I had dinner with Martin M. this evening. I hadn’t seen him in a while and called him at random last night, thinking it would be nice to catch up. We had a nice talk over beer at Smith, on 15th; he’s enthusiastic about his new(-ish) job at Google, and we traded speculations about the future of the computer industry.

After getting home I spent some time working on my electronic music device. I’ve stepped back from the all-in-one drum machine idea; it’s definitely the right direction for a commercial product, but I am daunted by the long list of unknowns I’ll have to deal with to get there. For the moment I’ve cut the box in half and am working on another Rhythm Robot: this one a complete sequencer, including the features of the Steadyrocker metronome gadget. I’ve designed the control layout, and am now working on the best way of connecting 92 individual LEDs, 10 7-segment LED digits, 12 lighted buttons, and 6 rotary encoders to an ATMega328 controller. I’m sure there will be a handful of PCF8574 I2C IO expanders in there, and perhaps some TLC5925 LED drivers too. The latter only seem to be available in surface mount packages, though, which scares me.