Hi Les,
As a hardware guy myself I'd love to have a board to play with, but
I really don't have time to do your work justice so I'll pass for now.
However should you find others like me that might be willing to pay
for their own board then assuming the cost isn't too high I'd probably
pony up some money for your next build should there be one.
And CERTAINLY keep us informed. I'll be going through the forum later today.
Cheers,
Mark
On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 5:24 AM, Les Hall
Hello again fellow ChucKists,
You may recall a while back that I posted a few times about this interesting eChucK project that I conjured up one day and started developing. There has been some good progress and the project is moving along slowly but steadily. Here are the latest updates:
eChucK is inspired by and related to ChucK. The "e" stands for electronic, so it's a hardware implementation of some of ChucK's features in concept. The idea is that we would like to create little bitty postage-stamp sized circuit boards that perform ChucK UGen, code, and instrument features in electronic form and then wire these boards up into free-standing "sculptures" that can create music on their own or interact with ChucK software or both. Also ChucK can model eChucK sculptures, which I have done a few times.
One of the things that makes eChucK interesting to people, and perhaps it's most defining feature, is the interconnect method. As you know, modular synthesizers are typically built into panels or other enclosures and interconnected with patch cords or jumper wires. So you have this rigid structure with wires all over it, which is just fine as a way of hooking up the circuits. eChucK, however, is the dual or opposite of that - the yang of the synthesizer yin, in a sense, because the concept is to use solid wire (not stranded) to perform the interconnect in such a way that the strength of the solid wire is sufficient to hold the little boards in a free-standing 3D "sculpture". So there is no enclosure, no panel, etc. This idea is apparently at least somewhat novel as I have received news from various folks who find it interesting.
OK, now for the updates. I had four dsPIC-based eChucK circuit boards made and two of them are taken, I'm keeping one for myself, and there remains one board to be mailed out for free to anyone who would like to work on the project. Please let me know if you would like me to send you this board. In other news, the awesome folks at www.electro-music.com were interested enough in eChucK to create a forum for it right next to the ChucK forum under the DIY section. I am moderator of that forum and I posted design files, hardware and software descriptions, and ChucK files there.
Some folks have participated in the eChucK forum threads and a few are working on their own vision of what eChucK should eventually become. We have one fellow working on a special type of processor (i forget which) for eChucK in England, I'm working on some Lunetta-based eChucK possibilities, and I just heard from someone in Brazil who is planning to create an Arduino-based eChucK project. I purposely left the specifications of the project as open and unstructured as possible so that people could do things however they wanted as long as everything works together.
So things are moving along nicely in the eChucK realm. To date there do not exist any completed projects, but momentum is growing steadily. I really enjoy the occasional email or post about eChucK, especially when someone is excited about the possibilities. Well, anyway, I thought it was time to mention all of this stuff on the ChucK Users list to keep you posted and also to see if anyone has any thoughts about the project. That's all for now.
Les (Inventor)
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