Category: update

underscores.shop restocked & back from hiatus !

Post author By cyberboy666
Post date April 11, 2024

heres some new updates about whats been happening / whats coming up at underscores.shop

after a summer hiatus spent working festivals / installations in new zealand (+ quality holiday time with friends and family) we moved to melbourne, australia in march 2024

current catalog restocked

since being unavailable in the shop since late last year we now have back in stock as pcbs, kits and assembled units for:

recurBOY,
sync_ope
& _rupture_ circuits

plus at least a few of everything else (theres only a couple _transcribe_ units left and these are unlikely to get a restock since i have plans for a newer version of this that will supersede it)

raspberry pi zero w’s in stock

also for the first time i am now stocking a limited number of raspberry pi zero w for recurBOY – if you order one along side an assembled recurBOY i will solder on the 2×20 and 1×2 headers and test the complete unit before sending out to you

a few foundations of analog video on breadboard

i am currently preparing for the second session of my interactive six part online course – a few foundations of analog video on breadboard – the last one we did was a lot of fun – you get a kit with this vga-breadboard module and all the parts to explore a number of circuit designs online with me and others.

the next one will be running this june/july, likely followed by another session in september/october if there is still enough interest. people on the waitlist (found at bottom of the link above) will get offered spots first before a general release of remaining tickets after that – so sign up now to be part of the first release (tickets on sale end of april)

WORKS IN PROGRESS – artist talks / behind the scenes at underscores

i have been doing monthly online talks showing various WIP projects – theres still a couple more of these upcoming – you can find the details here – also check out the recordings of the talks that have been to get an idea of whats coming up:

scanlines x polyphase community showcase

every year in april we celebrate the birthday of scanlines.xyz community space and forum with an open-call and livestream of recent works – its a fun time to come together and share what everyone is up to! for this one we are combining our screening with the seasonal polyphaseportal.xyz showcase- check out the forum post / polyphase page for info on how to submit

upcoming releases

i have just built and tested the v1_0_0 release version of two_point_one_colorizer circuit – which i have written about already here – so this should be available in the shop within the next few months (just need to order parts, make kits, write documentation and film a demo video for this)

after this i hope next to release my installation-based software/hardware for tv wall and addressable led mappings followed by some new hardware designs tba

if you want to help support this research into developing open source video instruments please consider buying assembled units, spreading the word or donating directly

shop update

underscores.shop updates & summer hiatus

Post author By cyberboy666
Post date November 16, 2023

heres a short update about whats been happening and whats coming up here at underscores.shop:

summer hiatus

i have decided to effectively close the shop for 2-3 months over the summer here in new zealand starting from monday 27th november. i will be on and off the road for festival work and holidays plus moving out of my studio (and home) to relocate to melbourne.

there wont be any underscores releases or restocks during this time but for any remaining stock it will still be possible to place an order with the understanding that your items will ship by end of feburary 2024 at the latest – i will update here and on the mailing list when we get restocked and settled on the other side.

plans and projects for the new year

once we are settled and im back working in a studio space again i have a lot of projects i want to finish and share with you. heres a few of them:

releasing the two_point_one_colorizer circuit plus another couple of diy projects tba
adding options to include front+back panels for existing projects
running some more sessions of my analog video on breadboard class taught on polyphaseportal.xyz
a series of eurorack video modules im working on in collaboration with GOBLIN CORP
a new hardware device im working on in collaboration with Liberated Interfaces
documenting and sharing some custom code & circuits iv made recently for video-art installations including addressable led lights & syncing tv_walls

works in progress

im also planning a monthly series of online talks hosted by polyphaseportal.xyz where i share and discuss various works in progress from behind the scenes at underscores.shop.

as you may have noticed by the sporadic updates, teasers and ideas thrown around here and elsewhere online, im much better at starting new projects than i am at following though, finishing and sharing current ones. im also not that comfortable with sharing too much about upcoming things publicly since it makes me feel bad when i cant meet the self-imposed deadlines or end up shelving them because i get overwhelmed. i want to get better at sharing the process and allowing room for feedback and discussions in these stages though. hopefully this informal format will help with this – would be nice to see you there!

update

recurBOY update

Post author By cyberboy666
Post date February 13, 2023

since the underscores soft-launch there has been a few updates to the recurBOY project:

hardware update

the recurBOY circuit depends on more harder-to-source components than others in the underscores catalog. This is because it was originally designed only to be built together in group soldering sessions – where we would source all the parts for the workshop beforehand.

Now that it is a fully open diy project (with some people sourcing the parts for themselves) I have updated the build guide with more information about selecting these parts

recurBOY uses a 1.8 inch tft display (ST7735S) in a form-factor commonly found on ebay/amazon/aliexpress – unfortunately this is not compatible with the waveshare version – who i have found to be a reliable supplier of display hardware in the past (perhaps a future hardware revision should somehow allow this version of the display to be used also ?)

based on some feedback from users + my own exploration of testing these displays, I found that some of them were not working on the recurBOY r0.6 pcb. However when i tested the same (faulty?) displays with pin-jumpers wired to the pi directly they would always work!?

A laborious process of trial and error discovered that in particular the SDA pin ie SPI data input between screen and rpi was the problem – soldering a floating wire to this was enough to consistently fix this issue across all the “faulty” screens i tested.

the DISPLAY_SDA trace between PIN38 on pi and PIN5 on display is the problem!

I couldnt really see any difference to the signal before and after this “fix” on the scope, but my best guess is that the trace on the pcb is a bit too weak for some screens to read it.

example of part of the SPI message on SDA pin

I updated the pcb to make this trace much bolder – bumping circuit from v0_6 to v0_7_1 (v0_7_0 fixed it also but accidentally broke a trace on the rca out – whoops) and now every screen that I have tested works

all of this could have been avoided if we had selected a more reliable part from a reputable supplier – however this could incur also a large increase in price for the project + ( potentially ) more difficulty for diy-er to source in small batches.

for as long as we design with hacky parts occasionally we will need to make hacky updates – and i stand by this decision !

open projects have the flexibility to adapt to their changing surroundings and this is a good example of that!

software update

recurBOY was designed to distill some of the best parts of a r_e_c_u_r video sampler while running on cheaper hardware (a rpi_zero) and keeping the interface simple.

one feature of r_e_c_u_r that i use often and miss with my recurBOY is processing live-video feed (eg from a camera or another video-synth)

processing live input

running input from a piCamera over csi into recurBOY proved to be too much for the pi_zero to handle. To my surprise however it could seem to handle input from a usb-video device like EasyCap capture cards

i cant guarantee it will work with any usb-video-input , but now if recurBOY detects a device on startup you will get access to a third source mode that allows you to preview that input and apply effects to it !

self-portraits w recurBOY digitial effects !

img file & other updates

you can download new image file and see the full list of changes on the v2.1.0 release page but in short, a few of the other ‘quick wins’ i also added in this release:

usb_midi support – including independent shaderParam and effectParam controls
sampler mode now plays images – jpeg/jpg, png & gif (single image only) supported
output sd over hdmi – defaults to 640×480 and seems to handle this without lag

please let me know if you have any issues or find bugs in this release – it has only been tested by me so far (i will keep old image up too if you need the stability)

when looking for things to update i rely on the issue tracker on github – no promises but putting your suggestions here is the best way to have them noticed!