Something I’ve been working on and modifying for the last few years.  Every version gets a little more robust, and a little nicer looking.  This, will definitely be the last version, I’m sick of rebuilding this thing.

FEATURES

• 8 – 120VAC/10A relay channels, items plugged into the back get switched
• USB control via software application
• OSC and MIDI controlled using liblo and rtMidi to setup midi i/o device

Eight outlets for the eight channels.  Allows for switching any device that gets plugged into the wall.  The strobe output is for driving a strobe light, uses the same signal as most DJ equipment strobe lights.  (Approximately 10V pk-pk signal for pulsing the strobe light, triggered using a max232 chip for the higher voltage).  The back was made by front panel express, the front was some leftover space on a ponoko project, which I stained and varnished.

The relay boards came from trossenrobotics , from many years ago. (5 maybe?) I think they still sell similar if not the same board.  I rewired them a bit to add in an LED in parallel with the relay, which is what lights up under the rubber buttons.  The relays boards have transistors built in, and the appropriate diode protection.  So, all I needed was 8 digital outputs, and 8 digital inputs for the buttons.  I used a small board I made up recently for another project that has an Atmega324 uC.  Slightly bigger than the popular 88/168/328 series, this chip has a few nice features including a whole extra IO port and multiple uarts etc.  The power supply there was taken out of a cell phone charger I think…..  Most of these parts have been part of other projects over the years…so I’m not exactly sure anymore what the point of some of them were.

The purpose of this project has always been to trigger lighting equipment in sequence with some kind of audio.  I’ve built many max/msp patches for controlling this box in the past, varying in complexity.   This final version though, I decided would have the ability to not only respond to midi through max, but become it’s own midi controller as well.  That way I cut out a lot of in between work, and I can send messages from any program (max, ableton, etc) or from keyboards/monome etc to switch whatever is plugged in.  In the past, it’s been DJ equipment, such as lasers, and various lighting and smoke machine effects.  In the future….it will probably be the same, but hopefully not crash as frequently…

The software that creates the virtual midi device using rtMidi, is the same program I use for my other controllers, more details can be found here.

GLAMOUR SHOTS!