Hack Media: Monome

posted Apr 14th 2006 8:00am by Eliot Phillips
filed under: Uncategorized

monome

Stop. Watch the video. Monome is an 8×8 grid of backlit buttons for music control. That’s pretty much it. The demo video does an awesome job showing some of the possibilities and I’m sure there will be many interesting developments in the future. I’d love to see what adding a second color for feedback would do.

Will O’Brien from Engadget and I will be attending Make Faire next weekend, where you’ll be able to see and play with the Monome first-hand. We hope to see some of you there.

[via Create Digital Music and Music Thing]

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Comments [29]

Reader Comments

Awesome! Just plain awesome. I really want one. I wonder how the software is at this stage.

Posted at 8:50 pm on Apr 14th, 2006 by ben

w00t! hell yea for maker faire! Cya there eliot! can’t wait to try this thing out!

Posted at 1:17 am on Apr 15th, 2006 by gaarie

anyone else go “OMG WANT”?! holy poop, that thing is damnnn awesome. $500 USD for the base, 8×8 model though..the 16×16 looks like there’d be a lot more functionality. the 40h looks like it would be more of an expensive toy than anything to get really productive with.
i do agree with their standards for making them, but it sure hurts the consumer more (in the short term, at least).

Posted at 3:41 am on Apr 15th, 2006 by deg

OK – so let me make sure I’m getting things straight here. You’re paying $500 for 64 rubber buttons that are individually backlit. Oh, and you get some software that translates pressing those buttons into commands on a computer. WOW!!! I definitely couldn’t do that with a $10 microcontroller and $20 worth of parts.

Oh wait, I could.

Posted at 10:24 am on Apr 15th, 2006 by Mike n

Nice. Here are some really awsome midi controllers as well. All home built with open source software.

http://www.ucapps.de/

Posted at 10:55 am on Apr 15th, 2006 by beanMosheen

While it looks like a freakin’ awesome way to create electronic music — and quite intuitive — I know I’m not shelling out $500 for one.

Posted at 11:04 am on Apr 15th, 2006 by louis goddard

Mike n :

Go on, then – do it.

Posted at 11:26 am on Apr 15th, 2006 by jubilantjeremy

Monome, do doo de doo doo
Monome, do doo de doo doo
Monome, do doo doo doo doo doot

Posted at 12:57 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by BigTeebo

#6, Yeah, same thing for me. I like making electronic music, I have no idea how to use trackers, but this looks kind of easy to use, I just wish it was around $100 dollars, not $500 dollars. :)

Posted at 1:51 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by Pick

Nice thing but a bit too expensive.

Posted at 2:03 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by maros

To mike n, or anyone else thinking of building one of these:

I’d suggest checking out a hand-held game called “lights out” made by tiger toys. check it out here: http://www.mit.edu/~kbarr/lo/

As you can see, its buttons are nearly identical to the ones on this midi device. i’ve seen versions of this toy at resale shops many times for next to nothing. in my opinion, it would make a great starting point for such a project :)

Posted at 2:04 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by Jakeh

#9, glad you agree — I’m in the same boat viz-a-vis trackers; I mainly use reason 3.0 and a software midi keyboard program for playing around. I’m more interested in live performance stuff, though, and it’s the ease of use and simplicity that interests me most with the monome.

Posted at 3:32 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by louis goddard

#9, #12,

Ease of use is exactly why I gravitated toward the electribes about 6 years ago – and probably why everyone and their mother’s uncle has come up with something similar. Sadly, all this kind of stuff seems to settle around a $500 price-point for new equipment. I’d love to see just a nice tactile controller like this (no brains, just buttons) for $100. I can write the software myself.

/*
I saw Haujobb and Architect a few days ago – they really could have used something like this.
*/

Posted at 4:15 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by pragma

your crazy

Posted at 7:38 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by MOPP HEAD

Reminds me alot of the Tenori-on, but having more practical uses.

Posted at 9:26 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by generalformat

#11 beat me to it. This is nearly identical to the lights out game. I still have one from my LSD days. You hit a button, and it toggles the light on that button and the 4 lights around it (or 3 lights around it for an edge, 2 for a corner). The object was to clear the board, so all the lights were out. Fun. Very cool looking on acid. Found it in the bargain bin at Kaybee toys.

For anyone interested in that sort of thing, I also recommend a game called “Light Wars” also by Tiger. It is a circular ring of lights, with 4 “control pad” type things. It is a multi play game, where each play has 2 buttons. The object was to “bounce” the light “ball” around, hitting it with your left or right button “paddle”. The light would move faster and faster, and if it hit the light in front of you, you lost a life (3 total I think). There was another mode called lockdown, where you had to hit both paddles when it was in the center, to “lock” the light there, and you get a point. You release the light and it starts moving faster. Another mode was like the first but with 2 light “balls”. The 4th mode was a 4 player game, with the player opposite you as a partner, and you both had to hit the same paddle at the same time.

Very interesting social game to play on drugs. All huddled around this 80’s looking space game tripping out of your skull.

Sorry. Resume hacker talk now.

Posted at 10:54 pm on Apr 15th, 2006 by acidrain

really really good idea and a great implementation… i love it :D

Posted at 12:28 am on Apr 16th, 2006 by andrew

OMG that is sexy. That would be awesome for live music mixing, like the stuff bt does. Makes me want to get one just to play with it. If only it weren’t so expensive.

Posted at 11:03 am on Apr 16th, 2006 by steve

dang… so simple yet so fun to play with. 150 dollar price tag and that thing would sell like no ones business.

Posted at 12:08 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by JIMMYD

It would be interesting to use this equipment with some of Bludgeonsoft’s Audio Apps.

http://www.wizardmaster.com/bludgeonsoft/audio.html

Posted at 2:55 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by Sp`ange

Pretty cool. I have no interest in music, but I could see it in use by any computer power user.

But $500? Forget it. Even that 3 button OLED input device is only $100.

Posted at 3:47 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by TJ

i temporary mirrored the file (12kb/s downloads suck)
http://oneko2.ath.cx/one/monome40h.mov
it’s a good project ;) – one

Posted at 7:13 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by one

i also immediately thought of “lights out” when i saw this article.

pic of lights out:
http://www.speedcubing.com/ton/collection/Other%20Puzzles/images/Lights%20Out%20Clasic%20Tiger.jpg

i wouldnt know how to go about rigging that up, but the interface of individually lighted rubber keys is definitely cheap enough to buy.

Posted at 11:53 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by kenny

Very nice. Classy.

Posted at 12:25 am on Apr 17th, 2006 by Vrogy

check this out: http://www.zefrank.com/sequencer/index.html

seems to be clearly the same

Posted at 9:26 am on Apr 17th, 2006 by yeha

I had a version of Lights-Out that was cube-shaped with 9 buttons on each side. That would be neat to use.
http://www.speedcubing.com/ton/collection/Other%20Puzzles/images/Lights%20Out%20Cube%20%20Tiger.jpg

Though 9 would be annoying to work with.

Posted at 6:27 pm on Apr 19th, 2006 by ben

Quote:
I definitely couldn’t do that with a $10 microcontroller and $20 worth of parts.

Oh wait, I could.
>>>>>>
Sorry, but no you couldn’t. An aluminum panel like the one shown will cost you about $100-125 USD alone. Then, have fun trying to find you backlit buttons – you’d not find any commercial manufacturers of them; instead you’ll have to order a custom run, so look forward to $500 in tooling costs and about a dollar per part. Now, go get some fecl to etch your plates, there’s another $20-30. Then spend a few months most likely working out the details – perhaps your time is worthless though so maybe that isn’t a cost to you.

If you claim you can do it, DO IT, or at least offer evidence of how you WOULD DO IT. Otherwise, shut it.

Posted at 9:32 am on Apr 26th, 2006 by aegis

Where do you get 100-125 bucks from? I can get a 12×12inch 6061 .25 inch thick aluminum plate, more than what they had, for less than $40.

Posted at 4:27 pm on Apr 27th, 2006 by Crash

Would the aluminium be strictly necessary though? Wouldn’t a self-built model be based purely on functionality instead of asthetics? If I were to make one (which I have neither the funds nor knowledge to do), I would be more concerned with whether it works properly than whether the panel is aluminium or plastic.

Posted at 12:20 pm on May 2nd, 2006 by reece

Hack Media: Monome

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