Auduino Dual Synthesizer Project

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Dual Auduino Synth Project

For my next project that probably won’t get finished, I’ve decided on a synth, based on the Auduino source. I’m planning to use 2x Atmega168’s  – dual synth’s, for the left & right channels. Each Auduino will have it’s own set of controls, for Grain 1 & 2, Pitch & Decay. There will also be an Octave control for each Auduino, plus a Stereo Width control, and Master Volume.

I had some brushed aluminium sheet left over from another project that didn’t get finished.  I chopped this down to size using the scroll saw, with some WD40 sprayed on the blade to stop it clogging. I chose a size of 200mm x 120mm. These were arbitrary figures, with the only check done to ensure it was large enough for 12x knobs:

Brushed Aluminium Sheet
Aluminium front panel, before any work

 

I left the protective plastic on while I cut it out, and marked up the locations for each of the 12 controls:

Front panel, pre-drilling
Front panel, pre-drilling

 

I then carefully drilled & deburred each of the holes. And then, as I could bear it no longer, I removed the protective plastic! It’s starting to look a bit like a front panel now. As I was to later find out though, I would need to enlarge the holes for the rotary switches (octave control).

Front panel, post-drilling
Front panel, post-drilling

 

The knobs I chose for this project are the knobs used on some Ibanez guitars. They’re the right weight, they look great (in my opinion) and they’re readily available:

Ibanez control knob
Ibanez control knob

 

I really couldn’t be bothered with designing and etching a PCB for this, so I decided on stripboard. I started to solder up the circuit itself, following the instructions to run an Arduino standalone here. I’m using 2x Atmega168’s, with the Arduino bootloader, one for the left channel and one for the right. There’ll be the ability to adjust the stereo width, using one of the controls on the front panel.

Auduino Circuit, first stage
Auduino Circuit, first stage

 

To label up the front panel, I chose to reverse print onto transparency. That way, it should stop the printed text from rubbing off. I knocked up the graphic using GIMP, then reversed it and printed using the help of Irfanview (as nothing else would seem to print at actual size). Here are some images of the first experiment. I included the centre black dots to mark the positions for the pot mounts. These will stay in the final print, however the grey larger circles were only included to mark the circumference of the knobs.These did not need to be printed, and will be removed in the final print.

Printed transparency (1st attempt), overlaid on front panel
Printed transparency (1st attempt), overlaid on front panel
Printed transparency (1st attempt)
Printed transparency (1st attempt)

 

Here’s the second go at the front panel transparency. I’ve changed the font and added some more text. Also, the grey knob markers have been removed in this print.

Printed transparency (2nd attempt)
Printed transparency (2nd attempt)

A colleague with a much better toolshop than I made me a 8mm steel punch. I used this to easily remove the plastic where the pots will poke through. The knife work needed to tweak the 2 larger holes made it quite clear how handy that 8mm punch was (thanks Gary!). I knocked out the required plastic, mounted the 8x 4.7k linear pots and added some knobs so I could see how it was going to look. In the image below you can also see the key holes for the rotary switches (top 2 centre holes):

Front panel, partially populated
Front panel, partially populated

That’s all for now. Hopefully the next post with be with some sample audio!

Links:

The source code and Auduino home page: https://code.google.com/p/tinkerit/wiki/Auduino

Running an Arduino out of the dev board: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Standalone

MySQL Authentication with old password no longer supported

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MySQL Authentication

I’ve just hit the following error:

MySQL Authentication – Authentication with old password no longer supported, use 4.1 style passwords.

MySQL Authentication with old password no longer supported, use 4.1 style passwords
MySQL Authentication Error

This is due to the way passwords are stored in the database for later versions of MySQL. All I needed to do was to reset the password for the user concerned. Just setting the new password as the old password was enough for MySQL to update the password hash, and I could then log in.

Of course, this is only an option if you can log in as a user with sufficient privilege to change the password. Fortunately, I could. Not sure what i’d have done otherwise…

http://www.mysql.com/

Cake – A Political Nightmare.

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Cake

At my place of work, pretty much like other places of work I imagine, it is customary to take cakes into work for everyone on your birthday. I do not, however. And i’d like to take a little time to explain why.

Many moons ago, while I was working for the same company (but a different department), I used to adhere to the cake tradition. And all was well. One year however, I did not. Now I can’t remember the reason why, whether I was skint, or I forgot, or I just didn’t pass the cake shop on the way into work that day. It doesn’t matter – the upshot was that there was no cake from me on that particular day in September. And nothing was said. Well, not much anyway. There might have been a couple of questions about the missing cakes but certainly not enough for me to remember. So the day passed without incident.

A few weeks later, there was another birthday. This time too, the birthday boy did not supply cakes. This time however, I did hear the complaints. Boy, did I hear the complaints. My fellow co-workers whinged and whined about the lack of cakes for a full day, but never to his face. A full fucking day. Like they had been denied the cure for cancer. Or that he had broken the (hitherto unknown) 11th commandment. Or that he had murdered a small puppy. With a cake.  Or that they had some god given right to eat cake on someone else’s birthday.

Cake

It got me thinking: Did this happen when I didn’t take the cakes into work? I imagine so. I’m not so conceited to think that I would be immune to the bitching and backbiting when I dared to defy the almighty law that states ‘You must take cakes into work on your birthday’. So I imagine that I got a lot of stick (behind my back) and got slagged off rotten (behind my back). It got me thinking, what would happen if I forgot to take cakes in again? Or what if I was ill on that day, or skint? Or what if I just exercised my own free will and chose not to take cakes in on that particular birthday? Would I lose friends? Be ostracised? Would I wake up to find a horses head on the pillow? I am joking for effect of course, but I still consider this to be an important issue. I’m sure that there are evolutionary reasons for the reaction I got (or didn’t get, as it wasn’t within my hearshot) to do with the human desire to be part of a group, or ritualistic reasons, but it still fucking annoys me.

So I took myself out of the birthday cake game. And for this reason I also do not eat cakes that other people have supplied on their birthday, out of principle. It was such a mountain out of a molehill that I resolved to no longer be part of it. I know a few people think that I don’t partake because i’m tight (and now that I have a family to bring up, that’s a little more accurate than it was), but it’s not. And I know people still whinge about my lack of cake supply, but I don’t care. Honestly – you should see ‘cake day’. It’s like some people have never seen a fucking cake before.

If I ever decide to buy a cake again, it would be this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_cake