Our friend Reed Ghazala sent in his latest project, an audio breakout desk to make better use of the iPad 2 music apps. It is a great way of having something more rigid when you are dealing with plugging and unplugging cables or working on a performance using the device. Reed makes a great use of adapting commercially available products like the iPad breakout connector and the iPad desk to create a simply do it yourself accessory.
Joey Mariano of Animal Style sent in his GBC Footcontroller to share with everyone. Its a control breakout box for a Gameboy System running Nanoloop which is used during live guitar performances. The battery compartment has been removed to make room for a birds nest of wires that are running to each one of the button traces on the board. A DB-15 connector is used to interface with an external breakout box with 1/4 inch jacks that accomodate standard keyboard sustain pedals thus shorting the button connections. During the performance the gameboy is mounted on a Mic stand for easy viewing. This nod can be most certainly done on other systems as well and the idea was inspired by a blog post in Make. See, isn’t sharing fun! Also on MakeBlog and NerdArts.
The efforts on the simple parallel inteface are coming along great, everything is working as previously thought it would. The interface itself features a breakout box with a boltbay for patching of trigger pulses to the sound modules. My first sound module is a Playskool Drum Toy with some very nice drum samples that are triggered by shorting the contacts to the ground connection, making it perfect for this application. The circuit board was removed from the toy and re-housed in a second hand display case of sorts from Goodwill. The side of the box contains boltbay connections for each drum sound and the pitch resistor of the toy for patching to the potentiometer added as a feature to the interface box. More work needs to be done to the sequencer software like being able to adjust the tempo and the number of notes in the pattern, also maybe some sort of a saving feature. For now however this is a working prototype that I will demo at Bend and teach people how to build something similar to it.
Link to the Gallery of Images here.
Kaseo has recently completed a circuit bent Famicom with another Famicom as a break out box for the first unit! This was done probably because space is a premium in a Famicom, unlike those great bulky US NES model which allow for tons of switches and knobs, but either way it looks cool. The breakout box also has an audio input that is seen through out the video affecting the scan lines. Now I need to see an circuit bent Atari 2600 with another Atari 2600 as a breakout box.[via Benders Forum] Video Link.
This circuit bent Yamaha SHS-200 has been outfitted with a breakout box crafted from an old Atari 2600 by Tablebeast. It recently sold on eBay, but the idea of using your Atari to house something worth while is here to stay. The banks of RCA jacks fit nicely along the vast flat useless space of the 2600. The standard control switches were replaced with massive toggles and the metal covers are a nice touch. One thing to push this over the top would’ve been the ability to plug-in a Classic Atari joystick for patching of the bends. Possibly even mounted on the keytar for killer live performance!
This pristine Circuit Bent Roland 707 was sent in by J-Prater who also authored the Singing Bird Bolt-bay keyboard. The breakout box houses 3 discrete 555 timer circuits and a MIDI switch Array kit (MSA) that can be patched to various bend points on the 707 for sonic mayhem. The DB-25 and the MSA are from Highly_Liquid’s fine line of kits. Sample1-Crash
Kind of like MIDI, but not quite EDDI (Electronic Device Digital Interface ) bridges the glitch hardware layer with the software controllers. Built from what appears to be 2 HighlyLiquid’s switch array kits this glitch desk system is capable of producing some very neat compositions as seen in this video. The website does not appear to have a lot of info yet, but other circuit bent devices can easily be found as well as upcoming shop and other artist areas. Thanks to youmibow for posting this to the benders list.
Thad has recently finished a breakout box realization for his Concertmate-500 ( SK-1 ). The project has been documented really well with tons of photos and descriptions on his H4X Blog. The resulting composition done with the mod is pretty ill. Also note the torsos of lego people which can be used to sub for knobs when in a pinch. 🙂
While on the quest for the mysterious HR-16 ROM rewriting info done by the Burnkit2600 crew. I noticed a few other interesting things on their site, first off its now a blog, with RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds perfect for the “Up-to-date” types like me. The next thing is a lengthy thread dedicated to bending the Roland 505 with details on which points do what and some external links to completed mods. Very nice work.
Simon just finished modding his Yamaha RX-17 with the some tips from the Anode Records page. Even though his webpage is in Dutch, its not extremely hard to figure out what is going on. Most of the bends come from a single IC wired to a DB25 connector and patched through some stackable banana jacks on main console. Lots of great images and a very neat video that makes me want to go out and buy an RX-17 on eBay as well.
Circuit Bending Events Custom Instruments DIY Tips and Tricks. Cassette Tape and Record Full Albums I converted on YouTube. My eBay Auctions and Special Projects.
