Tindie

Since its release in the early 1980s, the Roland TR-808 has been one of the most heralded electronic drum machines of all time. With the popularity of its iconic kick drum being bigger than ever (and an integral part of Trap music alone), it’s no surprise that the circuits are being replicated; and the VINTAGE ASTEROID BD is no exception.

This module is designed to put some serious punch in your low end, with tone and tune controls for tweaking it to your taste. It features potentiometers for fine and coarse tuning, and further parameters for buzz and decay which will help you sculpt the sound to your mix. It has a trigger input which, when attenuated, will enable accents from other devices – and an audio output to route the signal elsewhere. This is a short run from the original circuit designed by the maker, made around 2008. With its vibrant design and colourful purple panel, it’ll catch the eye even before you’ve heard it.

The Vintage Asteroid BD is sold by Blue Lantern Modules who are based in Chandler, Arizona in the USA. Visit their store for more inventive eurorack modules. Hear the unit in action and the full range of sounds it produces in the video below:

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Photography is a science and an art. Not only do photographers need to have a good grasp on optics and chemistry (if they’re shooting film), but also physics. You can’t do physics if you can’t measure something, and that’s where this calibrated light source from Tindie seller Film Camera Tester comes in. This tool is how you calibrate light meters, either hand held or built into cameras). If your light meter isn’t calibrated, you’ll get over or under exposure, possibly ruining your shot.

The idea behind this calibrated light source is to be part of a larger kit meant for testing camera shutter and exposure settings. The Film Camera Tester is an Arduino-based kit meant to perform a variety of time-based tests and calibrations of film cameras. This includes testing the timings of shutters, the delay between flash contact and the shutter opening, and taking a series of measurements and calculating the average stats of a film camera.

The calibrated light source can be used with this Film Camera Tester to calibrate light meters, and is adjustable within 4-16EV, with a calibration accuracy of 5%.

Like vinyl records and CRT displays, what’s old is new again, and that includes film cameras. Sometimes digital just won’t do, and there are an increasing number of photographers shooting only on film. If you’ve got a film camera, odds are it’s more than a few decades old, and that means calibration is key. This calibrated light source, along with the film camera tester, gives you the tools to make sure your camera is working in tip-top shape.

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Need to know what time it is? You could probably check your phone. If, however, you’d like to get this info at a glance, in a beautiful retro-style, then the Retro Clock with 2 HPDL1414 LED Displays by Phoenix CNC, OLEDiUNO looks like a great option.

The device fits nicely in the palm of your hand, and features two HPDL1414 “bubble” display units, which can show four alphanumeric characters each. This type of display is no longer manufactured, though readily available, and magnifies each segment-on-display via its own tiny curved lense. A clear cover protects the digits and other electronics, while still allowing them to be easily seen.

These little clock units can be set up for a 12 or 24 hour display, and can also show the date, battery status, and temperature. The device has a speaker for audible notifications, and is able to store up to 20 alarms. There’s also an hourly chime mode, which can be set to mute during certain times of the day, likely at night when you’d prefer not to be interrupted. It has a rechargeable battery for a few hours of cord-free use, and a USB-C connector is provided for power and code changes.

Check it out in the video below, starting at around the 2:30 mark:

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Enter a world filled with bizarre and otherworldly sounds with this Passive Ring Modulator Kit! Containing all the parts needed to build your very own ring modulator, this incredible kit is the perfect gift for any synth lover in your life – especially yourself!

Capable of producing wonderful harmonic sounds, this entirely Passive Ring Modulator kit packs a lot of punch for a tiny kit. Once built, the device is shockingly adaptable and can modulate almost any instrument you can imagine – plug your chosen instrument into the input jack and get modulating!

A ring modulator, put very simply, is a device that combines two signal inputs into one brand new output which has entirely different characteristics. Ring modulation is used all over popular media, with one of the most iconic uses being Star Wars. When you hear space communications distorted by interference, these are actually being affected by a ring modulator!

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We are very excited to announce that Tindie seller Bobricius is one of the 10 finalists in the first round of the Hackaday Prize — Planet-Friendly Power! This round is all about getting and storing power locally, which is one way we can reduce our burden on the planet. Many of the projects in this round focused on typical ways of creating and storing energy — wind turbines, solar arrays, hydroelectric, etc. But Bobricius’ entry focuses on a much smaller scale.

His entry is the ArmaLamp, a small light source that uses a supercapacitor, photocells, and a very efficient boost converter to provide nighttime illumination. Because it uses a supercap, it can be charged and discharged an almost unlimited number of times. Typically secondary (rechargeable) battery cells would wear out over time and require replacement. Because it uses a supercap that doesn’t need to be replaced, the entire module could be potted, making it waterproof and very rugged. It’s interesting that the design uses photocells instead of typical solar panels. This is just as valid an approach and allows more flexibility in shape and size, though often at the cost of lower efficiency. But for such a low-power device, this is a great application for photocells!

We’d also like to congratulate the other 9 finalists from this round — you can check out the announcement detailing the finalists here! Keep an eye out for the next round — Reuse, Recycle, Revamp. It’s going on right now, so you still have time to enter your project! Entries must be submitted by June 12th, 2022, and the finalists from that round will be announced on June 27th! You’ve got a chance at winning the grand prize of $50,000! Check out the official Hackaday Prize page for all the details.

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The Arduino Uno has introduced many a maker to the wonderful world of microcontrollers, DIY robotics, IoT, and more. Once blinking an LED becomes old hat and you can read a few buttons with ease, you may notice that the Uno itself is fairly large and power hungry compared to its peers. The AS-UNO by ArduinoShop presents a more minimal option, forgoing the power hungry USB-to-serial adapter, while keeping the classic socketed ATmega328P microcontroller onboard.

The device’s IO pins are tightly arranged beside the AT328P microcontroller, allowing for a board design that’s much smaller than the standard Uno. The AS-UNO itself fits nicely on a breadboard, which can be a bit of a pain point for full-sized Arduino Uno boards. Since it doesn’t include a USB-to-serial adapter, you’ll need to provide one for programming, and there’s an option to include one in the listing.

One drawback to this board is that it won’t fit a standard ‘Uno shield, though there are a wide range of other options if you want to go that route. On that subject, if you would like an easy a way to experiment with a standard Uno, you might check out the Trainer UNO shied featured here.

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Texture is a drone generation synth which gives you incredible control and expressivity over an ever-evolving sonic soundscape. Combine Textures’ three independent voices using satisfying analog potentiometers, and bring beautiful droning tones to your home.

This innovative and exciting drone synthesizer is a wonderful addition to your synth setup,  whether you’re searching for some ominously deep background droning, mellow synth pad sounds, or squealing cross-modulated voices – Texture is a device that covers a lot of textural bases.

Comprised of three voices with fully adjustable parameters, the sounds that come out of this device are mesmerizing even without accompaniment. They are the perfect option to add some analog grit to your next composition. The first voice, Cluster, is composed of three frequency controlled oscillators. The second, Ring, uses pseudo-ring modulation circuits to create metallic sounds – and a third voice, Chaos, is formed by three oscillators in cross-modulation, which produce complex variations in tone and granularity.

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Continuing our look back at Superbooth 2022, where I managed to catch up with some Tindie sellers on my travels! This time, we take a look at Lumanoise aka Leploop and their innovative electronic devices designed and made in Italy. Scroll down to see my conversation with the maker, Tony, in Berlin earlier this month, and read on to find out what he sells on Tindie.

Lumanoise is a unique product in the synth world, being controlled principally through an LDR – or Light Dependent Resistor, meaning a swish of the hand over its sensor, or an illuminating burst of light alters the way it generates sound. It’s got some history too, being based on the Trautonium, which was designed in the 1940s by Oskar Sala.

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Basketball has captured the heart of the world in its “short” 130 years of existence. It’s been played all over, such as at the Summer Olympics, between rival schools in the ever-beloved March Madness tournament, and in pick-up games in neighborhoods every day. The game has evolved over the years, to the point where we even have robots playing basketball. If you yourself want to combine basketball and technology, the REX Woody Desktop Basketball Game is the perfect weeknight project!

This kit includes all the parts you need to construct two basketball hoops, launchers, and the simple circuitry to make it all work – you just need a 9V battery to get started. When you land that perfect 2-point shot, the tinfoil ball completes the circuit of the hoop and turns on an LED at the top! A manual score tracker on each courtside lets your competitive nature come out and see who can make it to five baskets first. If you’ve got some spare components as well, the simple nature of this kit makes it easy to hack in your own additions such as a buzzer!

With the end of many basketball seasons drawing close, these kits are a great idea to celebrate with those younger basketball athletes, budding electronic designers, and fans in your life. And if you love the style but aren’t a fan of hoops, check out Robotistan’s page for more projects like this, such as a moving Ferris Wheel or a controllable robot arm.

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It’s hard to argue that the advent of color computer monitors hasn’t been a huge net benefit to society, but one might also say that that the world of monochrome had a certain charm to it. Perhaps there was even an event where you didn’t quite plug in the monitor correctly and were treated to and/or tortured with a whole new non-color scheme before making the appropriate adjustments. If you’re nostalgic enough for those days, then spark2k06 has a solution in the form of the MonochromeVGA.

The device takes in RGB signals from a VGA source (e.g. a computer), and transforms them into either a black and white output, or a selection of red, green, and blue, selected with a set of DIP switches. These allow for different single-color outputs, such as green and amber, allowing you to hit a retro nerve for nearly any system! You can also set the device up to display in normal color mode as needed without disconnecting anything.

Check how the adapter works in the first video below, with a clip of the optional 3D-printed case being assembled in the second. Take note:: the sound at approximately 25 seconds in, has quite the pleasant snap-together action:

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