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 [...]

I am sorry to say the last GorF PCB has been sold. I’m also sorry to say that I won’t be making further PCBs or Kits, but the Eagle files required to make the PCB are available on the GorF web pages, under the downloads section.
I’m taking a short break and when I return I plan [...]

Well, I’ve put together 10 more kits, of the people who contacted me and gave me their email address five have bought kits.
This leaves 5 4 3 2 1 no more of “kit 6″ to be sold, sorry. These were the last full kits I will make and will leave me only 4 or 5 [...]

I have the parts arriving for 10 more kits.
I’ll call these “kit 6″, and they will contain:

1 x PCB
1 x Micro (pre programmed)
12  x Switches
12  x Switch Caps
4 x 7 Segment Displays
1 x 16Mhz Oscillator
1 x 5V Regulator
8 x Potentiometers
1 x I2C EEPROM
2 x MIDI Sockets

All you’ll need is a few resistors, 8 x step [...]

Well, I finally got around to recording and editing a GorF video guide. it’s in two parts as YouTube won’t allow me to upload more than 10 minutes of video.
So, without further ado;

Well, what would you know, I was tidying up my “parts bin” and found 10 more GorF PCBs, these are ones I took to Synth DIY UK 2009 and never sold (everyone bought full kits).
So, I’m considering doing a run of another 10 “hard to find parts” kits, so this would include:

PCB
Micro (pre programmed)
Switches + [...]

Well, it’s finally here.
I’ve managed to get some time this week and put in the last few touches. We now have support for 64 sequences, 8 banks, each with 8 sequences. You’ll need to have the I2C EEPROM to get banks 2 - 8 to work, and they’re a little bit slower when loading and [...]

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 [...]

As promised, here’s pictures of a quick mod to help stabilise the 5V running around GorF (Click the images for a bigger version).

Take two 100nF caps, tin the legs, and cut them quite short, maybe 15mm.

Solder them to the regulator, as in the picture above. The middle pin is Ground, one is the input and [...]