Nerdy Texts of Analog and Embedded Systems Wizardry

It is with a sigh of relief that I can announce that the Russian-Winter-like Narrat1ve shipping backlog is OVER!

I have something in the neighborhood of 50 packages waiting to get picked up as of Monday morning, meaning our poor comrades overseas are now caught up with my cheeseburger’d nationals as far as shipping goes. Better still, I’ve gotten all the forms, legalities, phylacteries, and ephemera to make sure this never happens again. On a related note, I will be expecting roughly 48 new forum applicants in 6 to 10 days :-)

Furthermore (and excitingly) I am beginning to run low on WTPAs! The original pressing is close to 70% gone! In all likelihood I will reprint them again, but being an inveterate tinkerer there will be some changes. If anybody has any ideas about things they’d like to see incorporated into the new version, feel free to holler.

Most excitingly, this means I can now get back to some guilt-free nerding out on NEW designs… I’ll keep you posted.

Xoxoxo, TMB

So lately I’ve gotten called back into the top-secret toy-prototype world a lot and have not gotten as much research done for Narrat1ve as I might have hoped to.

However, I have tweaked my new video synth about as far as it can go with the current hardware, and got a chance to show it off at the Midwest Experimental Electronics Showcase last Saturday (that link will probably not be about MEES forever).
It looks considerably more badass than it did when I last showed it in New York, although it is still far from ideal. I’ve gotten a lot of what I’ll call “trippiness in the Horizontal range” and now know how and why all of that happens, how color encoding works, how interlacing and sync work, and what audio looks like coded directly into RGB color information. In general I feel pretty confident about the essentially obsolete technology of analog video :-)
I’m excited about plowing through the next revision as soon as I get some time. It should be a lot more badass, and include some frequency multiplication, waveshaping, and the ability to incorporate external video.

I also met some nice folks named Arturo and Sarah whose company likely knows a whole lot more about said osolete video than me, and it turned out that Arturo used to work on the Sandin IP which was among the first artsy fartsy video synths ever made (along with Stephen Beck and Nam June Paik’s stuff) right here in Chicago! Historical Context W00t!

In WTPA news, shipping shipping shipping. The videos and pics from people who’ve successfully built the thing are starting to come in, and I should get them up soon.

EDIT:

Tue May 19 20:32:31 CDT 2009

Whoa. I just found this Linear Technology App Note which is blowing my mind. Any of you interested in analog video should cop that *ish.

Xo, TB

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.

So WTPA is no Wii Fit Circa Christmas 2008 or anything, but it’s been nice to see the orders come in. I have been admittedly slow and horrible about moving them out the door, but am getting better.

Above you can see part of the reason at least — a WTPA based video synthesizer I made for a sloppy rocker dude video art party in Brooklyn last weekend. The party was fun, the synth was cool, and most importantly I’m excited to get started on the next one.

In line with my new-found forefather vs cherry tree honesty style I will say a couple things: I have decided I must do this sort of thing mostly to prove stuff to myself about electronics nerdery. Like, I get a kick out of challenging myself to build some esoteric fruitcakery like this in all of four days, or must because lord knows I don’t make money on it, and not very many people see it, and those people that do mostly don’t get it.

So that leaves ego and da love of da game as motivations. And learning, but I think that is tied up pretty tightly with the first two.

Something else I will say: I set myself on fire making that thing –>

For reals. It was a first. It sucked. Word to the wise: acrylic takes a lot more heat to bend than ABS. And apparently a lot more heat in general than a hoodie.

Also, for those of you who do like to mess with plastics, if you haven’t gotten a set of the fancypants acrylic drillbits with the special rake and pointy ends, they will change your life. You might cry. I almost did, but stopped when I realized I was in need of extiguishing.

Finally, for those of you who wrote me looking for videos of WTPA, they’re in the “Lejendary Adventures-esque jaunt through time and space in no particularly succinct fashion” section above along with all the other longwinded esoterica about this project. [Ed Note: Nope, they’re here in this blog now.]

Oh, and in case you’re in the hood and curious I’m talking about sampling theory and how to design cool stuff in general in LA this Sunday at the fine and noble Machine Project. It should be fun (and free) and I’ll have kits for sale.

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.