Vacoloco Ramblings

well, I’ve had a few people ask, so I’ve ordered another 10 PCBs (two have gone already) they’re due around the 14th of August 2010.
These will be just the board and preprogrammed CPU at 15GBP plus postage, I won’t be doing complete kits for these.
Let me know if you want one of these kits.
Update 18th [...]

Well it’s all over, it was a good weekend though very hot with temperatures hitting 28 or 29 on Saturday. I did spend a large portion of the time asleep due to heat and just being tired from working some very long days recently.
I took along a couple of PicoWave prototypes, GorF and a 25 [...]

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been busy with work and also with QiX (and getting to grips with Linux), but I’ve also been tinkering with a new project.
Originally called “picowave” it’s now called “Zira” in keeping with my naming convention of classic 80’s arcade games.
I’ll say in advance, this won’t be made [...]

We’ve got dates ready for Synth DIY 2010. This year the date for the main event is the 10th of July. A lot of people will arrive on the 9th of July and leave on the 11th, and Neil Johnson has put up his room booking page.
I’ve updated the main synth diy uk page here [...]

No, don’t panic, the panel layout is staying the same. What is changing is the backend for the panel, I had numerous problems with the first revision of the panel control board, mostly with it talking to the main CPU board and then the voice.
So, I’ve shrunk things, the panel board now controls the voices, [...]

Well, it’s a new year (for those who missed it, SURPRISE!!) and GorF is done, so what next?
Well, I’m going to be focusing on two projects this year, and only two. in no particular order;
Defender:-

It seems a shame to have that lovely panel sitting there dead, and a voice card that works doing nothing, so [...]

Finally I got the blasted I2C EEPROM working…. turns out I had two faults;

I was missing the 10mS delay at the end of the write! Thanks to Peter Ullrich for spotting that.
I had made a mistake with the way I addressed the data, in a way that meant I could only write data to one [...]

Well, I have say, it’s official, I hate I2C.
I’ve been battling on and off for a couple of weeks now, and I’m at my wits end. I can get it to write/read a single value to I2C EEPROM, but writing/reading more than one seems to cause corruption.
so, I’ve uploaded the current version of the code [...]

Well, the last GorF kit 5 has been shipped. There now remains less than 20 PCBs to sell. I have enough micro’s left for the 20 remaining PCBs should people want “kit 2″.
I’m still trying to find time to work on the final bit of the code, support for the I2C EEPROM. I’ve been doing [...]

Well, I found the problems, two were easy to fix in software (first was that the digits were backwards, so instead of GorF it said FroG, the second was I swapped the F and G segment lines around, which made the letters look a bit screwy), the third problem was my fault, basically I used [...]