arduinome thoughts

i trust everyone here has seen the monome clone via arduino project here on the forums, or very recently on cdm and then the other blogs. a few thoughts on the matter:

i'd first like to congratulate the arduinome team for achieving their goal-- it's been great to see a group of people come together and accomplish the project.

i'd also like to welcome arduinome users as members of the monome community. the focus here remains on positive exploration of these devices by sharing applications, ideas, and performances. as the community grows, we're excited to see more interesting applications. we monetarily do not benefit from the arduinome project, so we're hoping arduinome users will additionally contribute to the greater monome community, not exclusively to the cloning effort.

it's been suggested to establish a arduinome-only community site. i strongly discourage this, for the reasons stated above. it would superficially divide the community where we have the mutual goals. it's preferable to keep the monome project united in one place-- we've already spent time creating the community infrastructure and have a healthy wiki full of contributions. the arduinome is welcomed to occupy a subsection of the wiki, collecting data from the various contributors' sites.

all comments welcome. best!

I think you're doing the right thing here.

Your product is strong, the quality is fantastic and the demand is high. It'll be that way for a long time ahead... especially with the limited production. People are not just buying a box with buttons, they're buying monomes. My guess is, that you will sell out the future series at the same rate, or maybe a little slower than we've seen so far.
Maybe all this will foster your creativity, and we'll see some new products from you in the future as well? I would rather see Brian and Kelli as the creative entrepreneurs than Brian and Kelli as the sweaty assembly workers.
We're all fans of your work.
cheers

"we're of course working on new projects! we're looking forward to bringing them to life. "

best thing I heard all day :-)

that's not what i was suggesting, but i'm very glad you're happy.

I'm happy that you (tehn) wrote this post; I agree that for there to be a split between monome and arduinome would be a Bad Thing (not to mention a sad thing, given the principles of sharing upon which monome (the company) seems to be founded).

I too hope that good stuff will flow from arduinome back into the rest of the monome community. I'd like to think that the kind of person who's willing to go a more DIY route would also relish the challenge of building new applications to make the most out of the devices they built for themselves.

Arduinome.com now redirects to the sourceforge project. I appreciate everyone's thoughts!

_Dan

when i made the shield, i took it on as a project to learn eagle and learn the arduino (i made it a point not to look at the 40h schematics) before that i took the breadboarding experience as a lesson in electronics. also the original sloppy firmware that guberman and myself wrote was following the 64 protocol just to do it for fun. i don't make music and have little use for a monome myself so i sold off my buttonpads and a genuine monome logic board (the vanome for what i paid in parts) and kept my shield for historical reasons once i had learned what i wanted to learn. similarly the octinct and tinct project have pretty much been dead in the water since guberman learned what he wanted to learn and promptly fell off the planet.

its not my baby anymore, but i would like to see the arduinome group evolve into modifications of the monome that while remain backwards compatible to the protocol, offer features the general i/o pins of the monome cannot. RGB, additional io, etc.. etc.. i give the very very very eager julien bayle alot of credit for thinking outside the monome as you will.

since the beginning tehn and crew have been very gracious about allowing such a project to exist (the fact that sparkfun can sell clone buttonpad speaks volumes to this) and i must also commend owen, jordan, ben for maintaining the integrity of such a project while turning it into a usuable product. monome is thanked on the silkscreen layer of the gerbers i have given out as well.

i guess my take home message is, if you want a monome ... there are many better ways to get one! the logic kit is quite possibly one of the best values for money in electronics today. if the wait list is too long the source files exist to have your own made and there is very good documentation to help you put it together. the arduinome should be about learning electronics and giving an easier platform where you can hack the "monome" into doing things it normally cannot.

I agree with two_masks: great comments! It's good to know how everyone is thinking about this project. It's a pretty unique situation that has to be dealt with when working with open source hardware and I respect the way the monomes handle the developments!

I agree that it would make sense to concentrate all Arduinome development in one place, would it be possible to create an Arduinome specific category at this forum?

One of the main reasons why I wanted to get involved is to develop an RGB version of the monome controller like Julienb is working on. I think the easiest way to get "pseudo RGB" is by using 3 daisy chained max7221 chips and 6 lead plcc6 rgb leds, which have seperate anodes and cathodes for each color. The cool thing about this is that these leds fit the smaller monome keypads as well as the bigger Sparkfun keypads.

Also wouldn't it make sense if the monomes were the ones that sell the Arduinome shields? This saves people a lot of trouble doing group buys and it will concentrate production/distribution..

Anyway, great work everyone! I have verified and double checked the Arduinome faceplates and I'll release the final drawings later this week.

Sorry guys, I've been away for a long time and couldn't help you more than a few tricks on the arduinome project.

@tehn : I think I just love you, at least your way of thinking. ^^ It's just incredible how you are open minded.

As a lot of people here (I'm thinking about unsped, julienbayle, jordan & owen, ...) I wanted to "clone" the monome as a way to learn a bit more about electronics. I was in a tight situation that didn't allow me to be a part of the group buy for the shield, or other things. I just wanted you to know that now, I can allow tlme to the project, and I'll first try to keep up with all your work buy building a "clone", but my final project is not just that : I want my RGB 256 ^^

I wanted to have the RGB monome as a whole part of an audiovisual performance. When I started the project, I was just working on the visual part of the project, but some events happened, and now, I'm also making sounds... I just hope I'll be able to reach my goals : 256 RGB monome and make a good use of it with nice tracks, maybe a vinyl release and a worldwide tour (if we're lucky ^^)

Ok, I'll stop talking about me, sorry


I think that what impressed me most in this story is the core of the project : owen and jordan ported the firmware like they were reading a book, xndr can provide awesome enclosures as smooth as butter, unsped shared all his experience from the tinct as easy as if he was giving away candy at halloween, julien is willing to finish the RGB version like he's Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2... Such heart in a project, from so much people that don't know each other from more than a few weeks / months now... It's worth writing a fairy tale ^^

The ease of use of the Arduino programming is a new door. A lot of electronic newbies like some of us couldn't have done this work if we had to code it in C. With the arduino, we succeeded, but now, we have a lot more to do on the "hardware" side. For exemple, the monome with ADC and accelerometers is nice, but I guess we can go farther by using (let's say) a PIR sensor, which will affect the attack or another automation based on how "hot" is the crowd, or anything else. This exemple is dumb but you understand what I want to say ^^ Now we just have to be wild...

I'd like to hear what you'd like to come with.

Cheers

I finished the final Arduinome panel drawings today. No Arduinome section in the wiki yet.. Any suggestions where to put everything Arduinome related in the wiki? See attachment for now. Feedback appreciated ;-)

Edit: p.s. Melka, great to have you back!

awesome! as always, big thanks tehn :)

arrrgh! too much essay spam!
tehn, anything you could do about this...?

but it did unearth a very nostalgic thread for us arduinome and clone users :)