#1

apologies in advance for the misleading topic line—

i want to open source the trilogy hardware: white whale, meadowphysics, and earthsea

especially with @scanner_darkly’s multipass framework these hardware layouts become interesting options for re-firmwaring, or for those who want more dedicated control over MP/ES than the ansible ports.

the situation:

these modules are all two boards: the interface board (knobs, jacks) and the logic board.

my initial design of the logic board has insufficient power protection and requires the case to do all the 5V which is simply a bad idea. in short, i don’t want to see more of these boards exist.

i heavily revised the logic board when ansible came out— it’s mechanically and electrically pin compatible with the old trilogy interface boards.

however i did not include an external ADC chip on the logic board, but routed these pins to the internal ADC of the AVR32. this is a downgrade by a couple bits (14 to 12) but i honestly don’t think that matters a whole lot for control-rate knob input.

so for the “new” logic boards to work with the “old” trilogy designs we’d need an update to libavr32 in addition to each module’s firmware, along with some testing. furthermore if this is realistically going to happen i could use a hand cleaning up the files into a neat package.

i’m posting this in case anyone is interested and has the time/skills to make this happen— i can offer support with hardware and some minimal amount of guidance— so this is not a great project perhaps for someone with no experience in the codebase/ecosystem.

ps. likewise looking to open-source ansible hardware as the end of the year approaches— there is so much on the todo list.

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#2

This is awesome! As someone who has written a firmware for Meadowphysics using the multipass framework I would encourage others to take interest, even if you don’t have a ton of experience with C, multipass makes it a lot easier to get going with firmware development for these modules. With improved documentation / multipass updates, these modules could be used for all sorts of things in euro land, not just for those who have grids/arcs.

I would be willing to assist with documentation, helping organize builds, perhaps putting together some kits of smd-preassembled boards… I’ll definitely be building a set of these when that content comes out. Love that you’re giving these to the community, cheers! :v:

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#3

i can help with libavr32 / firmware updates (and will update multipass to support the DIY versions).

do you mean the firmware or the hardware files?

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#4

This could also coincide with some possible refactoring on libavr32 to add CDC device types (like devices built using Teensy microcontrollers).

Chatted with @zebra about this a little today and I’m going to revisit the code I started on a couple years ago.

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#5

Less familiar with libavr32, but have experience in tidying repos and documentation for open source hardware/software…

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#6

Hi all!

Been a long time since I’ve done any music production, life and shit getting in the way ya know. Recently I caught the bug again and have decided to start DIYing some modules.

I have an old monome 64 that I’ve dusted off. I’ve logged on to here/monome.org and it seems like the 64 is not really supported all that much anymore :frowning:. I have seen some old posts from someone with a similar story, and the suggestion was to try and get their hands on meadowphysics/whitewhale modules.

A bit of research tells me that these modules are not common these days (found someone selling them + Earthsea for 750 bucks!), and at any rate the are not really optimised for a 64, so I am loath to spend the dollars that some people are asking!

But I would love to interface my grid with my modular so I am happy to spend some time experimenting, does anyone know whether there are any circuit diagrams or similar for these modules, or any other resources that might help me design an interface?

New to monome, and monome + modular: ask questions here
#7

there are some used ones out there: https://wigglehunt.com/?query=monome&condition=&stock_status=in_&price_min=0&price_max=5000&currency_code=150&sort=price

FYI the trilogy originally sold for $240-$320.

an alternative would be to get a crow and use max with your computer. or get a crow and use a norns shield.

or if you want to DIY something, we’ve made this: https://monome.org/docs/grid/studies/arduino

#8

This would be huge :heart_eyes_cat:

#9

Thanks tehn that DIY page looks like what I’m after, muchly appreciated for the link. Would be interested to hear anyone elses experiences in making a DIY monome->CV hackjob using arduino. I’m pretty green so seeing some examples and inspiration is golden.

RE: buying second hand, unfortunately the Australian dollar is in the toilet atm so getting a single module delivered hits 500-600 AUD pretty quickly! This is unfortunately out of my range for the time being.