Quick test of the velocity sensitive buttons for the keytar.

I have to hold the 3d printed test rig in place so please forgive the shoddy note triggering. 😅 Overall it feels pretty good; there are 3 different velocity curves to choose from.

#diy #maker #pcb #3dprinting #midi #keytar #synth

It wooooorks. Well, mostly.

A more clever me would have broken out the 5V line for USB power since it already has a 3.3V voltage regulator -- had to get another regulator for the breadboard to connect to my laptop. Also, finally figured out how to make my own bootloader variant and configure the microcontroller pins.

Everything seems to be working so far. However, 3 of the 40 hall effect sensors are giving me weird values/unresponsive. Perhaps maybe I damaged them during the soldering process?

#diy #maker #pcb #midi #keytar #synth

The boards for the keytar are finally here. This may be the one I'm most excited about. 576 blinky LEDs that will serve as the main display for the faders, buttons, and XY pad.

#diy #maker #pcbdesign #midi #keytar #synth

Tada. A fully assembled keytar.

This should be enough to start ordering parts and building, but I want to try my hand at making some photo-realistic renders in Blender now. 😅

#freecadfriday #freecad #cad #maker #diy #midi #keytar #synth

Heh, keytar has SynthCarts now.

This is probably the coolest dumb/pointless feature I've ever added to a project.

I (eventually) want to make some digital synths and stuff them into cartridges so they're swappable with the keytar. Excited to make a few and slap some retro cart labels on them.

#freecadfriday #freecad #cad #maker #diy #midi #keytar #synth

I think I've finally finished the boards for the keytar. Unfortunately, I don't know of a convenient PCB manufacturer in the US that offers assembly. I can solder most of them myself, but the board containing 576 LEDs might be a job for a pick-n-place machine. 😅

I'm considering going through @aislerhq to have them made. Has anyone in the states tried them before? Guess I'm worried what the customs situation might look like. 😬  

More keytar updates soon!

#aisler #kicad #pcb #diy #midi #keytar

Working out the enclosure for my metal slab of a keytar. 😅 Very much inspired by early analog synths.

Also my first time using the sheet metal workbench in FreeCAD. The tabs for the wood panel mounts didn't work like I initially expected, but everything went smoothly after figuring that out.

#freecad #cad #maker #diy #midi #keytar