Saturday, March 23, 2013

Sometimes they work!

Over the course of the past 10 years, I have fried out many-a-integrated circuits.  Today, was not one of those days.  After recently entering the world of the Modular Synth, I started looking at what I had around me and how I could get it to talk CV, if it didn't already.  The first was a Monotron.  That one's pretty much a no brainer.  Just a couple wires and some jacks.  The next was my Moog Prodigy.  It worked-ish.  Something was a bit squirly, so I decided to removed what I had added and put it back.  I'd rather have a CV IN/OUT-less Prodigy than no Prodigy.

The most recent was adding CV IN's to a Shruthi-1.  The thing with those is the CV IN traces go right to the Atmel Processor, which can only handle up to +5V.  +5.01V and it's toast.  Any negative voltages end with the same outcome.  But, with the right protection, it should work.  So, after discussing this with the Official MI Case Maker, a simple circuit was devised.  Thankfully I have a spare Digital Control Board, so worse case scenario, I have an extra Atmel.   I wired the jacks up, took a deep breath and sent it some voltages from the dotcom.  The Shruthi stayed the course!  Not a flicker or a twinge!  I was quicky setting up different destinations in the Mod Matrix and using the dotcom oscillator as an LFO and getting some great results.  Couldn't have been happier.  Especially since I had ordered a custom case with 4 CV IN holes.

At any rate, now that it has been fully tested, I can now add this to the list of additional mods available for the Shruthi.



More pics here


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