I took it upon myself to create a Yahoo Group for the Arduinome.  I’m not sure if anyone is going to join or not, but I figured this would be an easier way to communicate with other Arduinome users and builders as well as a nice spot to dump files.  You can join here.

My Maxim sample order for the MAX7219CNG+ IC arrived on Friday.  The Maxim IC sample order program is awesome!  These chips are quite literally factory fresh as they shipped directly from the Maxim factory in China to me, for free!  Again, as I stated a few posts ago, please do not abuse this program.  I buy many Maxim products and will continue to do so, so I don’t feel guilty about the occational sample order.  Oddly enough, the sample order page would not let me request less than 2, so I have an extra one.  Once I get my Arduinome up and running, I think I will gift the 2nd one to someone out there who is sourcing parts for their Arduinome…a sort of pay-it-forward-karma-sample-order-thing…

My Unsped Arduinome Shield arrived in the mail on Monday.  What a classy piece of work!  So well done!  You can’t tell in my photo, but the board is a shade of blue that matches the Arduino board color. (I got a little artsy-fartsy with the photography…)  Between projects for work and my screaming 4 month old son, I’ll populate this board over the next few days, hopefully.  I also received a response from XNDR of MachineCollective about their brilliant Arduinome enclosure kit.  What I learned from his email: Full enclosure kits cost 95 euro, countersinking the exposed holes for you costs an extra 5 euro (worth it), there are five colors available for the top plate (white, black, transparent, white satin or black satin), he’s very flexible on adding custom engravings for a nominal fee (5 euro per panel “for now”), and that he was slow to respond to my email because they are moving their office to a new location.  I asked if it were possible to get a template for engraving the bottom, and he fired off one in both Photoshop and Illustrator formats.  Seems like a good guy, so once I finish my bottom panel engraving art, I’ll be placing an order.

Well, an oversized box with a Newark logo was waiting for me when I got home today.  Inside were my 64 diodes for the Sparkfun button boards and a collection of parts for the Unsped Arduinome Shield.  The keen-eyed Arduinome-head may notice the lack of a MAX7219CNG+ IC in the group.  That’s because I used the great Maxim Samples program.  (I said *used*, not *abused*!)  I use it quite often at work when I want to try an IC in a circuit but I’m either working on something that isn’t funded or a half-baked idea.  I use my work address and contact information, but I have also used my personal information in the past and always received my samples.  I only use the service about 3-4 times a year and never for more than a single line item at a time.  It can save you a lot of money and time, though, since the MAX7219CNG+ was $10.81/ea. at Digikey and not even in stock at Newark.  But Maxim sent me two of them completely free and shipped them within 24 hours of my request.  I use a few of their other products (and pay for them) so my guilt factor is low.  THIS IS NOT A PROGRAM TO BE ABUSED!  If too many people make too many requests, this program will evaporate and that would be sad…

My first batch of Arduinome parts arrived today. I received my SparkFun buttons and button boards in their nifty shipping box. I also ordered 100 beautiful blue LED’s from eBay. I wasn’t sure how good they would be, but they are nice and bright and should work great behind those SparkFun buttons. I held one inside of one of the buttons and lit the LED but I was unable to get a good picture of it. This is so exciting. In the next few days, I should be receiving a package from Newark (who are my vendor of choice; I don’t really like DigiKey which seems to be what most folks online are using to get their Arduinone parts.) I will post what I purchased from Newark, SparkFun, eBay, and elsewhere along with prices and links in the next few days.  Now, if only I could get a response from Machine Collective….

Unsped, the creator of the Aduinome Shield, posted on the Monome forum that he had a few spares from a previous Group Buy that I missed.  I immediately fired off a message offering to buy one.  He collected names and I made the list!  I sent him my payment late last night and the shield should be on its way soon.  Ha!  The final piece of the puzzle is within my reach.  Now, if only Machine Collective would return my emails about buying one of their beautiful enclosure kits… (That’s Unsped’s photo, by the way.  I snagged it off of his Flickr account.)

Seems like all of the other geeky blogs online are jumping on the Arduinome bandwagon, so I might as well.  Just kidding.  I’ve been eyeing up the Monome since it first came out.  I was even on one of the first waiting lists for the Monome 40h, but when my turn came around I didn’t have the funds available and had to pass my spot onto someone else.  Since then, I spent a lot of time polishing up my microcontroller skills and found the beautiful Arduino platform and all of its variants.  Then, I stumbled upon the Arduinome project while searching for audio and MIDI projects using the Arduino.  It seemed like a logical project for me to construct and has quite a bit of support online, even if some of it is scattered and incompletely documented.  So, for a while, this site will become an Arduinome building blog as I chronicle stubmling through the fractured building instructions and Flickr photo sets of other peoples’ successes and failures.

Finally, someone has shoehorned the Atmega 644P into the Arduino development circle.  Zach Hoeken of NYC Resistor has managed to put together an update to the Arduino 0012 Development Suite and design a new Arduino-style board to allow the use of the 644P’s superior I/O support and enhanced Flash/RAM.  The Sanguino, as Zach calls it, has 32 general purpose I/O pins, 64k of Flash, 4K of RAM and a second hardware serial port.  Kits are available from the Sanguino website for the low, low price of $25.00.  And….the board is RED!  Not bad for $25.

So, I’ve been trying to build a Polywhatsit effects processor from the December 2001 issue of EPE Magazine. I ordered the PCB’s from the magazine’s US website, sourced all of the parts (even the weird one), bought a new USB PIC programmer board on eBay, and started looking at unique housings. Flash forward two weeks: The boards arrived from the UK and one of them is incorrect. They sent me half of the Polywhatsit and the board for a project that uses an ultrasonic sensor tx/rx pair to create sounds. (I might actually end up building it…) I emailed them and they responded immediately and apologized for mixup and promised to send out a replacement board (2 more weeks!) Also, I managed to find that crazy BCD-switch by calling Allied Electronics and pointing out their UK website has it but their US site does not. I was told there would be a long lead time, but not how long. So far, they haven’t even charged my credit card. Then, my USB PIC programmer arrived. Nice looking piece of kit with snazzy software. While looking online, however, I found that what I bought was a bootleg version of the KIT150 PIC programmer and software. Had I realized that before I bought it, I would have paid a little extra to get the official version and support the original designer. Too late now, but lesson learned. And then I found that the code for the Polywhatsit is written in some weird flavor of PIC assembler called TASM that is, more or less, extinct. Luckily, EPE Magazine has a download on their website to convert TASM files into MPASM. The conversion was 99% with some minor tweaking needed by hand. So, overall, this project has become a big PAIN IN THE ASS! But I will finish it now if it kills me! I’m also designing some cool MIDI trinkets concurrently, so when the Polywhatsit pisses me off, I work on the more rewarding MIDI trinket designs.

Well, not exactly a datasheet, but I did find some interesting information about the Panasonic EVQ-WTEF2515B encoder currently listed at Electronic Goldmine. I scoured the web looking for data on this item and finally found it in an old Digikey catalog. Digikey was kind enough to publish data about the encoder in their catalog and I was lucky enough to stumble upon it. I’ve posted it here just in case anyone else is out there looking for it.