Custom Order: Fotosis No. 007, Noise Generating Synth.

Hello world, its been some months since we have completed anything in the realm of homemade electronics. Basically we have had our world turned upside down lately, I am now living in a whole other country working at a new job and trying to do as much Fotosis related work as possible on my off time when I come back to Lyon on the weekends.

This project was a custom order that challenged us to develop several new systems, most notable a sample and hold circuit and a micro-controller based trigger pulse generating system.

There are too many controls to list individually and descriptions would be difficult because I don't think it would be possible to find similar controls on another system to compare them to. This will probably be the last time I try to make an all in one unit this complex due to the time it took to develop build, test and debug the various circuits and programs that it contains. I feel in the future it would be better to build each of the systems individually and house them in separate enclosures that could be attached to some sort of board that gives them power etc.

Anyway here it is in action Fotosis No. 007...



There are still two more sections to complete, a CV interpretation module that will take in a control voltage and convert it to trigger pulses that can be used with the trigger pulse system and also a rocker pedal that will control the pitch of the oscillators as well as several other functions.

The sound range from more conventional synth noises to full on noise as well as different patterns of beeps and tones created by the trigger pulse generator. It would be the type of instrument ideally suited to someone wishing to create strange little samples for use on their tracks or it could be used live as a bizarre noise generating unit.

So essentially I am not going to go into details regarding the technical elements because there are just too many, so please just bask in the glory of this weird and interesting creation.

-J

'Will DIY geeks save American ingenuity?' via Collision Detection

I've been an avid reader of Clive Thompson for some time. Being a subscriber and a fan of Wired magazine since the late 1990's, his writing always spoke to me and his most recent article is no exception. Thompson recently updated his blog to coincide with the publication of his commentary on 'How DIYers Just Might Revive American Innovation' in the latest 16:03 issue (Wired's 15th Anniversary).

I know it has nothing to do with music nor am I (or John) American, but it speaks to all people who are venturing out on their own to create art, a way of life, a business and a new set of rules to work by. The DIY culture is one we obviously feel close to being the founders of this project, Fotosis, and our various other hobbies. As someone with no formal education, I know that skills are in demand, that there are many who are out there doing things that weren't taught but learned, experienced firsthand, hands dirty and curious. Let's keep this innovation going then and hope the movement avoids being pigeon-holed into a mere trendy past-time and remains a true revolution.

From blog: "Can you fix things that break in your household? Probably not. Our schools systematically stream "smart" people away from working with their hands, and I think that's a huge problem for the US, on pretty much every level -- commercially, globally, intellectually and spiritually, really."

From Wired:

"The decay has been rapid. Only a few decades ago, most serious adults were expected to be fluent in basic mechanics. If your car or stove or radio broke down, you opened it up and fixed it. "Magazines like Popular Mechanics in the '40s and '50s would publish projects like an automated pig-feeding trough, and they assumed you had the tools and skills to make it," says Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of Make magazine.

But as we migrated to an information economy, those skills began to seem as quaint as, well, mechanical clocks. America's bright future, we were assured, wasn't industrial. It was in the hands of "symbolic analysts" -- folks who sat at desks and thought for a living. In the '90s, the rise of the Internet sent this post-mechanical age into a sort of giddy overdrive. Remember Nicholas Negroponte urging everyone to "move bits, not atoms"?

But when we stop working with our hands, we cease to understand how the world really works."

Read the blog post on Collision Detection.
Read the Wired article.

- C