Now I have two fully functioning single unit PIANAs thanks to a couple more hours soldering today (and breathing flux fumes, which is icky). I have to confess, they are not QUITE fully functioning, but they would be except I have stupid corrupted SD card problems. So I just spent 2 hours flashing up 5 SD cards to push this problem out a few more weeks.
But anyway, now I have two I decided they needed names, so they are officially 'Town' and 'Country'. The theme should have resulted in the second one being called 'Town and Country' but I prefer having a Town one and a Country one.
Glad you're back to work!
ReplyDeleteWhat's the overhead cost per unit?
What do you mean by 'overhead cost' - the cost of the components to put this together? In low volume maybe £10 - the Humble Pi is £4, there's a PIC (which I will remove next iteration) which is about £1.50, a 6N138 opto, socket for each of these, 3 LEDs, USB connector for power, MIDI connector, handful of Rs and Cs. I don't think there's more physical hardware than that. So a custom 'Pi Synth' PCB with just the right stuff on it would be a pretty inexpensive item to produce. certainly less than the Pi itself in reasonable volume.
ReplyDeleteThe big questions that remain are around usability, and size of the case and whether it needs physical knobs.
Oh, and the Teeny Tiny TV of course, and stuff to interface it to the Pi.
It will be hard to ship one of these (as in a 'PIANA' that makes sense as a standalone product rather than a hacker thing) for under £100 and have it make sense as a business, that's for sure!
This all looks very interesting, especially if breath control can be mapped so it can be used with a WX5 or similar!
DeleteDo you not also need to figure in a USB to audio interface to the 'basic' PIANA, as well as the above? That's a whole extra £1 or so, unless I've been reading this wrong!
What's the plan for PIANA when you've 'finished' it (her?)? Freely-downloadable SD card image + plans to add the necessary hardware, or some other approach?
Good luck.