don’t want to say much yet, but there’s something coming to me in the mail soon. Then I’ll be extra not talking about it until its working, then more not talking about it until I can figure out the enclosure and whatnot. It might be fun. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be fun. I’m predicting a high chance for fun.

Tinker toy DIY

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Wow, Tinkertoy is even more awesome if you drill some holes in a board and use it as a building platform. I drilled some holes in different sizes so my kid can plug different things into it. Shoe laces, hoses, DIY flags, audio cables, etc.

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Benjamin Grosser’s Robotic Painting Machine

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Usually, I post stuff about what I’m up to with my art projects. I’ve been spending the vast majority of my free time on Beatseqr. One of the primary tools I use to fabricate them is my CNC router. Recently, I added a vertical attachment mount for a dremel tool. That did get me thinking about other uses for my cnc machine. Benjamin Grosser has taken it to its logical conclusion. I love it!! All this does it make me think about more ideas, so Well Done, Ben.

http://bengrosser.com/projects/interactive-robotic-painting-machine/

Interactive Robotic Painting Machine (2011) from benjamin grosser on Vimeo.

I’ll be honest, I’m doing things in quartz composer and processing that I wish I could do on the canvas. So maybe I should follow Ben’s lead. The unspoken lessons here are: 1. set your expectations low on the resolution of the resulting product, especially if you want to cover the canvas without it taking all day. 2. Don’t worry about cleaning the brush. 3. Do worry about the fluid viscosity of the media. 4. love the result for what it is now. Let the historians decide if it’s good or not. The process is awesome, and that’s worth a lot to me.

Top panel final

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It took a few iterations, but I think this works. Oh. Haha. I just realized how similar this look is to the version 3 acrylic cases. That’s probably why I like it. Anyway… I know the whole world is collapsing, but I’m pretty much done with research for version 4.51. I have a few of these boxes, then capacity for about more 10 boxes. Then I start to run out of some parts that are end of life’d, and I’ll have to re-evaluate my options.

What I do need to do is set up some customer relationship management infrastructure. But, I can do that behind the scenes.