Update November 2020

Hey everyone,

I hope everyone is still safe. Second wave hit Germany and the rest of Europe quite hard and stricter measurements have been taken. Also here in Berlin.

New Prototype

I lately have been very busy to get the prototype fully working and even build a new one. The new one got some nice natural oak lacquer.

The third prototype has a more natural lacquer

General MIDI & Editor

One of the things I didn’t show in the demo video, is how the controller will work outside of Ableton as a general MIDI controller. Reason for this was that this requires an editor to setup the LEDs and knobs.

Luckily, my friend Shiko from shik.tech (who is also making an awesome MIDI controller, check him out!) made a great config tool, and even made it open source! With help from Shiko, I could adopt the tool and use for my controller.

It still needs some polishing but I was able to change the colors in the tool and upload them to the controller (and they worked!).

Campaign video is (finally) coming

I have finally found a great filmmaker that will help me with the campaign video and we will start shooting next week! I’m super excited that this is finally going to happen because this means we are one step closer to the actual crowdfunding campaign. I will post some photo’s of the shooting on social media when it’s happening!

Planning

The search for a video maker did unfortunately impact the planning a bit (in fact, Corona was involved). Plan was to start the campaign in Oktober/November, it now looks like it will be November/December.

Made in Germany?

I have always made a great effort to try and have the parts produced locally. I still had some parts that were made outside of Europe though. Some parts are impossible to have them produced here (for instance, all the electronic components) but I managed to have the PCB, slider knobs, woodwork and panels produced in Germany or the EU.

The only exception are the rotary knobs which were produced in China. I am now talking with a company here in Berlin (just around the corner from my house actually) that might be able to produce them here. It will be more expensive (which means less less profit for me), but I think I will rather have them produced here; Better for the environment, communication is easier and I hope the quality will be better too. I can even jump on my bicycle and pick them up, saving on delivery (and CO2).

That’s all for now. I’ll be working super hard to get this thing off the ground. I want to thank everyone for their help and support. I hope the next update will be about the start of the campaign!

Cheers!

Koen