Vacoloco Ramblings

I love funk music, as you can see from this blog I’ve tried to join or start a funk band a few times. Alas these days no-one seems interested in funk.
Not to be put off by what everyone else likes I’ve started recording my own funk tunes.
So here’s the first, it’s called ‘Jovian’ and [...]

How I miss soldering, not! Actually, it’s kind of theraputic.
The panel for defender arrived earlier this week and I’ve mounted the potentiometers and begun soldering wires.
Each pot now has it’s 0V and +5v supply rail, Next I’ll be mounting the LEDs and switches onto strip board and the panel.
I’ve got some stand-off’s coming from Rapid [...]

Well, I’ve been banging my head for ways of controlling the insane number of LEDs and switches on the Defender Panel.
After a week of ideas and a lot of bits of paper being scribbled on and promptly screwed up and thrown I came up with a way forward.
I had been considering using Charlieplexing, as it [...]

Well, the real work has now begun. I’ve ordered the front panel for Defender. It’s not changed much since the last picture I posted. The only real changes are the octave select buttons above the pitch and mod-wheel slots and it’s a little wider (30mm) so I have space to drill holes and mount it [...]

Last night, Saturday the 2nd of August, our band, Ten Fifty, had it’s second gig. This time we were headlining!
We played at the Railway Hotel in evesham, a great venue, nice people and a good sized audience too!
Before us were Absolute Ataxia and Highway 5, both great bands and first class peformers, as well as [...]

A few friends of mine have been going on about how great the Arduino is, so I decided to get myself one to try. I want to build some of my MIDI controller ideas, and this seemed like a good way of doing it.
I’ve been playing with some of the examples and I’ve been looking [...]