maxome // adam john williams

So much soldering. I hate it.

Just ironing out some problems with the monome logic boards. The left side only lights up but doesn’t transmit button presses at the moment.

Update // Turns out one of the ATMEGA32s wasn’t flashed

Soldered all of the horrible surface mount diodes and the LEDs this evening.

The faceplates arrived from the waterjet cutting company today. Perfect fit. Next up is cutting out the wooden side panels from light New Zealand pine.

Current state of the Maxome: 1 large flight case filled with assorted stuff. Hopefully less than a week from now I will be uploading a picture of it looking fairly complete, as I’m traveling to Wales tomorrow night to stay at my parents’ place and work on it for a few days.

Slight change of plan, the aluminium is now being cut with a waterjet instead of a laser. In this case it proved to be more cost effective, and will also produce a clean edge around the panels and in the cutouts, as opposed to the oxidised edges laser cutting would have produced. For the two panels, the material, cutting, tax and shipping came to just over £160, which for a one-off prototype is not bad (I received some quotes for more than TEN TIMES this amount from other CNC fabricators).

My new toys that will be controlled by the Maxome’s CV outputs; an MFB Kraftzwerg modular analogue synthesizer and a Korg Monotron Duo.

With 16 outputs available, it could drive 8 layers of polyphony in a system with enough VCOs and VCAs etc, or less polyphony with more modulation control.

I’m so excited.

I just gave the fabrication company the go-ahead to start laser cutting the Maxome’s control panels from 3mm thick aluminium. Getting slightly giddy with excitement.

A series of pictures, showing how the design of the Maxome has evolved over the last few months. The final picture shows how the design takes material efficiency into consideration, and it’s manufacture will create a minimal amount of waste wood, without sacrificing ergonomic form and aesthetics.

maxome // an introduction

Maxome is a custom performance controller designed and built by Adam John Williams.

It is built to accompany a dissertation on the topic of Open Sound Control as a logical successor to the antiquated MIDI standard for communication between electronic music devices.