What’s on the bench, what’s waiting for parts, and what’s still only an idea. Most of it gets made between my home bench in Berkeley and the machine shop. Some of it ends up as articles on InsiderLLM; all of it gets written up here eventually.
A DIY tine synth in the spirit of the Korg Phase8: tuned steel tines, plucked and sustained by electromagnetic drive coils, built one voice at a time.
A stepper-driven bobbin winder for the Open Kalimba’s coils, and later for guitar pickups. Pi Pico, MicroPython, tested to 1,000 RPM.
Language models running on ESP32 microcontrollers, measured honestly, and a two-board story box that listens, tells a story, and speaks it aloud.
The deep gong of the Javanese gamelan, reimagined as an analog instrument: Rhodes-style tine and tone bar mechanics instead of four feet of bronze.
A three-string fretless slide guitar with a humbucker and piezo, the first of three, each one carrying its lessons forward to the next.
A 1970s Bridgeport Series I CNC, retrofitted: the original steppers and controls out, AC servos and LinuxCNC in. The pendant is next, and it’s a bigger job than you’d think.
A DIY granular looper in the spirit of the Hologram Microcosm, plus a sampler, prototyped in Pure Data before any hardware.
Distributed AI for everyone: old laptops, mini PCs and GPU boxes joined into one local AI swarm. No cloud, no API keys.