MF2006: Monome

posted Apr 22nd 2006 6:00am by Eliot Phillips
filed under: Uncategorized

The people from the Monome project are out in full force at the Faire. They’ve got five of the 8×8 pads hooked up for people to play with. The first two pictured above actually work together as a 16 step loop system. There’s also one hooked up as a mixer and another as a drum machine. The fifth one is showing pixelated video from an iSight. The box is really well built. The $500 price point has shocked a lot of people, but it’s really unavoidable since they’re only doing a 200 device run. Something I hadn’t realized before is that the buttons are unique to the device, not off the shelf parts. The button is really a rubber cap that sits over the LED and has a conductive ring at the base. I hope they post a schematic for their 8×8 matrix controller so that anyone could build one. Here are a few more pictures: one, two, three.

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Comments [24]

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$45 and you get an extra 17 extra switches.
http://www.hagstromelectronics.com/products/ke18.html
and DIY rejoice….
http://www.hagstromelectronics.com/products/chips.html
they even sell encoder chips separately

Posted at 8:12 pm on Apr 22nd, 2006 by Metalations

what kind of laptop is he using to control the device? Its running the Mac OS but it don’t look like a Apple laptop.
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=133020704&size=l

Posted at 8:17 pm on Apr 22nd, 2006 by nab

it’s a powerbook g4
http://www.macuser.org.sg/images/2001/0216db.jpg

Posted at 8:26 pm on Apr 22nd, 2006 by scoyle17

its a bloody ibook, theyve been around long enough

Posted at 8:30 pm on Apr 22nd, 2006 by andy

Is it just me or does that remind you of the game lights out?

http://cgi.ebay.com/LIGHTS-OUT-Handheld-TIGER-electronic-strategy-game-Fun_W0QQitemZ8799857020QQcategoryZ2541QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

just buy a few of those and rewire them in a fancy enclosure

Posted at 8:35 pm on Apr 22nd, 2006 by Mike marino

powerbook=silver
ibook=white (older ones w/ color)

Posted at 9:20 pm on Apr 22nd, 2006 by conor

>The $500 price point has shocked a lot of
>people, but it’s really unavoidable since they
>’re only doing a 200 device run.

lol NO! $500 is a bloody ripoff, material costs them ~$100, the rest is profit

Posted at 10:32 pm on Apr 22nd, 2006 by RusH

>The $500 price point has shocked a lot of
>people, but it’s really unavoidable since they
>’re only doing a 200 device run.

lol NO! $500 is a bloody ripoff, material costs them ~$100, the rest is profit

Posted at 11:00 pm on Apr 22nd, 2006 by RusH

This looks nifty, but I definitely can’t afford that.

Posted at 11:19 pm on Apr 22nd, 2006 by the antique

Profit? If those are really custom buttons and the case a custom plastic mold (is it plastic?) I doubt their numbers are far off. 12,800 buttons is a _REALLY_ short run for injection molding, with die costs in the thousands usually even for small parts. A custom contact memmbrane isn’t so great cost wise, either. Now, toss in the custom costs of a case of only 200 per die, and I wouldn’t doubt at the very least 60% of the costs for these are tied up in dies that may never be used again.

Posted at 12:21 am on Apr 23rd, 2006 by SOI Sentinel

It uses this chip -> http://www.maxim-ic.com/quick_view2.cfm/qv_pk/1339
I haven’t used em, but if someone has the time and knowledge of SPI it shouldn’t be too difficult to get the hardware side done. (I have the knowledge but not the time :P)

Posted at 1:09 am on Apr 23rd, 2006 by jeremy

Light-out handheld game with USB, yep, that’s what it looks like.

Posted at 1:25 am on Apr 23rd, 2006 by boo!

a bit off topic… but is that a pineapple in the background? Just seems out of place

Posted at 1:52 am on Apr 23rd, 2006 by trebuchet03

To #13:

1. 200 custom boxes stuffed with electronics
2. add a pineapple
3. ????
4. profit!!!

Posted at 1:59 am on Apr 23rd, 2006 by Linermonkey

We could do with that at work (i’m a sound engineer). It sounds mightily impressive.

Posted at 7:52 am on Apr 23rd, 2006 by Egg

And uh, what could one do with this?

Posted at 11:58 am on Apr 23rd, 2006 by -rice-

It’s an iBook in the photo above but in the photo on the page itself it’s a powerbook g4 too, I thought it was that he was talking about

Posted at 1:24 pm on Apr 23rd, 2006 by scoyle17

>And uh, what could one do with this?

not much, press buttons and look at lights under them :]
This is basically a 16×16 USB keypad with backlight (smart one), not worth >$100, not to even mention $500

Posted at 12:53 am on Apr 24th, 2006 by RusH

As for the laptops, in the pic above it’s an iBook. In the linkes picture a Titanium PowerBook G4 (TiBook) is shown.

Posted at 4:29 am on Apr 24th, 2006 by newswede

To #18….

If you aren’t a musician you probably would find it useless. If you use Ableton Live, there is a lot of things you can do with it. Not sure if you know what you’re talking about. Here’s a video for the doubters.

http://monome.org/media/monome40h.mov

Posted at 11:40 pm on Apr 24th, 2006 by craig

you’ve mentioned it: it’s a lighting keyboard sending midi-data on an usb connection. simple one. But the most interesting part (since it’s such an easy piece of tech) is: has anyone a ikea-like description to do a rebuild??? And is it possible to make a rebuild responsing on the same software here: ?
http://monome.org/index.php?m=resource

I’m far from any knowledge on hardware stuff but so eager to do a rebuild

Posted at 8:05 am on Apr 25th, 2006 by karl

If you want to try to DIY this, get the cheapest possible switch interface that has 100+ inputs - a keyboard controller. Find any old keyboard and rip it apart, then simply solder your switches directly to the circuit. This will cost $0 to $8 (for a cheap new keyboard). Repeat settings, etc can be controlled in software. As a bonus, it also has 3 outputs (Scroll lock, key lock and num lock). As for the leds, 35 line output led drivers can be had for around US$2.80 each. One of these with line scanning can easily drive an 8×8 matrix (in fact one can drive up to a 16×16 matrix). Do a search for M5451.

Posted at 1:14 am on May 2nd, 2006 by froog

actually a keyboard doesnt work as it locks up after say 6 keypresses at the same time.. you want to be able to play with the full 10 fingers.. but at http://www.ucapps.de we are working on a monome clone.. however its completely diy.. also if you want something a bit cheaper.. you can go for the c64 controller we are developing.. also completely diy.. check it out..

Posted at 7:42 pm on Jul 14th, 2006 by wisefire

here, my rgb monome clone project based on the arduino board:

http://www.julienbayle.net/diy/LiveInterface

Posted at 4:09 am on Aug 7th, 2008 by julien

MF2006: Monome

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