Somewhere between the Omnichord and the Stylophone sits the Le Strum — a superb MIDI device designed to replicate the melodic playability of a guitar, with the ease of single note chord playback. It’s pocket-sized, but full on features, and takes making music back into realms of pure joy.
Le Strum comes with 36 chord buttons, and a metallic strum plate to trigger individual notes by using the built-in stylus. An astonishing 84 different chords are available, including major, minor, dominant 7th, major 7th, minor 7th, augmented and diminished for 12 root notes. It is able to replicate a guitar string layout, simple triads, and an organ mode which can send your bass part over an alternative MIDI channel.
The Le Strum has been embraced by many professional musicians and producers as an exceptional alternative to the MIDI keyboard. Here we see Grammy-nominated producer James Wiltshire of the Freemasons and F9 Audio demoing it in his studio:
The Le Strum has been used by Michael Lovett of NZCA Lines, for his ambient soundtrack to this rather steamy video:
Renier van der Lee is the father of three kids, a technology enthusiast, and a self-proclaimed “gentleman farmer,” which sounds incredibly official on its own. He is also a Tindie seller who created the award-winning Vinduino sensor, which has seen massive growth and sales both on Tindie and beyond since its inception.
Join us as we explore the history and proliferation of this unique and endlessly useful device that has a huge impact on water conservation and savings for growers.
What is Vinduino, and How Does it Work?
Vinduino is a water-saving irrigation project for vineyards, but it has applications for all types of growers who live in drought-ridden countries. Vinduino utilizes a gypsum soil moisture sensor to accurately measure the moisture present around the roots of a plant.
It was originally designed for use in vineyards, where it can be connected to several long-range RF LoRA modules and charged by solar power. All of this is connected to the irrigation system. When the sensor detects a drop in moisture, the sprinklers turn on, and not a moment before.
Renier first tested his VInduino installation on his own vineyard. Prior to the creation of Vinduino, he was spending over $4,300 each year on a vineyard management company to ensure his vines were watered.
Once he switched over to Vinduino, he didn’t need their assistance anymore. Over the course of a single year, he managed to save 430,000 gallons of water, which equates to $1,925 in cost savings. The entire installation costs $635. It offers a great return on the investment almost immediately and represents a viable solution for the ongoing water shortages in California and across the world.
What Does The Future Hold?
Since winning the Hackaday prize, Reinier has been moving forward with improvements and enhancements to the Vinduino project. In June of 2015, the project went open source. Just two years later, a new Vinduino LLC office location opened in Temecula, CA.
The original design was powered by WiFi, but it was soon discovered that the range of this technology wasn’t sufficient for entire vinyards. Semtech partnered with Vinduino to bring their unique wireless solution to vineyards around the world. Their LoRA wireless radio technology empowers Vinduino to measure data in real-time and deliver it directly to vine growers.
Here’s how this combination of technology works:
Each zone houses a remote sensor station platform and individual sensors of various depths. The resistive solid-state sensors respond to the moisture range for agriculture (0 to 70 kPa) at defined intervals. The LoRa transceiver sends a message packet to any gateway that’s in range.
The gateway, which is designed for public or private LoRaWAN networks, can support up to 1,000 sensors in a six-mile radius. The gateway then connects to a router or modem for internet access.
The packet is forwarded to the vineyard management application housed in a cloud server or dedicated server platform.
The smart irrigation software presents the data on a web interface or mobile app. It can be customized to open or close irrigation valves based on readings.
Vinduino has expanded the technology to included management systems for other crops, such as citrus orchards. As the company and the technology continues to grow, more and more farmers are embracing it for water conservation, growth optimization, and better irrigation management overall.
Sound mixers can be daunting devices. With a wide range of knobs and dials, they accomplish audio miracles. Sometimes, though, you just need a simple solution that can achieve similar results. Rakimix bills itself as a “simple but proficient mixer” which includes 4 controllable channels and one auxiliary channel.
The device can be daisy-chained with another Rakimix or any other mono audio source to create larger channel count mixers. The channels have a level control that ranges from off to +10dB gain. Mute switches allow you to keep level settings and mute the sound on individual channels.
The master volume adjustment works across the four main channels but does not affect the auxiliary input. The auxiliary input is usable with any mono audio signal up to 4Vpp. The output signal is a mix of the 5 channels transmitted to the tip and ring of a stereo output. You can use a mono or stereo cable on the output.
To power the device, you will need a 9V PP3 battery to use with the battery-barrel jack connector included in the kit. If you prefer a power supply, it should be rated +8V to +12V DC and have a center positive barrel jack.
The Rakimix kit comes with a user-friendly assembly guide that you can also view online with pictures, hints, and tips. It’s classified as an intermediate DIY kit that requires a soldering iron and a pair of flush cutters. Beginners shouldn’t be afraid to give this a shot, however, as the kit comes with a cheat sheet to identify the resistors based on their color bands.
A 3D printer is only as good as the materials you put into it. If you have DLP stereolithographic printer, this High-Resolution UV resin from ValentResin is a fast curing low viscosity printing material that provides hard and rigid prints.
There’s no pigment settlement for 12+ hours, it’s low odor, and it has low skin irritation. The color is a dark gray. The starting benchmark for calibration is 3-4 seconds of exposure at 50um XYZ resolution with 3000lm, 210 Wat DLP projector.
The resin is calibrated for DLP printers, but it will work on LED/LCD printers with light sources above 50W. The seller is also able to provide advice on setting up your printer for this specific resin.
By far the most common wired connection to our electronic creations is via a USB serial adapter. Sometimes these are used for programming, and other times for monitored and troubleshooting, or even as part of the application itself.
Normally, you would do both actions on a computer or laptop, but this adapter lets you transfer data from a micro-USB OTG port to a serial connection. The result is a UART connection to your smartphone! At around 40mm in length and 10mm in width, the board is compact enough to reside below your phone or tablet without much trouble.
Even if you’re able to monitor your particular board via Bluetooth or Wifi, this does bypass a layer of complication that could hinder you during troubleshooting. It’s something worth adding to your travel toolkit for anytime you’re away from your workbench.
When was the last time you built a robot? Today’s technology allows for all kinds of robotic creations, but there is always something satisfying about building it yourself. Vorpal The Hexapod, from Tindie seller Vorpal Robotics Store, is a full kit that lets you create a Bluetooth controlled robot all on your own.
Vorpal is an Arduino-based, 3D printed, Scratch programmable kit that you control via Bluetooth. It can be used for gaming, to teach programming concepts, or anything in between. The kit comes with the components, cables, and servo motors.
You’ll need to print the 3D pieces yourself, but they are all open-source so you can modify them as needed. You’ll also need two 18650 lithium-ion batteries but no soldering is required. The seller recommends the EBL 3000 mAh “white top” batteries, as they offer a longer run time.
Once built, Vorpal includes three games: Capture the Flag, Joust, and Fidget Spinner Challenge. New activities are continuously being added on the Vorpal Robotics website. Vorpal supports the MIT Scratch drag-and-drop programming language. You can create new leg motions using Scratch and upload them using the SD card in the gamepad.
Everything from the Arduino source code, to the 3D print models, are all public and open-source. Check out the video below for a quick demo.
The Banana Split from SixtyFourPixels is an ingenious device to sync your MIDI hardware and reduce latency inherent in daisy chaining your gear. It’s one of many useful devices available from his Tindie shop, well worth a look if you’re into using MIDI!
This simple, efficient, and cost-effective unit splits one incoming MIDI signal (with both 3.5mm and conventional 5-Pin MIDI sockets) and sends it to each of the 6 outputs simultaneously. This means you can synchronise 6 or more pieces of equipment from one master clock giving you as close to perfect timing as humanly possible.
In addition to benefits to clock timing, it’ll give you the ability to sequence and trigger MIDI devices from a computer. This makes each note and drum hit happen right on time, to expand your ability play combinations on several devices at a time. The Banana Split is compatible with a myriad of MIDI devices as well as modern Novation and Arturia units which don’t use 5 pin sockets. It even features MIDI bus power.
The Banana Split comes fully constructed and tested. It’s powered by a 9-12 V wall-wart adapter that you supply yourself, and will accept positive and negative polarity. It features 3 LEDs to indicate MIDI activity, the clock tempo and incoming power.
LiDAR technology has huge implications for future technology. These sensors provide accurate distance data to robotics platforms and drones for the purpose of collision avoidance, gesture recognition, area mapping, and motion sensing. This same kind of technology even powers modern self-driving vehicles.
MappyDot Plus, from Tindie seller SensorDots, is a micro LiDAR solution that uses the VL53L1X time-of-flight sensor from STMicroelectronics, along with an onboard controller to provide a significant amount of features from one component.
Each MappyDot+ is able to provide distance measurements, in millimeters, up to 4 meters at a non-interpolated rate up to 100Hz. The field of view is programmable from 15 to 27 degrees without additional optics.
If you chain multiple MappyDots or SensorDot boards together, you can gather multi-dimensional data about an area, similar to radar, without reducing the sampling rate. The sensor also performs low pass filtering on the motion data to offer the clearest possible picture of the environment around it.
The pulses from MappyDot+ are used for a variety of functions. Drones can utilize them to avoid collisions in mid-flight, or harness the data to optimize landings. You can even equip the sensor to doors and have them open automatically.
Each MappyDot Plus ships with the latest firmware, but new features are constantly added. You can find the latest firmware version on the Github repository. You can also chain MappyDot Plus to other SensorDots boards (a breakout board for use with MappyDot Plus) on the same bus.
Distance measurement is the primary function of MappyDot, but the features go far beyond that:
Auto addressed bus scheme for chaining up to 112 devices
A simplified I2C interface for easy integration into existing projects
Automatic mode switching for optimum measurements based on the environment
Open source firmware
Tiny size: 13 x 17.8 mm
Pre-calibration for plug-and-play use and auto user calibration
User controlled LED (PWM, threshold, measurement, or manual modes)
Check out the full Tindie seller page for other components, such as the SensorDots development board.
Owners of 3D printers are divided on the topic of auto-leveling, but for those who want to add this feature, the process can be complicated. You need to buy the individual pieces, assemble them, and then configure the software all on your own.
The kit comes fully assembled and tested. Not soldering, shrink wrapping or crimping is required. The kit is supported by both Marlin and Skynet (not that one). The kit has been tested with stock PCB aluminum heat beds through 3mm glass, with GeckoTek build plates, and with BIQU PEI sheets.
It’s important to remember that this sensor configuration and hardware has not been tested by an independent lab, only the seller. Anything in the RepRap space should never be used unsupervised.
Photographers often struggle with timing. Some of the best pictures ever taken came down to a combination of location and a perfect moment. A great way to ensure you don’t miss your moment is to have a trigger in place to take the shot for you.
This is where the Remote Camera Trigger from Nightfire Electronics LLC can assist you. This creative solution is triggered by a laser pointer. You can use any common pointers with red, green, blue, and white lasers.
The device is compatible with any camera that has a 2.5mm plug and a switch closure. Sensitivity adjustments let you use the device both outdoors and indoors. The range is up to 50 feet so you can trigger it from quite a distance.
To do so, you simply point the laser at the light-sensitive resistor and the circuit will turn on for a time period based on your adjustments. This ranges from half of a second, up to ten minutes. LED indicators on the PCB let you know when the laser hits the LDR and turns on the circuit.
The kit includes everything to build the trigger, but you will need tools like a soldering iron, solder, wire cutters, and a laser pointer of your own to trigger it. For those who do not wish to build it themselves, a separate “Built & Tested” option is available.
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Sound mixers can be daunting devices. With a wide range of knobs and dials, they accomplish audio miracles. Sometimes, though, you just need a simple solution that can achieve similar results. 
The master volume adjustment works across the four main channels but does not affect the auxiliary input. The auxiliary input is usable with any mono audio signal up to 4Vpp. The output signal is a mix of the 5 channels transmitted to the tip and ring of a stereo output. You can use a mono or stereo cable on the output.
