C i b o M a h t o . c o m

Seriously, is anyone marketing tools like this?

You might remember that some years ago, I found a discarded organ and brought it home. Well, it sat around for a year, then I converted it to MIDI, then I moved across the country and only brought the keyboards, and finally I re-built it as the proper single-row unit featured in the above video.

The keys are laid out as a generic matrix-style keyboard, with a column for every note in an octave (12 in total), and a row for each octave bank (up to ten, although only 8 are in use). Using a Barebones Arduino clone and a couple of I/O expander chips (PCF854AN) for extra digital pins, I was able to convert the old keyboard into a MIDI device. This version works fine, however the circuit is a bit extravagant- If I ever re-build it, I will use a 3-to-8 line decoder for the select lines, which should free up enough digital pins on the Arduino to be able to get rid of the I/O expander chips. Really, though, I would prefer to convert it into a velocity sensitive keyboard, so any further effort will be in that direction. Rough schematic and source code after the break.

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Matt, Andy and I built our Atari Punk Console kits tonight, so that we are ready for Synth Night 2 at Hack Pittsburgh. Hope to see you there! Video encoding deets after the break.
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Here’s a project I made back in 2006: a portable Intellivision. I took a cheapo LCD TV and combined it with a 25-in-1 Intellivision game toy, and managed to cram the whole thing into the shell of a broken gameboy. The whole thing worked out pretty well, except for the portability part. There wasn’t room in the case for a battery pack, so it had to be plugged in to work.

It ended up as a present for my friend Kevin, in remembrance of some fun we had in college when we wrote Fish Fish, a clone of the Intellivision game Shark! Shark!

Lathe experiment #2, machined out of a piece of solid aluminum rod. Basically, the ring is stuck because it was carved out of the rod. A collaboration with Matt Stultz.

I think they came out well, though obviously not all of them are actually for passport photos. I ended up using a single flash, camera left through an umbrella, with a metal reflector to the right of the camera. If anyone else wants one, let me know and we can set up a time.

From a recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook. Basically 2.5 cups white flour, 2 cups wheat flour, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, 2tbsp oil, and some yeast. Come out to HackPGH tonight to try some