Tindie

Portable sound devices are an accessible and fun way to get into making music – with many devices offering chance and probability settings to change the beat up. The Drumkid is a lofi aleatoric drum machine which uses random numbers to generate unpredictable beats, for live recording and performance! Let’s take a look at this pocket-sized hackable beat box:

The Drumkid is a MIDI-equipped drum machine capable of loading custom samples for playback, meaning it can replicate classic drum machines such as the Roland 909 and 808 – or equally, loaded up with any samples you choose for custom drum kits! It has 16 adjustable parameters, with 36 save slots, and MIDI controls for CCs (Control Changes), Notes and Clock (Tempo). Its probability features give you varying beatmaking possibilities with minute variations and more sporadic playback tuned to your taste.

The Drumkid is available as a kit or as a fully assembled unit – and is ripe for hacking and modifications, being completely open-source. You’ll find all you need to know on the sellers GitHub page, including the latest user manual. Drumkid is perfect for beat making on the move, as its powered by 3 x AAA batteries or via Micro USB cable.

It’s the first product sold by Matt Bradshaw Design who is based in Oxfordshire, England, what a great start!

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MIDI devices and connections come in all shapes and sizes, with many hardware units shipping with smaller 3.5mm MIDI sockets over the larger 5-Pin method which has been the standard for nearly 4 decades. The Sharp X68000 Midi Cable Converter Adapter Mini is a product which fulfills a slightly different purpose; to connect your MIDI devices to a vintage Sharp X68000 computer!

The Sharp X68000 was a Japanese computer released in 1987, and contained a Yamaha YM2151 FM chip, which you’ll find housed in lots of Tindie products! The computer itself came with a mini MIDI port as standard, so requires conversion to connect it to conventional MIDI sockets. Each cable will come brand new, with possible colour variations and the assurance it’s been tested before posting.

Using this adapter, you can send MIDI notes and messages from a software sequencer on the X68000 and play sounds on an external MIDI module! Surely one of the rarest forms of music making in 2021, and a rare find for anyone in need of this exact cable!

The Sharp X68000 MIDI Cable Converter Adapter Mini is sold by La Cueva Retro, who are based in Mexico – and stock a couple of neat cable adapters we’re sure you’ll love.

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We love this handheld Geiger counter purely for the excitement of trying to track down radioactive sources like old clock and watch faces. However, it’s easy to forget that for some areas a radiation detector is an essential bit of safety kit that can help keep you healthy.

In many parts of the world, foraging for found foodstuffs is widely enjoyed, but in areas (such as the Ukraine) there is the added complication of checking if fruits, berries or mushrooms contain a radioactive dose. Not only is this dangerous to someones health, there are heavy fines and even prison sentences if you introduce contaminated foodstuffs into the foodchain.

The GGreg20_V3 Ionizing radiation detector is supplied as a pre-built module and has a buzzer on board for that familiar Geiger counter pulsing. It’s designed to be used in conjunction with any microcontroller that can be used to log the pulses. Pretty much all popular microcontroller families can do this and we certainly know that Arduino, Trinkets, ESP32 and more have lots of examples out there to count pulses presented at a GPIO pin.

It can run on a range of voltages from 1 cell through to 3 cell and weighs a diminutive 30 grams. It’s highly likely you could build a full logging,  battery powered, pocket scale device that wouldn’t weigh you down on your next foraging adventure.

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If you use a computer regularly, there are likely keystrokes that you have to input over and over in sequence, or functions that would be better served by a single key than the operation you currently use. For hackers, this can mean creating a custom keyboard from scratch, perhaps with a development board and mechanical switches in a custom configuration made to your specs.

While this can be a great experience for many, and a productivity booster when you’re done, perhaps you don’t want to reinvent the wheel again. If you’re fairly new to electronics, a kit could be very helpful. For either purpose, Painless Prototyping has come up with the BYO [Build Your Own] 9 Key Keyboard Kit.

The kit takes the form of a PCB, which mounts 9 keyboard keys, along with an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M0 Express for interface duties. Keyboard switches, along with the requisite diodes and header pins must be soldered on, making it a fun project, or a useful introduction to soldering if you’re new to this pursuit. Once assembled, the M0 can be programmed to suit your particular computing needs, allowing you to access those once hard-to-input commands with ease!

Of course, if you’d prefer a few more keys, a couple of rotary encoders, and a USB hub, you might also check out the HUB 16 input device.

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Sometime around the era of the original Fast and Furious movie, if you had a video screen in your car, there was a very good chance it was a custom setup. Perhaps you used it to play games and watch DVDs on your Playstation 2. While such mods took a variety of forms, one thing that facilitated this type of setup was the double-DIN-style receiver mount.

This allowed anyone with a bit of time and technical skill to swap out the factory radio for something more interesting. Unfortunately, this standardized mounting style has mostly fallen out of favor, ironically enough at a time when you can easily get an inexpensive Raspberry Pi and touchscreen that would have been the envy of early 2000s modders.

If you do have a car with such a setup, Tindarian mechatroniks is selling an aluminum chassis to facilitate Raspberry Pi/touchscreen DIN mounting. You’ll need to print your own bezel, but having a solid structure on which to mount everything looks like a great place to start. For that matter, while it’s designed with the Raspberry Pi in mind, there’s really no reason you couldn’t add other sorts of hardware to your car in this manner. If you do have a car with a DIN mount, this hopefully gives you a few ideas!

As for the name ‘double-DIN’, bonus points for this post if you know what DIN stands for. 10X points if you can spell it correctly. The answer might be in this industrial-style Raspberry Pi DIN mount article if you’re interested!

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Designed and sold by SGROBOTICS in Singapore, this infra red motor control kit is friendly for those who are new to soldering and perfect for projects requiring two motors!

Infra-red is a fun and affordable control system to play with, certainly capable of making reliable wireless systems for indoor use. The kit comprises of through-hole components only, which means that they’re larger, easier to handle and can be held in place more easily when soldering. These factors make this a great kit for first time solderers.

Motors aren’t supplied with the kit but you should have no trouble finding some that are suitable to run at the 6V provided by the 4AA battery holder. The two motors are attached using wire terminal blocks for ease of construction and, once set up, you have forward control of each motor with three levels of speed. Simple two motored vehicles can use the ‘skid steering’ approach where you simply stop one motor and rotate the other to create a turn to the left or right. For small robots you wouldn’t miss having reverse as they can virtually turn on the spot.

Provided with a construction guide, this is an excellent kit for beginners and you could easily have your latest robot creation up and running in a hour or so.

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The 1980s were a vibrant time for electronic music and devices, and aside from synths, electronic drum kits like the Simmons drums not only looked high-tech but also sounded wildly futuristic. The Knucklehead is a device which employs similar methods to synthesis to the classic drum synths of the Eighties.

The Knucklehead uses a ‘Twin T Filter’ arrangement with a very high Q resonance – which can be triggered into oscillation and then returning to stability to create the envelope and decay we’re accustomed to with acoustic drums and instruments. It uses a condenser microphone coupled with a cylindrical, tubular input passage which you see perpendicular to the board. This microphone is highly sensitive, allowing for minute sounds to trigger it and giving the instrument a fantastic dynamic range of expression.

You can see the Knucklehead as a standalone device as well as an instrument enhancer. It can be attached to other instruments to feed off the resonance and harmonics being played elsewhere as a perfect compliment. It can be comfortably attached to a lanyard for many mobile audio experiments! For ease of use, the seller recommends using this audio lead with the device, for the best percussive experience.

The Knucklehead is sold by ZeroCrossing who are based in New York city,

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Modular music makers are always on the lookout for devices which can perform multiple functions, for when the rack real estate is at a premium. Great to know that devices like the DAEMON Eurorack Swiss Army Knife + Glitcher exist, combining 10 pre-installed apps into one sleek unit. Lets unfurl this electronic swiss army knife and see what’s inside!

The DAEMON comes in kit form, with the tricky SMD components all set in place, so only through hole components to solder! What does it do though?! Quite a lot – it’ll transmogrify into a VCLFO, an envelope generator, a Turing Machine, an Euclidean gate sequencer, a Bernoulli gate, a sample player, or a bytebeat generator! It has 3 analog inputs and 2 analogue outputs for interfacing with other audio equipment. The analogue outputs operate at a speed fast enough to create an audio signal, whilst having enough accuracy for 1V/Oct output.

At its heart, it has an ATTiny85, which means that it can be programmed by Arduino-savvy coders for a multitude of purposes. Check out the seller’s GitHub page for more information on custom programming.

The DAEMON is sold. by ASCII (Blinkenlights) who are based in London, England and they’ve provided a neat demo of the device in action below:

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We’ve all been there, poking a hot soldering iron at a component on a PCB and then the PCB shifts and components fall as your set up of tape and binder clips slide across the desk! Whilst PCB vice ideas are common, these Board Braces take a slightly different but very inventive approach.

The idea is pretty straightforward; each post is a large standoff with a screw clamp arrangement at the top of the post to hold your PCB in a groove. It’s a good approach as it adapts well to a range of PCB thicknesses and sizes. The base of the posts contain a strong magnet, so you have to work on a ferrous metal work surface (not supplied) and we like that that means the posts can accommodate PCB of many shapes and dimensions.

Sold as a 3D printed set of four, we can imagine these would be particularly useful in setting up temporary IC flashing rigs or for extended probing and analysing of circuit board signals – while keeping everything secure and stable.

The Board Braces are the first product from JTLabs, who have clearly got an eye on making unique products which will make our electronic lives easier.

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It’s true to say that we are spoilt for choice when it comes to wonderful LED badge designs on Tindie. However, the luxuriously-coloured Nautilus Blue from n°Garage stood out to us and we wanted to show it off!

It’s a lovely design that’s sold fully assembled. It doesn’t have the usual badge pin or clip but rather has a small mount hole at the edge of the PCB and as such lends itself to being worn as a key chain or perhaps a pendant. There’s seven cool blue LED’s around the design, driven by a logic inverter IC and powered by a coin cell in a holder on the reverse. We also notice on the reverse there is another LED that we can see casts a little back lighting glow through some of the via’s on the PCB.

It’s the perfect accompaniment for a night out or a fancy dress outfit in need of illuminaton and perfect for oceanic, aquatic, or seaside-themed get togethers!

Definitely take the time to have a look around the n°Garage  store as they have created and curated a gorgeous range of badges. They use a real variety of techniques to get wonderful and very wearable effects.

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