I use it every day, but had stopped dev on it a few years ago. Fable has gotten me excited to take it off the shelf and add a bunch of features I've been wanting for a while. Working on localization now.
Very cool - can’t wait to try it. I made an impulse tracker clone for MIDI years ago that also uses SDL, though a mix of C and C++. It has been picked back up for dev again recently and we’re making good progress.
https://github.com/m6502/ztrackerprime
The world could use more trackers. I’m really hoping the upcoming ableton live extension api will allow for direct access to the piano roll. I suspect many people include myself will use it to make tracker interfaces for ableton.
And yes, trackers are great tools and with a bit of integration, like program change message, they can even provide this experience to MIDI. I use a bunch of tools I created for music making, live performance etc. trackers are almost always at the center of this for me.
A VST is not similar to what the Live extension can do. I use redux, but it is always a slightly less integrated experience, as the extension, but extensions at the moment are also not fully featured yet. In short, both have a purpose. I also converted some of my tools to both, by either writing actual MIDI data into Ableton, and otherwise, be controlled by the DAW as a VST; I work on Regroove, which is a Protracker and (Octa)MED replayed library, which can convert from and to several other formats and can be used even in a Drumlogue to playback a .mod as a groovebox like use, with looping, etc.
Renoise is great, but there's usually some compromise like using the tracker/vst's built-in sampler instead an integrated instrument (like Ableton's Drum Rack) or another VST (soft synth, etc)
Congrats on an impressive achievement and milestone. This is a great outcome, great work, and an indication of how far the hardware industry/tooling has come.
This feels though a little to me like building a simple SaaS service, and deploying it on a managed cloud service, and concluding all software is really easy!
This project is near to (if not at) the easy end of the hardware product difficulty/complexity spectrum. Some great choices were made to keep it simple and therefor easy.
An alternate take-away: "If you keep things simple, hardware doesn't have to be as hard"
That underrates the difficulty in keeping things simple.
It is mentioned elsewhere here that a lot of time was burned on unused firmware features. It takes surprising discipline to cut stuff and still deliver.
Agreed. At someone who works primarily in hardware, it is definitely hard. A midi-to-bluetooth recorder is practically a software project in a fancy box. There is very little physical complexity to deal with here, which is what makes hardware difficult- the interaction between firmware and the "real world".
Congrats though, making a half-million a year business is a massive accomplishment! The headline just irked me a bit, haha (but, it got my attention, so I guess you win there)
Hey man, you made a successful product, wrote a great article, and are now getting attention for it. You don't need to respond to every person who wants to nit pick at your title :)
I think there's a lot of people talking past each other here. Sourcing parts internationally, preventing counterfeiting, slow iteration time, inventory management...all this logistical stuff is hard enough that the conventional wisdom in the software business world is to never attempt it. You're here presenting a counterexample and that's wonderful. The people criticizing aren't talking about this though, they are talking about whether logging digital inputs on an esp32 counts as a real hardware project and they act as if you've insulted their expertise in [signal processing/antenna design/insert specialty here]. You didn't do that, most of us know you didn't do that, but the word "easy" sets a lot of engineers off.
Just ignore the noise and keep writing great articles. My personal request, if I may - I'd like to hear how you did injection molding since I always assumed that was out of reach for small business.
Not super low. It starts to make sense around 1000 units. I’ve gotten runs of 2500 done domestically. But it is pretty hard to find domestic injection molders for consumer work - they will give you an FU quote at best because they cater to high volumes and industrial customers.
And they’ll make the molds in China anyway. Chinese molders are hungry — they will work with low volumes and offer a bunch of integrated services. But if you don’t know what you’re doing you will end up with bad parts over schedule.
Easiest way to get started is to use ProtoLabs. They charge lower prices on molds in exchange for higher part cost, are way faster than China, and have way better customer service.
I also appreciate the callout but don’t believe it’s in bad taste. There are enough analogs, and it makes you question the type of people who run the companies and make the decisions. In MSFTs case, Bill Gates was an associate with a known pedophile and likely an abuser himself.
I completely understand it being triggering but shying away from it because of that protects perpetrators. A lot of executive circles are filled with abusive freaks and their decision making reflects that.
A article mapping out those connections would be a good thing to do. That’s not what this article is, though. This is about Microsoft having poor quality software and a business model that is adversarial to their customers.
He is someone that cares about operation and information security. Modern Consumer operating systems basically throw all of that out of the window. On top of that he hate Microsoft.
>the impact or meaning of referring to violence in a flip[pant] way
I don't think you actually mean "violence" in general, unless you think that word means something radically and fundamentally different from what I think it means (and my understanding is based on what dictionaries say; but I will happily acknowledge that I have encountered very, very many people whose apparent understanding of the term is utterly incomprehensible to me). I say this because I never, ever see people object to the use of idioms such as https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/you+killed+it . The objection is only ever raised with respect to very specific kinds of violence.
Or will you also object when I kill a process, or when POSIX-standard systems (I'm pretty sure this is part of the standard but I'm not that kind of nerd) continue to use `kill` as the command name? How about when a new startup releases a "killer app"?
I’m glad to see someone else that loves objective-c as much as I do. It is delightful.
It’s a fantastic language and tools. I wish it had had more time to polish, expand, and potentially grow beyond mainly Mac and iOS before swift happened.
I bought a machine with a 75Mhz blue lightning "486" as an upgrade to a 386SX/20. It was sold as the budget 486 at the time, and I learned the lesson the hard way that sometimes budget really does mean a lot worse!
Performance wasn't great and compatibility was an issue more than you'd expect.
At Sense we make a home energy monitor that provides real-time appliance-level monitoring using machine learning. Hardware is indeed hard as everyone said it would be!
$165 will get you an emporia with 16 sensors so you don't need any AI trying to decipher your usage, compared to $300 for yours that only gives you sensors for your main feed.
Considering it's trivial to find schematics online showing how to wire a clamp current meter into an esp32, what have you found to be difficult about the hardware? I would expect the AI detection of individual appliances would be the hard part.
Hi HN - I built a Winamp-like audio player for Mac. I buy/download a lot of music and could not find an audio file player that was lightweight, made it easy to skip through and audition tracks, and native to MacOS.
I'm interested in feedback or anyone that would like to help collaborate on it, either programming or design, the latter of which could definitely use some help. Thanks!
I've got a working macOS Winamp-inspired music player I've been working on. I was thinking of open-sourcing - anyone here interested in something like this?
I use it every day, but had stopped dev on it a few years ago. Fable has gotten me excited to take it off the shelf and add a bunch of features I've been wanting for a while. Working on localization now.
https://github.com/cmicali/vibe
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vibe-music-player/id1582482361