Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Checking In, and a Slight Course Correction

I've been busy with the Hemisphere beta releases, and really busy at my actual day job, and haven't had time for the blog. Sorry about that. So for those readers among you out there, I wanted to quickly bring you up to speed on upcoming projects.

This Blog


This blog was originally intended to be a journal about how to develop O_C apps. But I think I'm pretty much at the end of the line there. First of all, it doesn't seem like that's something that other people are really that interested in. I knew it would be a small audience, with the hobby of developing applications for a specific eurorack module buried under several nested layers of "niche." But second, I've pretty much covered the topic. Anybody that wants to write an app for O_C can get a pretty good start with the information here, and I don't have that much more to say about it.

On the other hand, the topic of the software that I'm producing is up one or two levels of "niche," and there's a relatively strong level of interest in it.

So, this blog will shift a bit toward my own O_C projects, of which there are many. I'll discuss code where it's appropriate or (mildly) interesting. And I might wind up doing more development tutorials if there are any requests, or I find a topic I've neglected.

Hemisphere


The first version of Hemisphere is in what I hope is its final beta release. If no more bugs are found, it'll be released with a version number on July 16, 2018. After this, I plan to merge any new O_C operating system updates into the Hemisphere release.

This release keeps Ornament and Crime apps, with the exception of Meta-Q. So it's basically O_C + Hemisphere and 13 applets. This configuration takes up all of the O_C's program storage, so the plan is to go into a stable release that won't change much over time.

Hemisphere Suite


This is my current project. For the multi-O_C crowd, this removes the O_C apps to make room for many applets and new full apps. This will be rapidly-changing system and will contain everything that I do. There will be some weird stuff in there, but hopefully pretty interesting.

At the moment, it includes a slew processor, a gated VCA, a port of an accent sequencer I wrote for Peaks called Palimpsest, a playable implementation of John Conway's Game of Life, and a dual Euclidean drummer called Annular Fusion. I'm also planning to update the Hemisphere framework with a master clock forwarding mode, so that both hemispheres can share a single clock source.

Documentation


This is important, and I can't neglect it. I have to document the applets' functions and keep the documentation somewhere. Right now, information is kind of fragmented between this blog, GitHub, MuffWiggler, and my website. I need to consolidate. So that's a thing, too.

Neural Network


The neural network full O_C app is also in active development, although right now it largely involves research. So more to come on this as it comes together.

Messing With My Case


I got this awesome Switchcraft flush-mount USB jack. When I get some time, I'm going tear my system down and install the jack and a button, so that I can program my O_C without it hanging out of the case. I'll post photos, at least!

6 comments:

  1. Keep up the great work I love Hemisphere!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. A blog post explaining how to write your own hemisphere app could be great addition! I have some ideas that I’d like to use in an upcoming project that would fit right in. Just read through the tutorials and I might give it a go tomorrow. Might be able to swing it with what I read so far! Great work, thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I do plan to do that, but it's already documented pretty well. If you look at the HEM_Boilerplate.ino.txt file, there are instructions at the top, and then each of the required methods is documented, too. From there, it's mostly a matter of observing how I/O and graphics are performed in a few of the existing applets.

      Delete
    2. I just finished writing a master clock app for hemisphere. Allows to set BPM and one divider. Both CV controlled with a parameter to control the mod range. Just one flaw in it: if OC::CORE::ticks overflows, there will be a hickup.

      It's certainly manageable from reading your code! I'd be happy to share too.

      And on the side: while testing I used this to control your sequencer apps. When the reset and clk arrive at the same time, your sequencer resets to step 2. I guess you have to switch the processing of these triggers around in your code?

      Delete
    3. Oh, thanks, good catch! I'll double-check the handling of those triggers.

      Delete

Pitch Calculation and Output

"If pitches were horses, we'd all be eatin' steak." --Jayne Cobb And where have I been for almost two months? I was busy...