Live electronic musician Moldover’s MOJO is the Sherman Tank of controllers: enormous, indestructible, destructive. It’s also a deeply involved build, costing US$1999.00. If you want to get some of that … um, MOJO … but don’t have two grand lying around, or if you want to adapt it to your own mojo, Moldover’s work is now fully open-source.

If you’re an experienced hardware maker, you could use these files to build your own MOJO or adapt ideas into your own design. (Moldover uses the excellent, powerful Livid Builder line of parts.) If you are a builder, you can get an idea of what’s involved with the build in the timelapse and explanation above. If not, you can live vicariously through Matt.

But builder or not, if you use Ableton Live, you should pay attention: in that big archive are the Live templates, which you could use to adapt to any controller you like, including some tasty effects chains to play with. That means even if soldering irons send you into a cold sweat, this is news worth watching. (Only one criticism: I’d like to see a license included, which would make this proper open source hardware.)

If you do have two grand, meanwhile, boutique controller maker 60 Works is taking over manufacture of the MOJO so you can get your own. 60 Works’ Dave Cross shares details with CDM:

* 1999USD
* hand made (duh)
* improved over Moldover’s original, based on his touring experience. Mostly tech improvements under the hood.

Grab the open source download as an archive (cough, guys, GitHub), and read up on the hardware:

http://blog.60works.com/mojo

Another video details Matt’s personal journey through controllers and shows off what the MOJO is about:

Inside this compact white box lurks a lot of sonic power and technical prowess. Perhaps that explains why the newest version of the open source Shruthi-1 now sports a crazy-badass wolf dog cartoon with glowing eyes.

Since its launch, the Shruthi-1 has gradually evolved new features, with a fairly sophisticated combination of hardware and extensive software. At its core, it’s a “hybrid” synth with digital/virtual analog oscillators and real-analog filter. The digital oscillators allow it to change character, for classic virtual analog subtractive, or wavetable, FM, phase distortion, and vowel synthesis.

The big news with the filter is that the various flavors of filter board are now discontinued. Sadly, the wonderful CEM3379 filter chip is just too rare to have a long-term home in this synth; the Shruthi-1, like other synths (the Dark Energy being a recent example) has hit chip scarcity.

But in its place is something else new and wonderful. The SSM2164 (uh, that doesn’t roll of the tongue, but yes, that filter) combines 15 filter responses with four resonance models, for a total of 60 possible filter sounds. See also the Oberheim Matrix-12 and Xpander for pole-mixing techniques. You also get self-oscillation, and even a Korg DS-inspired diode waveshaper. (I won’t go into any more detail, as maker Mutable describes this in gory precision.)

In a way, the Shruthi-1 – despite its minimal knobs – really hides a semi-modular instrument, one with its own built-in arpeggiator, modulation matrix, duophony, rhythmical oscillator cycling, and lots of other features. If there’s a technical feature possible – just about any feature – the Shruthi-1 does it. Combined with that terrific filter and digital grunge, I think it’s a terrific deal in desktop synths.

In fact, my only real criticism is, it does so much, you’re likely to be stuck paging through menus – or should focus on MIDI programming – because of the minimal controls. I can see why members of the Shruthi-1 community have been building expansion controllers for it to get more hands-on control. But on the other hand, to me, it’s entirely worth the tradeoff going compact – even with a complex menu system. The result is a synth that’s far more affordable and portable. It’s a natural for MIDI users.

The new design is also unquestionably the best-looking Shruthi yet, thanks to translucent white plexiglass and white LED lighting. 130 € buys you the kit (plus another 20 € in parts), but I’d strongly recommend the pre-assembled version if you’re less familiar with bigger builds. There are a lot of parts and two boards, plus a pretty white circuit board that will look grimy if you don’t solder carefully. For experienced builders, it should be a great assembly process into which you’ll want to sink your teeth, wolf-like. But for less-experienced builders – or just people who want to get straight to making sound – I think 349 € is a small price to ask. (A carry bag and European wall wart are included.) Just grab the pre-built version fast; because they’re hand-assembled, they won’t last long.

Full details:
Shruthi-1, 4-Pole Mission edition

Be sure to have a listen to the way the new stuff sounds:

The other important thing to mention about the Shruthi-1 is that it’s a fully open source synth. (An earlier version prohibited commercial use, but it now uses a more permissive license.) The best way to see what lurks inside is to check out GitHub. Apart from being able to modify the Shruthi-1 hardware and software design, there’s a library you can use in your own projects:

https://github.com/pichenettes/shruthi-1

This also means the Shruthi-1 joins our own MeeBlip among open source synths. I’ve been a bit amused at people comparing the two, because what I like about the Shruthi is that it’s basically MeeBlip’s opposite. We kept the design of the MeeBlip as minimal as possible, both with an eye to keeping one-to-one hardware controls and making modification simpler. The Shruthi is lovely because it’s the reverse: it retains a small footprint, but packs lots of sonic options. It’s the maximal alternative.

I’m just happy that the hardware landscape in general offers loads of great choices for people wanting to augment their computer soft synths with hardware. Who says the synthesizer’s best days are in the past?

Who says you can’t make your own consumer electronics? David A. Mellis, a co-creator of Arduino who now is starting a PhD in Leah Buechley’s group, High-Low Tech, at the MIT Media Lab, has shared his Fab Speakers, an open source, portable speaker project:

These portable speakers are made from laser-cut wood, fabric, veneer, and electronics. They are powered by three AAA batteries and compatible with any standard audio jack (e.g. on an iPhone, iPod, or laptop).

Why open source them? Mellis says he designed the speakers to be affordable and easy to assemble, in the hopes that he would “see changes or additions that I didn’t think about and to have those changes shared publicly for others to use or continue to modify.” Speakers are perhaps ideal for this exercise: the housing matters, both aesthetically and functionally, and because a speaker is something relatively straightforward and simple, it’s easy to imagine modifications that retain the basic role of the design.

Big-league design blog Core77 takes note of what sharing this design can mean, as Mellis turns to designer Sarah Pease to imagine an alternative housing:

Here’s a great example of what can happen when experimental research is documented and posted on the web with plenty of explanation and resources. RISD student Sarah Pease, a junior in Furniture Design, took part in an independent study with the High-Low Tech Group at MIT’s Media Lab this past Fall.

Sarah Pease turns to something you probably already have in your house:

Using readily available household items and basic construction methods allow for even further customization and flexibility of the Fab Speakers. Varying jar shapes/sizes can be mixed with alternate feet for different looks.

High-Low Tech Research Group Project’s Jarring Effect

Building speakers was once a common activity, to the point that many, many musicians made their own speakers or amps or simple effect circuits. For all the excitement over DIY these days, a lot of people don’t have this experience – but with Internet documentation, the time is right for more.

Indeed, I’m keen to hear from people who do have experience building speakers: what might improve the sound quality of this design, and looks aside, what would be the best housing shapes and materials?

In the meantime, I’ll have to give this a try:
Fab Speakers [David Mellis @ MIT Media Lab]

http://sarahpease.com/audioJar

More pics:

Via comments, here’s yet another design – Jon Moeller’s adorable “owl” speakers:
http://moeller.io/owl-speakers.html

I have a bunch of jars, so I may need to give the jars a try here.

The original vision of the MeeBlip was to make something affordable, something open and hackable, something anyone could get, something that could tell a story, and something we’d use to make some music. And since those are all goals of Create Digital Music, too, it’s a perfect physical compliment to what we do. For me, personally, it means putting my money where my (blogging) mouth is. It’s a chance to learn.

So that makes this a really special week. It hasn’t been easy getting here, but now the MeeBlip begins its second chapter.

This week, we’re announcing availability of the MeeBlip SE. US$139 (intro price) buys you a version you can put together in a few minutes with just a screwdriver, a complete, MIDI-capable digital hardware synth. (We ship most places worldwide – and we’re shipping now.) Through incredible work by the MeeBlip’s principal designer, Canadian James Grahame, the SE revises our original design:

• It’s more playable. With lots of feedback from users (and extended chats with Francis Preve of Keyboard Magazine and Academik Records), we made the control layout more logical and more fun to play.
• It’s got a greater sonic range. Anti-aliasing on/off, and a variable pulse width knob combine with more unusual features like its digital distortion and intentionally-quirky digital filter.
• Everything responds to MIDI. If there’s a knob or switch on the front panel, there’s a MIDI parameter – and vice versa. Whether you use your hand or a MIDI message, everything is accessible.
• It stores patches. 16 patch slots accessible from the front panel mean you can use your favorite sounds live, and you can store them somewhere other than your brain.

And you can get one right now. (MeeBlip SE, and for DIYers, either the SE Build Everything version or the compact micro board.)

But, of course, as we learned how to make the synth better, we learned a lot more about how to make the business of making a synth better. Learning is wonderful: I’ve been floored by seeing what people have done with these instruments, by seeing them pop up in unexpected places and making brilliant, unexpected sounds. Learning is also painful. We made some mistakes, as demand for the MeeBlip went beyond what we expected, and the limitations of the chip we chose made developing our more ambitious ideas take longer than we wanted.

In other words, users have been incredibly inspiring – reality has sometimes been incredibly challenging – and those are the two things that have moved us forward.

So, it’s now a daily task to work on ways of making the MeeBlip more accessible, more available, and better.

While we work on that, you can now find all of our schematics and code – including many, many hours of James’ work, in particular – on GitHub. Axel Werner, a programmer in our community, has already contributed to making that code better, so when you play a MeeBlip, you’re playing some of his work, too. (The lesson of open source: if just one person does something with what you share, it’s already worth it. And Axel’s not alone.)

I’m working mainly on documentation – both for users just wanting to make music (even if this is their first synth), and developers who want to learn about code and sound.

You can learn about the MeeBlip, read those new docs as they’re added, keep up with the latest, and – if you like – buy the new MeeBlip SE as a kit or quick-build synth – at the synth’s site:

http://meeblip.com

Let’s Get Some Music in Here

I can’t talk about the MeeBlip nearly as well as its users can show it.

Case in point: we didn’t know one Jeremy Leaird-Koch until the video above popped in our inbox. It’s a demo video of the MeeBlip SE, and it shows off all the new sonic features of the instrument, and demonstrates the PWM width functionality, and shows how to make music, and does a timelapse of building the kit from scratch. Here’s the funny part: we didn’t ask him to do this. His demo video puts anything we’d make to shame.

Jeremy’s story behind this, and the reason there are two MeeBlips in there, was even more amazing. He wrote us about a month ago:

My boyfriend and I had put off exchanging Christmas gifts because I was waiting for the MeeBlip kit (his present) to arrive. Finally, about a week or so after XMAS, it came, I wrapped it up, and gave it to him. I unwrap his present to me, and it’s in a Canada Post box, too. Turns out we got each other the exact same thing. Two MeeBlip kits. Absolutely hilarious.

Anyways, the next day we built them up and played around with them. We also made this little video documenting one of the builds and our first explorations of what it could do. Damn, what a fun little box.

I nearly cried – well, for two reasons. One was, it was a clear explanation of why you go nuts trying to make a synth. The other was, we really screwed up shipping in 2011, and if anything told me to never let that happen again, this story did. We’ve changed the way we source parts, the way we assemble the MeeBlip, and the way we distribute it, and it’s one of the things I think about every morning when I wake up. But thanks, Jeremy and your boyfriend; you’ve absolutely inspired us.

And most importantly, I want to hear more music, made on whatever thing you choose, because I really enjoyed it. And that’s what this is all about.

Side note: if you like soldering, you want the MeeBlip Build Everything kit for intro US$119, which is what he has here. If you don’t, don’t let this scare you; you can get the Quick Build and just use a screwdriver, and it doesn’t take a whole lot longer than this does in fast-forward timelapse time.

http://meeblip.com/get-one/

For the last few decades, generally speaking, we’ve had computers, and we’ve had physical, modular, analog gear. Computers are endlessly patchable, but not using physical cords. Modulars use physical cords, but they lack the flexibility (and affordability) of a computer.

Now, US$25 and an Arduino can change that.

rePatcher is a simple, tangible modular interface for computers. It could work with any software, but right out of the gate it already works with two popular (virtual) patching environments, Max/MSP and the free and open source Pure Data (Pd). You use physical patch cords to make connections, and those connections are reflected in the patch you see on the screen. The patch cords are coupled with requisite encoders for dialing in additional parameter changes. (Reason comes up as a possible candidate for additional compatibility, which would, of course, be really sweet.)

rePatcher is built as a shield for Arduino, so you’ll need one of those, but that still keeps the price low enough to say I absolutely have to have one of these right now.

It’s not the first attempt to do something like this, but it might be the most accessible and affordable – and interesting. And while those cute little patch cords are fun, there’s nothing stopping someone from building on this idea and going to bigger cords and something more extensive than this 6×6 matrix.

Best of all: the magic happens entirely over USB, so if you want to make this work with something else – say, your favorite VJ software – you can do so with anything that can communicate over serial.

More information:
http://www.openmusiclabs.com/projects/repatcher/

There are times when something happens that reminds you why you make the sacrifices to do what you do. A real highlight of 2011 for me was Gwydion ap Dafydd appearing with the MeeBlip, our open source synthesizer, baked into a cookbook.

I knew Gwydion had gotten creative in making a housing for his MeeBlip kit, and I knew that it was a book. But then, he opened it up to reveal the MeeBlip’s controls popping out of a cookbook page, with I/O ports conveniently located on the side, and even the ability to remove the panel to get at the board. And then… the pig’s eye lit red to indicate MIDI messages and power, and I was floored.

Synth in a Book [Konkreet Labs, also here in Berlin]

I can share some good news from the MeeBlip project: we’re now shipping a US$39.95 MeeBlip micro kit, an ultra-compact variation of the MeeBlip. It’s in stock in Canada, in transit within 48 hours. I’m especially excited, because the MeeBlip micro is designed to allow MeeBlip users to surprise us. With pins for analog and digital input, you could connect any arbitrary number of controls in any layout. You could have one giant filter knob if you wanted, or turn it into a wearable project in a purse. Or you could just make a nice, little housing and control it via MIDI. (We now provide full MIDI control of all of the controls.) And we’re excited that it’s forty bucks, because it makes a kit highly accessible to hobbyists. A fully-assembled version will be available soon.

Meet the MeeBlip micro: Small, Hackable Project Synth, Shipping Now, $39.95

http://meeblip.noisepages.com/get-one/

We can’t wait to see what you do with it. We think the simplicity of the MeeBlip’s design, its low cost, and its straightforward MIDI operation could mean people will turn the micro into things we can’t yet imagine. (At least, that’s why we designed it that way!)

In 2012, we’ll again be offering MeeBlips in quantity that come with cases, and affordable MeeBlips (and now MeeBlip micros) that you can get pre-assembled, so the need to solder something together won’t keep your synth on a shelf. Now, with MIDI input in place, we’re ready to get back to MeeBlipping and playability. James Grahame has worked feverishly on the engineering of the current MeeBlip generation, and I look forward to us getting to share the work he did, and how he did it. He’s also been working on how to make the thing easier to manufacture and ship, so we’re ready to share that, too!

It’s also been fascinating to watch people use MIDI – and even iPads – to control the MeeBlip.

Gwydion’s MeeBlipBook (MeeBook?) made another surprise appearance (it sure as heck surprised me) in a teaser video for Lemur on the iPad. In case you missed it:

I had been playing the MeeBlip, when my keyboard or laptop weren’t handy, with the excellent Little MIDI Machine for iPad. I’m looking forward to playing with some other non-computer MIDI solutions, too, not just the iPad.

I’ve seen at least one Lemur template in the works, too; will link to those – and perhaps Pd patches and such – when they’re ready.

In the meantime, the fact that the MeeBlip is out in the world doing things and making sounds, and that we’re at last shipping them again, means I actually have a reason to be festive this holiday season. And, MeeBlip, what are you doing, New Year’s, New Year’s Eve?

meeblip.com

LA-based bang Fol Chen (Asthmatic Kitty records) wanted to go beyond the computer as the playback and manipulation device for their music. So they worked with collaborators to invent a solution. In a new video, sounds, and an interview, we can share some of how this came into being.

Built with the monome creators (Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain) and LA research and experimentation center Machine Project, the Tetrafol is a custom, pyramidal sound device. The object warps Fol Chen’s music using gestural manipulation of playback, but can also use your own samples. And with open-source circuit and firmware, the project could be an opportunity to learn or to build your own creation.

Description:

The Tetrafol is a hand-held tangible electronic sound toy. Circuits enclosed by a wooden tetrahedron detect orientation and motion-gestures to modify the playback of a collection of Fol Chen’s micro-compositions, allowing the user to explore sound through physical manipulation.

The battery-powered device has its own internal speaker but can additionally be hooked up to a headphone or amplifier.

The circuit and firmware are based on open-source hardware and is itself published as open-source, allowing anyone interested to learn about its deepest inner-workings.

Here’s a sample of the project, via the Tetrafol-created Fol Chen track “So Good”:
Fol Chen – So Good by WeGetPress

Built by hand in a limited run of 100, the device sells for US$110 direct from Machine Project. We spoke to monome’s Brian Crabtree about the project – and a new, comically-inclined video shows off the project.

Stems from the track “Back on Kent” come preloaded:
Fol Chen, “Back on Kent” by asthmatickitty

CDM: How did this collaboration come about? How did you work together?

brian: kelli and i have a loving and working relationship with machineproject, a phenomenal organization founded by our good friend mark allen. we’re always amazed at the fantastical variety of projects that are born there. a few inspiring works of recent include a cash machine designed for a children’s museum and a workshop on lockpicking. so when mark approached us on behalf of his good friend adam goldman and adam’s band fol chen regarding a possible collaboration we were all ears. the goal was to design and produce some sort of synthesizer-sampler-effect-instrument-toy-object to accompany the release of their new album. that was about a year ago and we’re happy to see it finalized and soon in playful hands.

in the early stages there was much whittling of ideas (too expensive, too complicated, etc). we arrived at some sort of gestural sample player and a demo video was ready to show the proof of concept (we live on opposite coasts so there was much back and forth through internets and mails) the basic build used a waveshield (by adafruit) and an arduino and some very hacky code i modified.

fol chen provided the sound set. kelli and i proposed a series of enclosures– diamonds, stars, ice cream cones, d20. the tetrahedron ended up being the most beautifully minimal, and incidentally the most cost effective. our friend jason voytilla laser cut a prototype from thin birch ply and we sent the “finished” sample to california where it underwent a series of intense focus groups – thanks to the rigorous machineproject laboratories. after more back and forth, and basic design changes here and there we were in agreement. we used our very reliable production chain that we depend on for monome releases… it was nice really helpful to have that all in place and sped up the process considerably.

the tetrafol accompanies the release of some exciting new fol chen tracks, and there will be a release party of sorts in early december at machineproject. should be very interesting, as the current installation is a 30 foot deep window sill of sorts.

What went into the design? The construction of the thing?

the final circuit board is an arduino, [Lady Ada - Limor Fried] waveshield, and accelerometer smashed together and made very small. i really just put existing technologies together– i can’t take a lot of credit here.

the industrial design was more fun. we didn’t want to use plastic so we experimented with felt and wood. coming up with a size, shape, and feel were the main goals- to create something that was pleasant to hold and sturdy enough to be tossed in the air.

What’s the basic notion of the instrument?

it plays sound loops, or “micro-compositions” written by fol chen. when you pick up and tilt the device it modifies playback: in one axis it changes the playback speed, in the other it triggers a variable-speed stutter (playback position jump). sounds are changed by a shaking motion. given the response is immediate, it comes alive very quickly.

i’d also hesitate to endorse it as an Instrument, though it’s very playable. it’s a bit like a responsive buddha box.

Any other documentation?

i posted the firmware/hardware source on github. there is a no “build your own” guide as you’d be much better off just looking at the waveshield documentation (which is very good.)

this was a fun collaborative side project– and it makes me even more curious to see how musicians continue to create tangible objects to accompany their releases.

More information:
folchen.com

Tetrafol @ GitHub (firmware + hardware, under a GPL v3 license)

But whether you’re in the US or in one of the many other parts of the world where we count readers, let’s pause to consider what makes us thankful.

I’m immensely thankful to have the opportunity to make music. I find it’s always worth reminding myself of that, and reminding to fight for the time to do it, to keep myself sane. Highlights for me so far in 2011: playing a friend’s grand piano in Brooklyn on a wintry-feeling March day (the samples of which make up the performance Saturday), spending Hurricane Irene jamming on a Mono/Poly with King Britt and Rucyl Mills, firing up Pd and getting lost in granular samples on a gray day in Berlin, assembling a track in Reason or Ableton in a hotel room… these are the sort of moments where, all at once, you find under almost any circumstances you can reclaim your sense of center and happiness, and give everything else clarity.

I’m also, and I don’t get to say this enough, unbelievably thankful for the readers of this site and some of the print projects I do. As a professional writer, writing is not a claimed right, but a privilege granted at the pleasure of your readership. Then, on this site, I get the gift of being able to see the inventions and expressions of people around the world. And yes, even getting criticisms and hearing people argue with what I say is a terrific motivator, one I don’t take for granted, especially when print writing remains largely without feedback. For me as a musician, it’s come to be part of who I am – not only my personal output, but all this input, having the chance to write about what’s happening. It doesn’t conflict with being a musician; it’s an essential element of that process for me.

I’m so grateful, in fact, for these two things, that I feel I can always do more.

And more is coming. I’m thankful that after a lot of work behind the scenes, there are new possibilities that lie ahead to expand upon what CDM does. And yes, as some readers or residents of Berlin have worked out, I’ve personally for the last few weeks been in the capital of Germany and not the city of New York. You may also have met Marsha Vdovin, who came onboard earlier this year as Business Development Manager and who has already moved forward what CDM can do and how it can grow.

Also, as of this morning, delays suffered by our open source MeeBlip project are at last coming to a close, beginning with new shipments of the MeeBlip micro and all-new firmware for all models, available now on GitHub. (We’ll have a full update on the MeeBlip project next week, as everyone gets back from the holiday.)

Most importantly, I’m working now on plans to completely rebuild Create Digital Noise and give readers and like-minded artists the community they deserved, instead of the failed experiment we got. If you’re interested in being part of that conversation, get in touch; otherwise, more on that very soon.

But it’s those things for which I’m thankful that motivate all of this. And I’m thankful, as always, not so much for what lies in the past or somewhere off in the future, but what is halfway-done and in process, partway through the story, which is where I find the really good stuff lies. In that spirit, here’s a documentary that deals with the notion of delivering in beta, and getting things out the door – something that goes as much for music as it does for inventions, I think. (As it happens, director Gabriel Shalom and photo editor/titler Patrizia Kommerell are sitting next to me in a hotel lobby as I write this.)

What are you thankful for? Let us know – or have a look at ten music technologies I gave thanks for last year.

We’ve followed open source hardware – and generally hardware that is more open to user customization and modification – on this site since the beginning. As I prepare for a talk on the MeeBlip at Berlin’s Create Art & Technology Conference, though, I think it’s time to do a proper survey of the hardware that’s out there.

The ability to modify music gear is something that’s important to a lot of people as musicians. It means the ability to learn how the technology we use works, and therefore to have a deeper musical and compositional understanding of it. And it can mean the ability to make music hardware more expressive of your sonic imagination and creative ideas. Finally, it adds an additional avenue through which you can share your understanding and use and modification of musical instruments with other people.

Explanation below, or just skip to the survey, or live event in Berlin.

A Spectrum of “Open” in Music Gear

Even proprietary hardware can become more “open” in the general sense. In the early days of synths, it was commonplace to include detailed specifications and even circuit diagrams. That arguably furthered the evolution of music gear, as knowledge was shared, and it certainly allowed more advanced users to better understand how that gear worked. We’ve seen a subtle return to those days, with examples like Korg’s Monotron and MonoTribe hardware, for which the company released schematics.

The viral, revolutionary spread of the monome design owes in part a community built around modification, access to critical schematics, and some open sourced software which the community took and modified. The monome, however, focuses on a fully open-source protocol and availability to schematics. Those schematics are not free for use in your own creations, which has sometimes caused friction as makers sell modified or homebrewed variants of the monome. On the other hand, many in the monome community value the handcrafted original hardware and don’t particularly want “clones” and the like, and have found the available information more than enough to fuel their musical needs.

Open Source Hardware goes further, by placing everything under a license that makes it free for use. This would include the software (either running on the device, on an attached computer, or both), the schematics of the design, and even visual elements of the design, as well as the documentation. Projects that give their users the most freedom to work with any modifications they make also allow for unfettered commercial use; that is, you don’t have to worry if you sell a few, or even many, if you run afoul of the project’s original creators. Without going into the debate for or against such an approach, if this kind of sharing is your goal, then it follows it will important for you to make that freedom explicit. This sort of explicit use is also what is described in the Open Source Hardware definition, which our MeeBlip project has adopted because we feel the project and definition fit one another.

Note that there’s a very real debate about whether the ideals of free software are applicable to open source hardware. There’s no debating it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison: copying hardware means physically manufacturing something. (I’m surprised to see, in German, the use of the term Freie Hardware, which has generally been avoided in English. See also the Open Source Hardware and Design Alliance, which goes beyond some of these specific – and possibly not-really-applicable – licenses.)

I’ll say this: I think adding in the issues of economics, materials, sustainability, local manufacture, labor, distribution, and international trade make this question more compelling for discussion. It’s messier than software, yes – but given that all software relies on hardware on which to run, dealing with these messy and often demanding questions means engaging more of the many dimensions in which technology interacts with economics.

Resources:
Open Source Hardware (OSHW) definition / principles
Business models for Open Hardware
Amusingly, the MeeBlip continues flying under the radar as an open source hardware project, but once we actually get our shipping picture in place over the next couple of weeks, maybe we can work on that.

Let’s See the Gear!

But first, we just need to find out what’s out there. And that’s where you come in. If you’ve got a project, or use a project, or just know about a project, let us know. If it’s your own project – especially if you feel we’ve ignored you in the past (trust me, you don’t want to see my inbox or brain) – now’s your chance to tell us about it.

Because it’s the narrowest and most sharply-defined category, I’m most interested in those projects that fit the Open Source Hardware definition – not for philosophical reasons so much as taxonomic ones. But other projects are welcome, too; I’d like to hear about them.

About that MeeBlip…

And we’ll have the first of a series of updates on the MeeBlip project later this week. (The new SE and micro projects, and updated firmware, as well as vastly-expanded documentation, are all due soon, held up only by international shipping, weather, and illness challenges I’ll describe later.)

In the meantime, fire away.

Or Talk in Person!

If you’re in Berlin, this weekend join some terrific discussions on creativity, technology, and DIY, including my talk on the MeeBlip, lots of talks on hardware design and prototyping (including for beginners), and projects like the fantastic libmonome. And if you see me, say hi! (My talk is Sunday morning.)

http://createartandtechnology.de/

Survey

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Light-up grids of buttons are nearly commonplace, but the BlipBox is something different: its array of lights is also a sensor, making it both X/Y controller and light-up grid. And it’s designed to be completely open — firmware, hardware, schematics and documentation are all fully GPL-licensed and open source.

For those of us who aren’t ninja coders, it’s also easy to customize, thanks to friendly software (pictured below) .k for making nifty interactive animations on its display and support for the artist-friendly Processing code environment. As the creators describe it, it’s three (three!) pieces of hardware in one:

• a creative tool and musical instrument
• a large, high definition x/y controller with visual feedback
• a uniquely versatile MIDI and OSC controller

Lest you assume such oddities as this come only from non-musician hackers, these are designed by musicians. The project, built right in London, is available in fits and starts and stock becomes available, but a recent run was “Prices are GBP 140 for a complete ‘box with USB and MIDI interface, and 9v external power connection, in a black aluminium case with perspex side panels.” (To the team: apologies for giving you splashy publicity right as you have precisely none in stock. Readers, follow @cdmblogs on Twitter for updates. Or just follow their site:

BlipBox News

Side note: yes, we need to stop putting “blip” in the name of things. Guilty as charged. (I’ll be writing soon about the Blippo Box, which is … completely different.)