I’d prefer Wednesday…
Any day is mostly okay.
2 for Tuesday. 1 for Wednesday. UTC 1900 Tueday wins.
It’s on tonight! DM me if you need details of how to join. We will be taking the usual nonsense about whatever pops into our minds.
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One minute before sunset (which is dinner time during Ramadan)
I will attend but I will be late. Don’t talk to anyone until I arrive.
As the year inextricably moves on with some of us seeing new growth and rebirth of the spring whilst others enjoy darker, cooler days of autumn (and some endure spring in their autumn years) we avoided the cardinal sins of discussing politics and religion, instead meandering through such subjects as:
- How to avoid the pain of poorly presented adverts on YouTube on a Roku (without paying for the privileged)
- Adventures with STM32F103C8 including:
- 3 port MIDI / USB interface that presents each physical MIDI port as a different MIDI channel to the USB port
- CV/GATE - I2C - USB interface providing 8 of each: CV input, CV output, GATE input, GATE output
- This wonderful multi-port MIDI / USB router / processor (that I couldn’t get to compile)
- …and similar interfaces already designed by others like a monophonic USB MIDI to CV converter and a USB MIDI 12 GATE, 16 CV interface (Teensy based)
- Why not use a Pi Pico? Too few UARTS / ADC pins
- A Pi cluster is being built that might run a powerful Zynthian - early stage development so little info but there is another cluster of picos out there
- Some have spent money on such things as a digital osciloscope whilst others are planning to spend money on instruments that sing in Japanese
- Of course you could always just build your own modular osciloscope
- In the mean time some of us need to break out our soldering irons and fix that notoriously bad SH-101 power switch - we heard a demonstration of how it can be used as a vibrator controller!
- The Zynthian Discourse search facility was maligned but I was able to find the link to a discussion on the Zynthian build process
- The Tracker Mini from Polyend was released with a rather familiar look. It seems all the cool kids are putting big screens and buttons on their kit these days! (Warning: The Polyend website contains flashing images - not aiming at the old and the infirm.)
- Are modular laptops really good for the environment and worth their premium cost or will they too end up in landfill if the companies that make them don’t survive?
- If you wear a tin-foil hat to bed then maybe you might consider a privacy focused mobile phone
- When you have an interface for an ancient bit of tech worth about $20, is it worth spending about $180 to buy the device it interfaces to (and probably more for something to attach to the other end)? Even if it can hack ATMs!
- If you leave a UART input un-terminated and let it produce random MIDI, are you creating intergalactic compositions? (I think not, given that most messages are 0xFF reset)
- Isn’t MIDI 1.0 BRILLIANT!!! Praise was made at its alter
- Toffees were lost and found then enjoyed and (kinda) shared
- A 10-part drama about a fictional 1970’s rock band called, “Daisy Jones and the Six” is streaming on Amazon Prime in the UK which is a fun watch - spot the writer’s influences like Fleetwood Mac and Donna Summer
- If you buy a Blue Pill STM32F103C8 based board from China you may well get a clone like the CS32F103 even if the chip has STM32 printed on it which can cause issues - be careful out there!
The sun set and it rose and we went our separate ways. Some to slumber peacefully at the end of a hard day’s work with all this rubbish talked clouding our dreams whilst others started their working day, fresh with these random subjects haunting their normal lives.
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There appears to be no mention of bells.
Please fix this at the first opportunity.
There were no bell-ends present!
Hello…?
Aah Hello!
Disagreeable Gerald down the pub said you might be able to help…
I understand you arrange …clear ups…?!?
Ah yes.
Well it’s a person that needs to be cleared up…
You do!?
Excellent…
The location ?
Clacton…
Why is that extra…?
Well I know but it’s not jaywick is it…?
Ok but it seems rather steep…
I’ll leave the details in a bus station on the posher side of Thorpe Le Stoken…
You, didn’t see me . . .
Surely we are due…?
Does a couple of beers helps to understand what’s related between both of this gears ?
even by following this thread, (scoop: it’s not the only one) and having tried some experiences on non RBPI hardware, this task (automated Zynthian build on a third party hardware -build system or port to it on an exotic SBC) is still quiet obscure for the most of us …
Not in generating solutions but it does help with the acceptance…
for sure
The link was reduced wealth.
When, then?
well, monday obviously?
Mondays ok for me.
Good for me too!
Who knows what the kids got up to before I arrived? I can barely remember what was said whilst I was there but some of it may have included:
- Don’t trust ebay or other cheap suppliers of microSD cards. You may be sold a dud. Many of us have experienced buying an apparently branded card like Sandisk which fails when used beyond a certain size. The card is probably only a smaller capacity than shown but tricked into believing it is bigger and after being written beyond that size it fails, unable to fix via format or anything. Sometimes it appears to work but after removal and re-insert, the files are missing of not updated. Sometimes it has the wrong size deliberately painted over the top of the right size. Amazon tends to be a bit safer with a good returns policy.
- At least one of us has built this DIY bench supply. Maybe they might review it after using it for a while.
- One of our friends here in the forum has previously mentioned owning an Expert Sleepers ES-9 which we like the look of (if not the price!). Lots of lovely analogue inputs and outputs that go from d.c. to light (well, audio frequencies at least). They are (apparently) very well thought of within the modular community.
- If you are bored with your device’s legends then maybe you want to cover them up with a colourful (or plain) overlay sheet from Novalays. I wasn’t as impressed by the actual thing than my perception of what might be on offer. I would have liked to see the option for customised legends. I am not so keen to have a sheet with my handwritten scrawls all over it.
- We chatted a bit about using foot pedals. The M-Wave Chocolate was again mentioned which looks like a good value device but despite someone owning this device we are yet to hear of it being used in with Zynthian.
- The tuner plugin was praised for its recent improvements in UI design and being a very useful tool, if only you could get to it more easily - but wait! Yes you can! Configure a switch to go to the control view with the parameter being an integer value of the chain number and voila! A single press to show the tuner. In theory (at least from this ageing man’s failing memory) you should also be able to do this from a MIDI CC but we didn’t find that configuration last night. (There were very few (one?) in the search party!)
- MIDI specification got some more love (it feels like a worthy idol to worship) but the MIDI Association also provide other services. Recently they had a talk on “MIDI in Music Education” which luckily for you had technical issues with its live stream so is now (mostly) available to watch on YouTube. This coming Saturday (if you are reading this before 27th May 2023) they have a talk on “The Furture of Music Accessibility” which I know a few of us are particularly interested in.
- We talked about electronic circuit design, prototyping and fabrication. A commonly used, open source design package is Kicad. (I think Zynthian hardware design is available in this format on GitHub.) Another option is EasyEDA which has an online editor. If you use standard components from their library you can send the result directly to JLCPCB for fabrication. The component selector shows the cost of the component which is quite handy. EasyEDA charge for their service if you are designing larger projects but for smaller devices it is free.
- We were accompanied all night by the throb of a heartbeat emitted from a cajon. Whatever will they think of next? We want to see its glowing lamp pulsate.
[Edit] To select the tuner from a MIDI message you must enable Master MIDI Channel then use a MIDI Note (not CC) to trigger CHAIN_CONTROL with parameter = chain index (or trigger the switch you have configured to do the same thing).
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