protodeck first demo from Julien Bayle on Vimeo.
Speaking of special Abletronic miracles out of reach of most mortals, meet the Protodeck. Inspired by Robert Henke’s legendary Monodeck, it’s an all-stops-pulled bundle of delicious overkill. The specs are — insane, really.
- 87 potentiometers
- 90 buttons
- 81 rgb leds
- 2×20 LCD
- 2 PIC 18F4620 (20MHz RISC processors)
- fully custom rgb led drivers
- fully custom firmware
- 2 MIDI IN/OUT interface
The ingenious design of Julien Bayle, the Protodeck isn’t available for sale. You can’t buy one, but you can build one – or treat the copious documentation on his site, from control layouts to firmware and electronic specs as inspiration for your own projects. Perhaps a full-blown Protodeck isn’t your cup of tea, but you might want a tip on how to do LED arrays, for instance — it’s in there. I would say more, but that’s time you could spend browsing through images and schematics. (Maybe it’s just the Club-Mate speaking at this point.)
http://www.julienbayle.net/diy/protodeck/
For more on the art behind this:
Julien promises performances and workshops, so I look forward to seeing more. (This is slightly old news for those of you tuned into such things, but for everyone else – and a reminder of the sorts of hacking you could do this summer – great hardware never goes out of style.)