Okidoke. It’s taking me a while to get my act together, but I’m getting there. I have three kits available. They are kit serial numbers 1, 2, and 3.
The kit includes:
1. circuit board
2. eight 10k faders
3. two 10k potentiometers
4. thirty two LED Tact buttons (16 red, 16 green)
5. sixty four 100 ohm resistors
6. 9 various values of resistors other than 100 ohms
7. 16 x 2 LCD screen from Modern Device
8. LCD driver board kit (assembly is required) from Modern Device (where you will get the assembly instructions, BTW)
Things *not* included:
* Arduino Mega
* enclosure + hardware
Price is $249 plus shipping, payment via paypal, shipment via USPS if international, UPS if within the USA.
I even made two videos showing how to assemble the kits, so watch these before you do anything else. Make sure these totally makes sense to you, and you have no reservations about your ability to put this kit together. It’s not a particularly hard kit to put together, but there is a lot of repetitive soldering involved, so you’re the right candidate if you’re already comfortable with soldering, and you already have all of the tools you see in the videos. You’re also already familiar with the arduino platform and ALSO completely realize that this kit runs on the ARDUINO MEGA, and NOT any other variant. If you don’t have an ARDUINO MEGA, you NEED to BUY one. I’m using every single pin on the mega. I couldn’t squeeze this much functionality out of a regular arduino… it’s just too awesome for the little guy.
You have to file down the headers because of where I chose to place the arduino mega. This is sort of cumbersome but it’s also how I was able to keep beatseqr from being any larger than it already is. The Roland TR-808 is cool and all, but c’mon already.. that thing is huge. Plus every square inch of circuit board costs big bucks, so squeezing the arduino into a shield configuration works well enough. I’d maybe try another tactic in the future, but this kits works today. I sold Beatseqr serial number 8 based on this kit.
Ok, so: 1. you read all of the above? 2. you saw both videos and aren’t tripping out? 3. you saw that you need an arduino mega? 4. still interested? email me steve at beatseqr dot com.
I am pleased to announce that MIDI sync out is working in Steppa as of version 0.5! Now you can sync your Beatseqr to any MIDI hardware or software that can receive MIDI clock, which opens a whole new world of possibilities. One scenario to imagine is being able to playback melody or bassline patterns that you previously created along side on-the-fly created drum patterns from Beatseqr. This can really be helpful if you use Beatseqr for live performing like we do for Haptic Synapses. We tested MIDI sync with software like Propellerhead Reason and Ableton Live as well as hardware like the Korg ESX-1…fun stuff!
Also added to Steppa 0.5 is the ability to sync to an audio click track. I know the technique sounds very old-school, but it works….well enough for Haptic Synapses and Antacid Crew to use it to sync all kinds of hardware (old and new) at their last jam session together at Mighty in San Francisco. So how do you like them apples?
Keep an eye on http://beatseqr.com for links to the new version and developing info about Steppa.
Almost done! Just need to go buy a couple of knobs. I’m getting a really good feel for what materials work and how to use them. Woohoo!! Also, i did this track with it, using reason:
Progress is slow but definitely still happening. Along with determining if silicone buttons are doable, I’ve been working on how I can produce cases at home instead of farming them out, or having to get up to techshop and the serious hassle that is to get time in on the laser. My CNC router has been put to hard labor and here are some of the preliminary results:
here’s an early test. many things wrong.
Here’s the results of about 3 tests later. Much closer. I’ve solved some of the hardest problems, now I just need to get a workflow going and I think I’ll be in good shape.
And then here’s the latest test of a new (to me) product from Smooth-on that has a much firmer feel than the test results we showed at Maker Faire Bay Area 2010.
And here’s how they look in this newest prototype case:
My camera (soon to be my *old* camera) somewhat exaggerates the brightness, but it’s still very readable.
I wasn’t able to de-gas the silicone, and it really really needs that to achieve the water-clear property it’s capable of, however, the bubbles serve as a very effective diffuser of the LED light from underneath. The only drag is that while I was able to get relatively few big bubbles in the casting, there were still some. Degassing would solve that, but it would be almost a thousand dollars in new machinery to do that. So I’m not sure if this is the direction I want to go in, but it’s a possibility. Testing it out has helped to at least answer the questions in my head about whether this is something we *should* do. The answer is still “Hmmmmm I dunno yet” but at least now that’s because we can try using the prototype and see how it performs. Maybe it will be an option we offer.
hey there. So Apple rolled out a new version of Java 6, and it appears to have solved the problems of it not letting compiled processing apps to launch. So! this is really good news because there are a ton of now deprecated setup steps that you can replace with just making sure system update has run and you have the latest java installed.
pending any kind of hold my board house may have for my order, I’m expecting a new small batch of boards to arrive in a couple of weeks. There are a couple of changes that I hope will translate to improvements.
1. the older style potentiometers that required headers, wiring, and holes drilled through the circuit board are now replaced by pcb-mount style potentiometers. I’ve tried really hard to get it right, so I’m hoping I did.
2. fader mounting holes are resized to be the correct size… or.. a better size. I’d made an error on the v3.1 boards in forgetting to fix the problem I saw on the v3 boards. So they should go in easy peasy now.
3. mounting holes are going to be fabricated by the board house. It took me a while to figure out that I can get them to do that for me. The net result is that a significant amount of work will be reduced to a couple of machining operations once I get the boards. The cost to get them to do the final machining operations was far outweighed by my ability to do it on my bandsaw in no time.
4. Electrical testing. This extra board house option will further increase my confidence in the product I sell. I could test the boards myself, but I’d rather be working on more creative things. I figured it was best to leave this important step up to people who are experts at quality control.
I’m using every single pin on the mega. I couldn’t squeeze this much functionality out of a regular arduino… it’s just too awesome for the little guy. 
