Building the Hex Drum / Big Button trigger sequencer

hello once again i'm extra life when last we spoke i was putting the finishing touches on these drum modules the 909 style hex inverter eurorack drums and i'm really pleased with the way they come out they're really nice and punchy and crisp but i don't really have a good way to play them yet having them hooked up to the mini interface means that i need to have my computer connected and the super 16 only has the one gate output so i really need something with a bit more flexibility and i've got just the thing in mind if you follow the channel look mom no computer which you definitely should then you will likely have seen his diy drum sequencer it's called the big button and it's a six output trigger sequencer with some really innovative real-time programming features and he has very kindly made both the schematics and the arduino code for it available online so today we are going to try our hand at building our very own big button drum sequencer this is an off-the-shelf standard size hammond 1590 double d enclosure and i plan to etch the face with a custom design so first i need to prepare the surface with some sandpaper [Music] i'm going to use the toner transfer process to apply a mask to the metal surface and then use an etchant chemical to produce a deep image in the areas where that mask isn't covering as the name suggests toner transfer starts using laser printer toner and then we use heat to transfer that to another surface [Music] once the toner is fused to the metal surface we use water in this case or for some other kinds of paper a chemical release to remove the paper backing [Music] i didn't much like the way the first design came out when i saw it on the enclosure so i started from scratch and did it again you can see i'm using hexagons as the theme for this is going to be the hex drum of course the big button is still going to be very centrally featured but as it's a six channel sequencer i wanted to feature that in the design [Music] in areas where the toner failed to transfer which is invariably always on some parts of the enclosure you can use a manual masking method either tape or paint of some kind you don't have to use pink nail polish but it does look the coolest and it makes it easy to see where you've worked this is aqueous ferric chloride which is the same solution that i use for etching printed circuit boards it produces a very deep color change on aluminum and it stains everything else so be careful when you're handling it this reaction is exothermic and will produce a lot of bubbles as well as heat so when the etch is finished we can use acetone to remove the plastic toner mask and the touch-ups and reveal the untouched metal surface below on this particular etch i left the enclosure in the chemical for probably too long and it kind of ate away a lot of the fine detail as well as leaving a lot of scale on the surface so instead i started again from square [Music] one this time i watched the reaction a bit more closely and i brushed away any precipitate before it could accumulate i also removed the enclosure before the collar had started to change too dramatically this reduced the contrast of the image a little bit but it's still plenty easy to read and there's a lot more fine detail as a result [Music] next i use the design to locate mark and drill the holes for the components in the front panel [Music] [Music] the titular big button poses a problem for me because i don't have a drill bit large enough to accommodate it a hole saw would probably be a good option here but first i tried this step drill bit as you can hear from the sound it makes it really wasn't enjoying that operation and it wasn't big enough for the job anyway so i tried another method first i marked out the diameter of the hole using the plastic nut that came with the button then i put a straight bit on the router and set up to freehand the line i just [Applause] drawn [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i was a little apprehensive about trying this because i'd never used the router on metal before but as you can see from the tiny chips it produced it really goes through that aluminum like butter with the enclosure finished it's time to start getting the front panel components installed and wire up the electronics on this [Music] project [Music] [Applause] [Music] now that this strip board wiring harness octopus is finished up we can install it in the enclosure and start making some connections to the front panel components my off-board wiring still isn't very neat so i like to use ribbon cable to make it a little bit easier and to simplify routing lots of parallel components we can connect the arduino to the computer and program it over usb and then seal up the enclosure and start making some rhythm sequences [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that [Music] ah [Music] well there you go that is the hex drum aka the look mum no computer big button six channel trigger sequencer it is a joy to play it syncs up nicely with all my eurorack gear everything seems to work properly on it although i'm still kind of figuring things out getting it to sync properly and knowing where beat one lands is a little bit of a challenge this reset button doesn't do quite what i thought it did so i might have to modify the code i did actually have to modify the arduino code that i found online quite extensively to make this work properly not only because i had wired a couple of the switches backwards and just had to flip some bits around but also because i found that some of the code just wouldn't compile properly and i'm not sure why that is i just uh went and made the changes it wasn't that difficult and i'll post that up on my github if you're trying to build this if that's of any help to you i would be happy to share it i'd like to make some other modifications to it as well for instance enabling this clock out so it can either daisy chain or serve as the master clock controller for the system and you know i think the reset button could be used to reset it to beat one or it could be used to reset to a default pattern i'm not really sure what the best is i'm going to have to play around what i would really like to do is hook it up to my laptop and get the midi device controlling the clock and see how i'm going to use it in combination with maybe ableton live and what are the things that i actually needed to do and that's the wonderful thing about having a diy sequencer that's programmed by arduino is that if you don't like the way it works well you can change it that's what the code is for once again before i go i have to give a huge shout out and thanks to everyone who is supporting me over on patreon it really means a lot to me to have your support and it means that i'm able to take the time to make and edit these videos a bit more frequently so if you're interested in early access to new videos as well as a little bit of bonus content head over to patreon.com extra life and become a supporter today i think that about does it for today i want to say a huge thanks to sam look mum no computer for open sourcing the big button designs it's been a lot of fun to build and even more fun to play with so thank you very much for watching and don't be scared to try it

Channel: Extralife

Views: 3,885

Rating: 4.9560437 out of 5

Keywords: look mum no computer, modular synth, eurorack, drum synthesizer, drum machine, trigger sequencer, diy synthesizer, arduino, diy electronics, drum sequencer, big button, hex drum, extralife, synth diy

Id: De32_datjyI

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/kryptoniterazor]

I needed a trigger sequencer to go with my new 909 style eurorack modules, and I always liked the look of Look Mum No Computer's "big button" arduino-powered seq, so I took the plunge and built one. I love the minimal interface so I gave it a custom designed etched aluminum enclosure and tested it out with the drums. I keep thinking of features I want to add to it so it's nice to have the code and the arduino in there to change it out how I like it!

[u/scowler1]

Sounding pretty sweet!