Make: Monome x Arcade Buttons, Video!

Monome x Arcade Buttons from Defcon6 on Vimeo.

Monome x Arcade Buttons is all done and it’s super fun to play with!

In this quick video I made, the lights indicate when a note is hit and the buttons change a scale arpeggiation (Running Max/Msp + Midi/OSC converter + Polygome + Ableton Live 8 + Commodore64 VST). This is just one of the many things it can do!

Make: Monome x Arcade Buttons, LED Wiring + First Test

The LED wiring is complete and everything is working! Here’s the first all-on test.

And here’s how pretty the final wiring looks! I still am going to tie everything up but I think it ended up really clean. Input boards on the left, output boards on the right. I tried a few wiring harnesses before I settled and duplicated. I think this helped make everything really clean and reliable (everything worked the first time!).

I already got a scrolling text monome program working with it and am in the process of writing a Max/Msp object to make it monome compatible (http://monome.org/). I’ll try to take some video soon and also some pics of the final casing once I fiinsh that.

Make: Monome x Arcade Buttons, Button Wiring and Box

Phew, I was able to wire all 64 buttons this weekend and they all are working! I also made a box out of some nice ply to shove everything in. The next step is to purchase and wire all 64 LEDs inside the buttons.

Make: Monome x Arcade Buttons, 64 Button Install

After much sanding and screwing down plastic nuts, 64 buttons installed!

Make: Monome x Arcade Buttons, Button Harness

Finished up the midi board / input module and everything seems to be working. I spent a while trying to figure out how to harness the arcade buttons. I was able to do one row, only seven more to go. Check out my sweet rocker on/off switch in red (like the kind that launches missiles).

Make: Monome x Arcade Buttons, Sneak Preview

Most of the non-circuit parts for the LED/button matrix I’m making! More photos to come as it gets put together. Note that this is unrelated to the arcade controller I am building. What you see in the photo are arcade buttons though, 64 of them, epic.