[Ross Fish], [Darcy Neal], [Ben Davis], and [Paul Stoffregen] created “the Monolith”, an interactive synth sculpture designed to showcase capabilities of the Teensy 3.6 microcontroller. The Monolith consists of a clear acrylic box covered in LED-lit arcade buttons. The forty buttons in front serve as an 8-step sequencer with five different voices, while touch sensors on the left…
Teensy creator Paul Stoffregen has shared a new project on OSH Park:
The Monolith Synth Project needed to use a large number of these LED lit arcade buttons.
Dimming of the LEDs was required. Initially I considered using this Adafruit 16 Channel PWM board. But the LEDs in these buttons have integrated resistors which require 12 volts, so 16 transistor circuits and another board for reading the switches would have also been needed.
It uses the same PCA9685 chip for 12 bit PWM control on every LED, with mosfet drivers to handle 12V outputs, and also a MCP23017 chip to read the buttons. Every button has a discrete 1K pullup resistor (rather than using the higher impedance on-chip pullups) to help with use in the same cable bundles cross coupling to 12V PWM signals.
Four of these boards where used in the Monolith Synth project:
The project is featured in this Tested video:
Thanks to everyone that came to Bring-A-Hack last weekend after Maker Faire Bay Area! Here’s a gallery of photos:
People were quite impressed by this soldering handiwork by Mike Szczys of Hackaday:
Mike also did a great job tweeting about all the wonderful hacks such as this care-free robot:
We’re excited that there will be a SupplyFrame Hardware Developers meetup next Thursday before Maker Faire Bay Area weekend:
https://www.meetup.com/Hardware-Developers-Didactic-Galactic/events/239907140/
We had a great time last year and recommend folks at Maker Faire Bay Area 2017 come to this Saturday night meetup hosted by Hackaday and Tindie:
It’s Maker Faire Bay Area time of year again and we’re holding our 4th annual Hackaday and Tindie MFBA Meetup!
After a ridiculously fun Saturday at Maker Faire, carry on the festivities with us at O’Neill’s in San Mateo on Saturday night from 7pm.
Bring your finest blinky, flashy, IoT, hacks, wearables, or other techy items for us to paw. Bonus points if you bring your #HackadayPrize project for us to get super excited about.
We can’t wait to see you there or at the faire.
Space is limited, so get your foot in the door early. 21 or over only. Please bring ID.
OSH Park 