Why not use a neotrellis grid and 3d print a combined case with a diy arc?
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I canāt tell you how much Iād love to do that, but Iām not sufficiently convinced about my DIY skills to even attempt an Arc! Thatās an incredibly impressive array of DIY gear!
I recently acquired a Shruthi in need of some assistance but sorting out the non-standard deviations on that are about my level of synth DIY expertise at present.
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Thanks ! To be honest the neotrellis is really really easy to build - thereās minimal soldering.
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Holy shit, thatās an amazing collection! I couldnāt find your Norns-related builds but the modules are awesome and that first case you made is an absolute thing of a beauty!
Honestly, I would love to properly get into synth DIY but I discovered when doing previous little projects that I can either work on making instruments or making music, but I donāt have time to do both. I could try to do it on a rota where I spend a bunch of time making some releases and then a bunch of time making gearā¦ but then I also have to find time to learn Supercollider/Lua/Softcut coding too and also have an Axoloti I want to do something with one day. I need that universal basic income to kick in so I can stop trying to juggle work, family and music things 
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Thanks a lot !! The Norns and Monome stuff is all in ādiy_modulesā
I totally get what you are saying - the deisng and building of the modules ended up being more fun than making music !!! (I sort of swing back and forth - sometimes I only build/design and sometimes I only make music - badly!)
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Man, I love the build diary. Itās funny, I was speaking with a friend earlier who said the same thing re: SMT vs thru-hole builds. Iāve always thought that SMT was incredibly difficult and beyond my reach, but youāre the second person today who seems to tell me the exact opposite! The Grid and Norns look awesome. Iāve got a spare Pi, as it happens, and, like the proverbial heads, maybe 2 Norns is better than oneā¦
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Yeah - SMT is definitely faster and easier !! Iām building an original Ambika at the moment (Iām working on a very updated version and want something to compare it to) and hating the through hole !!! At least the voice cards are SMT - a friend converted someā¦).
The neotrellis doesnt have any through hole or SMT soldering ! (You just need to solder some boards together along their edges). If you build the Norns from a pcb and source the parts there is one small pitch ic that would benefit from a little experience firstā¦ the rest is easy iirc
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Ah, man, thatās dangerous info! A friend of mine showed me his Ambika build today, funnily enough. It looks impressive. I didnāt actually realise it was 6 boards (1 for each voice and filter) - I bet it sounds amazing! Your Arc build looks superb, btw. Iām guessing you could set one of those dials to control the rate of Softcut and have insane amounts of manual tape loop style fun!
Ha ha !!! Yeah - it gets out of hand quickly !
Ambika is awesome !!! It sounds amazing !
The one Iām building (well, Iām sort of doing a second one as well but will run out of parts for that) has SMT voice cards - only three of them but they have two voices on each card (as itās SMT two cards fit in the space of one, if that makes sense).
Iām actually working on an stm32-based ambika (think polyphonic plaits)
The Arc is really versatile - you can do so much with it ! The encoders for it were just crazy money but they feel really nice - we bought them in a large bulk order to get some discounts but even then they were like Ā£16 each IIRCā¦
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Damn, that sounds amazing! Iāve actually played with polyphonic Plaits of a fashion thanks to the Spectrum Suite on iOS and the results were insane. Am I right in thinking the STM32 is the insane little processor that things like the Performer module use? A friend was showing me a module that was basically Serum in Eurorack format & that was using those little 32 bit chips to do all the waveform handling. Just insane what is possible!
Was the Arc a difficult build? Iād love one but I canāt see me affording an official one any time soon and, like Grids, stocks of them seem hard to come by even if I had the money to spare. Hehe Ā£64 in encoders alone is probably a lot of money but the only frame of reference I have is the unobtainable official unit so the cost is a bit abstract in some senses! Iāve seen the PCBs on Pusherman (I window shop DIY synth stuff, I canāt lieā¦) and am definitely tempted
Yes stm32 is a series of small microprocessors - and it is used in the performer (which is excellent btw)
I dont think Iād recommend the Arc as a build if you didnt have much experience. It wasnāt particularly hard (mine worked first time with no issues) but there is quite a bit of part sourcing. There are a lot of parts to solder (all the leds are smt) plus you have to program a few chips. Itās quite an expensive build (maybe Ā£100 in total) so you dont want to mess it up! Have a look at the project files and see what you thinkā¦ (but Iād suggest get more experience firstā¦.)
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Werenāt the encoders the most expensive parts (in group i mean)?
I want soon or later build that clone, perhaps before the Neotrellis one, as Iām still with the norns only and some apps really need both of them.
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The encoders were definitely the most expensive part by far!
I agree that you do really need a grid with norns (Arc is definitely nice to have but less essential imo)
Now that Norns has native code to support the usb devices like teensy, one good option would be to use a teensy and one of the Ā£5 cheap oleds plus 4 bog-standard encoders to emulate an arc - it would be really cheap and effective - it shouldnt take long to do eitherā¦. (or even one of the cheapo raspberry pi picosā¦ I have one lying around so may have a play - you could then have an arc for about Ā£10 - the obvious sacrifice being you lose the feel of the nice spinny encoders and the light show)
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Honestly, I think Iām far more likely to see if I can enlist the skills of an adept to craft me one at some point rather than attempting it myself, but SMT definitely feels as though itās in my future
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Although I love them as objects, itās the functionality within Norns that Iām most interested in. Thatās an incredible prospect but I wouldnāt have the first clue where to begin
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This is the quintessential part of arc, though not sure how many of the modern apps effectively utilize it. Itās possible to convey so much more information that āamountā. Classic apps like Electric Dharma Wheels use the led rings in such a powerful way.
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Oh yeah - dont get me wrong - the light show is great, as are the low friction encoders (theslowgrowthās arc clone us really nice - mega-quality encoders and beautiful leds with clever masking and coversā¦ I love mine) - I was just saying that you could replicate a lot of the function very cheaply with cheapo encoders and an oled display - but youād lose out on the lovely ui - whether that is worth $700 dollars to everyone is the question 
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Hello, does anybody know good way for marking buttons?
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I found a Norns but am not sure if it is for me. Iām totally into granular synthesis, live sample manipulation, generative sequences and so on. I like the small form factor of the Norns. Is it fun to use it without Arc or Grid? Or can you do all of that with Borderlands on an iPad or Max/MSP on a Macbook?
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Iāve never used Arc, though it looks useful, but not essential. Grid on the other hand expands the Norns into new territories, and while the real thing is quite expensive, using the midigrid script allows alternate devices (in my case 2 x Launchpad Minis Mk3) to stand in, mostly successfully.
You wouldnāt necessarily need a Grid for many of the scripts on Norns to use them in interesting ways, but one certainly helps. Some, like the amazing barcode looper or the rather fun euclidigons geometric rhythm generator, donāt use the Grid at all.
Thereās a useful community web resource for finding which scripts do what and need or can use which interface here.
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