monome five twelve

yes, it is real. several close friends encouraged the endeavor, so we extended the proposition to a few more. ten were made in total, four of which we’re offering to the public through an auction. we don’t see a broad market for such an obtuse (yet beautiful) device but saw this as an opportunity to actually bring it into existence, if only on a microscopic scale. we do not expect to make these again. much hand wiring was involved, much wood finishing and care for detail, and in the end we’ve been reminded that we began monome as artists, not business people. so, here it is.

sold out!

ten units were built, four of which were auctioned in april of 2010.

technical details

• - custom designed and milled enclosure from a solid block of black walnut.
• - custom machined aluminum top plate, clear anodized.
• - orange LED lighting, matching earlier monome series devices.
• - custom laser cut and etched rubber slip mat, keeping the device scratch-free and stable on the work surface.
• - two monome two fifty six devices, housed in one enclosure, internal usb hub. one power jack, one usb jack.
• - tested for full speed operation. no latency disadvantage compared to standard (un-hub-ed) monome devices, which are designed for incredibly fast communication and low latency.
• - mappable in monomeserial easily for dual-256 operation or single 32×16 matrix (or even smaller sub-matrixing with custom configuration.)

images

walnut end grain.

laser cut/etched slip mat.

video

photos from production

finalized internal CNC routing of walnut base.

512 top plate, from above. machined by our reliable friends in baltimore.

512 top plate, with macbook for scale.

sideport printed circuit board, for power and usb. custom for the 512, with chair drawing by kelli cain.

finalized CNC plywood test enclosure. exceptional work by our friend jason voytilla, who also milled the earlier monome series in walnut.

test enclosure, CNC cut from plywood.

custom vacuum fixture specifically designed for 512 cnc process, to hold the block firmly in position.

jay received the finished blanks from our lumber mill. black walnut from middle pennsylvania, certified sustainably harvested.

these two 256 are hooked up on a non-powered hub. tested perfectly. i see no possibility of a usb datarate bottleneck. updating all 512 LEDs at once using /frame messages i was able to easily clock about 150fps. beyond that my eyes couldn’t follow the pattern to register if things were working correctly, so not the best test, but good enough.

top plate mechanical drawing.