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Tuesday 11 April 2017

Google Scholarship




It's been a little quite around here lately, for this there's good reason; In December I was lucky enough to win a scholarship in Android Programming with Udacity paid for by Google.  So that's what I've been concentrating on for the last 4 months.  I've not stopped thinking about making & synths and drum machines though (in fact I took the course to help me with programming them better).  I've also managed to design a PCB for the drum machine, so that'll soon be up & running. Stay tuned!

A Faster Horse: Drum Machine Survey Results


The results are in for the Drum Machine Survey.  Thanks to everyone that took the time to fill out the questionnaire; even if I did perhaps force my friends to participate.  Let's take a look at the result;


So people seem to want to keep the case design mostly the same, which I'd put down to the first version being OK rather than people's lack of imagination! 😇  I'm going to make a few variations & choose the best one in regards to looks & ease of construction, but in general it won't be too different.  Another suggestion was to make it rack mountable, this could be a great idea to have an alternative version.





A lot of Goth readers here obviously! So it looks like black it is.




& it'll have a volume pot.



...with a large audio-jack output



...and the audio jack will be at the back



....Along with the MIDI jack



...And the switches will stay in a row


Cheapskates ahoy! But I completely agree, the audio will sound the same with premium or with no-name parts.  The component reliability is a different matter, so I think for this I'll meet the two groups half-way & probably have branded parts from a reliable distributer (hopefully eliminating the chance of receiving fakes).



So I've gone along with the group-think so far, however when it comes to power I've decided that if I'm selling this, I probably (probably) don't want to be responsible for burning down a house or electrocuting somebody (or worse for me, being sued!).  So with that in mind I'm just going to use a 9v battery & leave a couple of open points on the PCB for anybody who wants to instead use a power supply.



This is the answer with the closest results, so I'll order some of each & see what looks best once the next case is built.

So, now on to making the PCB