MOTM

Quiet?

For my 5U system I bought a BegleBone Black, some color LCD
touch-enabled panels, and built a LINUX dev machine.  The base idea is
to create a decent quality A/D - D/A cape that will match MOTM I/O
levels, deal with CV, gate, and MIDI.  The next step is to port PD to
the BeagleBone.  I think Pure Data on a 'Bone would be a pretty cool
toy for starters.  The ability to change application code via USB,
Ethernet, or an SDCARD makes maintenance a cakewalk.  With this
compute platform and such connectivity, many doors would be widely
open.  Open-source hardware plus open-source O/S plus open-source
applications, would help to make this future-proof.  Nothing closed
... all open ... sweet!  I am surprised others have not mentioned
this, though I am certain many other smarter people than me, have
thought of this ... it is obvious.

At the least, this generic platform would be a nice launchpad for
other endpoints.  With a 1GHz processor board and a decent amount of
memory & I/O for $45, this would hard to beat.  A large community for
Beagle Bone support helps move this along.  This is far better than my
first idea of using an OMAP-L138 SOM (too under-powered and too
expensive).  This generic module with a MOTM wrapper could be pressed
into any number of functional blocks.  Might even become a ROMpler for
saved MOTM-produced sounds.  Dial up what you created six months ago
and get it polyphonically for cheap.  Your audio tinker-toy makes the
original sounds and this gizmotron reproduces them on demand.  This
method completely sidesteps the need for an expensive audio-grade PC
and closed software that has the lifetime of a fruit fly and costs a
fortune.  Sequence with one of these.  Hell, stick a hub in the
cabinet, link them together.  Or stick a large LCD in the cabinet and
be Keith Emerson with a color monitor that does something.  Whatever.

The expansion possibilities are endless.  And with an assembled $45
compute platform, that competes nicely with say a VCO board blank at
$39 a pop!  What sacrilege ... digital infecting a pure analog
sound-chain!?  Yeah.  My laserdisc was analog and it was nice.  Hard
to find Avatar on laserdisc, though.  On blu-Ray ... no problem.  No
offense, but I'd much rather get time delay subfunctions digitally
than from BBD chips.  My interest is outcomes, not methods.

I am probably crazy but someone has to be the village idiot.  It is
after all, a sociologically important function according to Mr.
Cleese.

My brain hurts ... it will have to be removed.
Tom Farrand

On Wed, 5 Jun 2013, Tom Farrand wrote:

> I am probably crazy but someone has to be the village idiot.  It is
> after all, a sociologically important function according to Mr.
> Cleese.

I've been thinking of something similar for different tasks:
arm-like cpu that can run a real os or one of the open-source
embeddeds with threads and comparable features, OLED,
DA/AD, Sparkfun led buttons and a few additional features.

--
Monty Brandenberg