monome 40h rediscovered

I realised again today how much I love my monome 40h. Although it’s ‘just’ a grid of 8×8 lit buttons in a box with a USB connection, it is also so much more. For one thing, the build quality has to be seen (and touched) to be believed. This is no off the shelf commercial junk, these babies are lovingly hand made in small batches.

If you use PD, Reaktor, Chuck, Processing, Ableton, SuperCollider, Bidule, or really anything which talks MIDI or OSC, the 40h is a nice device to get your hands on. As a general purpose controller which you can hack in to whatever you want, it’s pretty fun. The wiki and forums have downloads and discussion about all the environments just mentioned, and pretty much anything else you can imagine, including (of course) an implementation of the game of life.

I’m in the process of getting warmed up again with the 40h, and starting to make nice things with vvvv. I’ve also dusted off my Phidget RFID reader, which I think has got potential for hacking into an interesting interface for making music. I’m inspired by Yann Seznec’s Wii controller loop machine too. Another reason to get a Wii. And a Mac.