Posts Tagged ‘Kits’

Dorky Lectures, Shipping

Thursday, May 7th, 2009


So I’ve been bringing the word to the street pretty hard lately. I just rolled back from a really great talk at Machine Project in LA (see above), and the last two weekends before that I’ve been in New York pimping some kind of technology.
Landing in Chicago it turns out that both CDM and Hackaday were cool enough to talk about WTPA (thanks!) and suddenly I’m (even more) behind in shipping.
Since I got back I’ve updated the shopping cart so it’s now possible to order WTPA from outside the USA, I’ve updated the Assembly Manual to account for some FAQs, and I’ve written the Operator’s Manual which includes how to rock out, MIDI implementation, and general arcana.

In general, selling kits is fun, but it sure does take time. I can’t wait until I’ve got all this logistical mess under control and can go back to working on my new video synth. I’ve learned a lot about tape guns this week; less about back porches.

WTPA v1.01 Released at Bent, Now Shipping. More Manuals Forthcoming.

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

So it finally happened. WTPA is out! I officially dropped the marble at Bent 2009, which was a real blast. To come clean and be totally honest, I actually released WTPA on the Thursday before BENT to the list of faithful WTPA-heads who have been blowing up my inbox for the last few months. You know who you are, and you rule.
To continue to be honest, I have already gotten word back from the first (AFAICT) nerd to not only complete, but MOD WTPA — Mssr Pete Edwards of Casperelectronics. So get crackin.

There’s still plenty of stuff I need to deliver on this site: The operation manual and MIDI implementation chart, the Theory of Operation Manual, schematics and source. They’ll be here this week, at least some of them. I also, more physically, have to get all the orders I’ve gotten out the door. One piece of math I neglected to do: if I’m flying along stuffing parts bags at the rate of one every 5 minutes, and do not pee, sleep, or flip the record, it will take 17 straight hours to stuff 200 bags. Given that it took like One Million hours to get the program and hardware done for WTPA, this isn’t all that significant, but man, is it boring.
Then again, I suppose it’s no more boring than waiting on a whinging prima donna emedded systems nerd who’s too busy making a new prototype analog video synth extention for WTPA to get off his duff and SHIP ME MY ISH.

Rolling to Bent 2009, Dropping Pearls

Friday, April 17th, 2009

I AM IN NEW YORK, CURRENTLY ANNOUNCING THE RELEASE OF WTPA AT BENT!

Yep, I’m on a jet plane with a bag of art-nerd-bitmagick.
It’s finally happening. Come Back Monday for Business Hours!
In the meantime, some reading:

[Editors note: These are NOT current anymore. xo. TB]

WTPA Component Guide v1.01
WTPA Assembly Guide v1.01


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WTPA v0.98 Designed! Kit To Be Released At Bent 2009!

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

God, it’s been so long I hardly know what to say. But I believe the big banner above says the most important thing :-)

It is with excitement and not a little trepidation that I am announcing WTPA’s booting out of workbench land and into the hard, cold world.
That’s right: The wait is almost over — the real deal kits WILL BE out for the Bent Festival in New York this April! Not my usual, waffly “soon”. But on a real, fixed, finite date!
That’s exactly one year since the proto came out, and would be embarrassingly slow if the latest WTPA wasn’t head and shoulders better than its forefather. But. Lest you think I’ve been idle, know that since my last post I have done several things:

  • I have become a business. Not a sissy nonprofit either.
  • I have used my extensive pull in the “business” world to do some international commerce, and have a boat full of components on the way from Taiwan.
  • I’ve set up (and am continuing to set up) an “E-commerce solution”. Although I like these about as well as I like “blogs” and “hipster runoff” they are all totally unavoidable in 2009.
  • I’ve revised the dickens out of the boards.
  • And all of this is to sell you kits!

The first run of kits will number 0-199. This figure made the most sense considering all the number crunching I did, at least for now. The retail price will be announced on or around the release date, but for the curious it will be nestled snugly somewhere between Mssrs Grant and Benjamin.
There may, at some point, be another distributor besides Narrat1ve for this kit, but they will not likely be onboard by the release date. The kit will come BYO-enclosure, although I will probably sell some parts on the site to make it easier for those of you who want a little of the guesswork taken out. The website will (has to, basically) get beautified to accomodate info for the people building the kit, and not so much my gibbering. Finally, on (or right around) the release date, you’ll be able to get ahold of the source, schematics, instructional videos, manual, and theory of operation docs all from right here.

The hot mess you see above is the test pressing of the final WTPA boards (it’s a picture of the gerber files, complements of GEDA’s Gerbv, which (sadly) unlike most of GEDA, totally rules). The real thing gets here Monday for requisite twiddling.
This is the third and last (hopefully) major hardware revision WTPA will go through. The second WTPA totally slayed the first in audio quality, latency, functionality and pretty much everything else. This last rev cleans up the rough spots that were still left on the second rev, and adds a sprinkle of small new features.
Mostly, however, it is the physically smallest and most simplified of the WTPAs to come out yet and is geared to make the kit easier to build and cheaper to sell. There is very little fat left on this design in my opinion.

Technically, WTPA has returned to single-MCU design. Shortly after I made the two-MCU rev I learned about a device called an I/O expander, which is cheaper, simpler, and more robust than a goofy UART link with a second MCU. Shortly after beginning to do battle with the I/O expander I did some much needed forehead-smacking and figured out how to rearrange the databus and replace the whole nasty expander / MCU / mess / with another parallel latch. Which of course was the Right Answer. Pie-simple, cheap, effective.
This WTPA also has its two analog subsystems (the input/output amps and the VCO / CV section) isolated with separate ground planes and ground returns to the main regulator. The last WTPA was not noisy, but I expect this one to be even better. The goofy emitter follower in the front end has been removed. This should result in better audio response, more headroom, and fewer parts.
The jitter generator has been moved into the realm of software. This does a lot for us. Most importantly, it makes the jitter work right (and sound cooler). It also introduces less HF noise onto the board, and further reduces the parts count. Finally it allows the jitter to be controlled by MIDI! This is obviously good for playability reasons, but it’s “orthoganally good” as well because the jitter clock was the only effect left exclusively in the analog domain. Other than the gains, everything on WTPA is now controllable from both the knobs and switches AND the MIDI in.
Finally, all this hardware juggling allowed me to free up a few extra pins which I assigned to a spare UART / SPI module. I have no immediate plans to expand WTPA, but if I ever did, this would be a great way to do it (say, to talk to other instruments or to add an SD card interface or the like).

This all means that the hardware is basically done changing. It also means I’m getting down to the wire on software business, too. WTPA will not go gently into the aforementioned good night — expect to see LOTS of updates here for the next month while I pull all-nighters getting this monster ready for her catwalk. There will be some ugly fixes, a huge rush of features, sample banks, scope traces, the whole nine. Exciting stuff!

And hey, thanks so much for sticking around this long. Xoxoxo.

WTPA v0.9 in Brooklyn, Kitted

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Brooklyn, 10 hours of sleep later. Debugging on an old friend’s coffee table. Brooklyn is good for a lot of things. You can get any number of tasty and erudite coffee drinks really easily, and the girls are cute (I think — they dress cool enough that I think you sometimes think they are even when they actually aren’t).

Say, however, you coded a resampling routine and realized your gain staging in the analog section was all types of foobar, and you really needed:

a.) a carbon-film resistor kit
b.) your Tek
c.) even a soldering iron.

What would you do?
I’ll tell you what. You’d fix it in software and probably go to a party or eat a falafel, and maybe worry that you weren’t dressed well enough.

Kits for tomorrow. Extra op-amps! Value Added!