A short application to test your arduino mega and detect if there are very thin short or cold solder joints between the pins/connectors. Useful if your buttons are not detected for example (we had a defective board with a short between pin 10 and 11, disabling SRIO function scanning the buttons).

Simply upload the sketch and then with a single wire you can monitor through Serial at 115200 bauds that the pin is good : pin 13 is the output pin alternating a state 1/0 while Serial indicates if the tested pin is working. All pins are tested so you can pass from one pin to another with the monitor window opened without rebooting, simply by moving the wire.

pin10 is tested on the picture below :

Increase the delay(5) to delay(150) to see the source output pin blinking. Sketch to download :

testeur_Mega_one_wire_v2

There is a long time we have published some news !

We (or should say “I” as alpesmachines is a single guy project) have been focused on daily life things and a regular job but some prototyping projects should be exposed in the next weeks …

We have also invest some time to enhance the Matrix Ctrlr and you can find the latest revisions 1.38 on Github here :

• One major improvement is a faster display librarian : all the micro delays induced by printing on the display have disappeared. You can trigger very short notes and move all the parameters together now : beware to the musical results !

• ARP Menu : now you can set the split point in between the arpegiated section and the sequenced one with a midi learn : simply press KEY2 under SPLT and send a midi note to define the split point. A customer request !

• We have also improved the ADC stability by using a moving average method to filter power supply noise and thus having a more stable reading of the potentiometers. It can be access under the CFG/MISC/JTR parameter. A lower value uses lots of filtering (drawback the calculus is longer so the printed value is a little delayed) while a higher value is more responsive and sensitive to noise. The value can be set by pressing KEY4 and saved with PAGE. Now you can use a very bad quality power supply if you like.

We still have a few kits in stock and you need to order a Matrix Ctrlr ECO kit + assembly service to have a ready to use unit.

We recommend to have firmware 1.20 or 2.15 inside your Matrix 1000 or Matrix 6 : we provide Oberheim EPROM if necessary.

There are also Stereo One-O-Six Chorus kits in stock, a nice companion to add wide stereo effect to a mono synthesizer !

We wish you all the best and enjoy the unlockdown freedom !

julien

it’s winter and you’re still locked at home …. a good time for a DIY project !

use the coupon COVID19 for a -15% bargain on your cart. valid until the 14th of December !

take care and be safe 😉

We are sold out ! thanks for your confidence in our products 🙂

we will restock this week to ship again by the end of July. You can still place your pre-order (backorder)

During the lockdown, I have been developing : the code of the Matrix Ctrlr has been upgraded and we still need to certify some features/user interface. I will clean the Github and make something more “developer”. I’ve also started a new controller for a very underrated 80s rack that will sounds like an analogue techno groove box 😉

More details in the next days !

julien

We have finally received boards from China last week… so much delay. There are still some components in transit but we had a small stock, so we could supply a few orders.

With the Coronavirus sanitary crisis, all the EU citizens have noticed we are confined.

The benefits of this confinement are … the silence and a break for the planet. We will have time to develop firmware and other projects. We send courage to the parents !

The  orders from January and February (outside soldering service) will be shipped next monday. The transit of goods will be particularly slow (less post officers, less trains, no more planes).

You can contact us for any question regarding your order inside your account interface.

Dear fellows,

We recently ordered last week in China the necessary components for our kits that have a long delivery (e.g MN3101, LEDs, switches, etc). We have absolutely no idea of the exact time it takes to arrive in EU considering the coronavirus story in China (most parcels are delayed as many workers are confined at home). It should take more than usual (> 3 weeks).

We will order this week fast shipping elements (PCB, displays ..) as we batch some personal projects in there (like this midibox 909 sequencer for TR9090). Even DHL and normal manufacturing times are delayed (5 days instead of 3).

So we may ship kits in March.

All kits are sold out ! thanks a lot to all our customers for this awesome confidence. We will restock the ECO of Matrix Ctrlr and One-O-Six Chorus but we can’t clearly estimate the delay as, you know, the Chinese peoples are a bit annoyed by a virus ! We wish them to keep safe at home until epidemic is over. Transmission over parcels is not possible, but many factories/companies have asked their employees to stay home until further notice. You can have a look on Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion which is a state of the art explanation of that pandemic.

As a consequence the kits are backorder, meaning that they are not in stock now but you can preorder them.

We have upgraded our website to the newer PHP and SQL and the delivery system is now fully operative. We use the services of La Poste and an newly WC plugin for automated labels printing/editing/tracking system.

We have enhanced the Matrix Ctrlr firmware to support grouped Matrix synths (up to 4×6 notes polyphony !!) and we will officially publish an update in the next months.

We also would like to wish you all the best for 2020 and launch a game for this new year : we celebrated ein frohes neues Jahr in Berlin and we have hidden a business card at the Tresor. If you find it, we offer you a free kit !! Hint : watch the ceiling 😉

A customer asked us how to flash the Matrix-6 EPROM using TL866 programmer & MiniPro Software on Windows.

You will need a blank 27C256 EPROM (UV erasable) and the binary (.bin) file.

1. First, specify the chipset used : in this example the brand is ST and the model is M27C256B in a package DIP28.
2. Then load the .bin to have the data to write by the software.
3. Flash the EPROM
4. Finally, verify it is no more blank.

So are screenshots :

We have been fighting yesterday with our website and plugins regarding automated shipping calculation … the war isn’t ended.

Anyway, all pending parcels will be prepared this weekend (except those with a soldering service as we need to solder the units first). Thanks for your patience and confidence 🙂