I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. The Basement Scientist, a fine DIYer and hardware hacker, has finally received his MIDI shield boards from Batch PCB. What does this mean? It means that soon, he’ll do a run of MIDI shield PCBs that will be available for purchase. In turn, that means you can easily run MIDI through your Arduino, making it fun and easy to create your own instruments.

I received my two MIDI Shield circuit boards from Batch PCB over the weekend. I’m happy to report that they came out 100% error free. However, I think I’m going to make one or two minor tweaks before getting a bunch produced.

MIDI requires the use of the Arduino serial port pins, which are also used by the on-board USB programmer. With my current design the MIDI Shield has to be unplugged before the Arduino can be programmed, which is a pain in the ass. Instead, I’m going to add a jumper to the MIDI Shield. Remove the jumper, program the Arduino, then put the jumper back on. Much better than pulling the whole shield off every time you need to upload code.

I’m incredibly excited to get my hands on one of these shields. I was contemplating on building my own but TMS has done a fine job and I wholeheartedly support it.

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If you’re familiar with the Game of Life then Automaton will seem familiar to you. Using the rules as the Game of Life, it instead sequences and generates music along with FX, which is perfect for any of you producing atrocious techno. Random squelches, blips, beeps and then some are all included with Automaton. Just use your favorite DAW like Live, Cubase or Reason to kick out the jams. At $49, it seems well worth the money.

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Here at Gearfuse, we love seeing all the cool Steampunk twists people put on regular products. Sadly, this awesome set of Steampunk headphones that you see pictured above is actually just a non-functional model.

A guy from Chicago who calls himself Nicrosin made this “Mechanical Aural Communication Device” as a prop with “sculpey, rubber, and… various pocket watch parts,” the earpieces have a suede lining. Real Steampunk headphones that look like the inside of a watch would be awesome. Hopefully, someone will take a cue from Nicrosin’s idea and make a working version of these.

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As we mentioned yesterday, the online music service Muxtape shut down. While this is yet another lame move by the RIAA, I’ve found I don’t miss Muxtape. It was really just too basic of a service for me to get into it or hyped up about it. Plus, having to upload one track at a time really sucked. So with Muxtape gone, I decided to give 8tracks.com a go.

Sign up is easy. Very straightforward stuff. The interface is much cleaner and reminds me of the old version of Last.fm. Anyways, you login and create a mix. This mix contains 8 tracks, all of which will not be revealed unless a listener listens to your mix all the way through. You can upload all your tracks at once (in a queue) and go make a sandwich while they upload. Once that’s done, just drag your tracks to the mix and figure out an order. Create your mix and you’re good to go!

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The RIAA keeps chugging along and putting people with good intentions out of business. The latest casualty is Muxtape, an online mixtape service that I used and really enjoyed. You uploaded 13 of your favorite tracks and that’d be about it. What do I think will happen now? Nothing. Muxtape is not/does not have the money to license all those tracks at the current royalty rates. It was a nice ride but until the recording industry “gets it,” I’m afraid we’re screwed.

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Who needs friends when you’ve got all these ports! If you worked in the AV club in high school or do that shit for a living now, this shirt was made for you. It resembles the back of an expensive McIntosh receiver as far as my eye can see.

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It’s been a few weeks since we attended the Last HOPE Conference but it’s still fresh in our minds. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to attend or missed some of the great talks, there is good news to be had. 2600 has kindly put up all of the talks on their website, including both streaming and downloadable versions. You can also grab HOPE-related DVDs and a brand spankin’ new t-shirt. Check it out by hitting the link below.

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What better way to translate audio signals into light patterns than with this DIY project from Electronicpeasant.com. Throwing a few parties at your house while your rents are in Tahiti? Build a bunch of these, throw on some jam band music and take some hallucinogens to pay tribute to the late great Albert Hoffman. Perhaps some of your friends could bring over their DIY E-bolas to turn the party into a real rave that’ll have the police there (partying with you) in hours (they were busy).  With LEDs for lights, the color organ was designed for extended battery use and doesn’t burn too much power. After all, no one wants to change a battery whilst under the influence.

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Radio stinks. It’s boring and pretentious and they never play enough 1970s progressive rock bands. In a desperate attempt to get more listeners in on radio, Coby Electronics’ HD Radio launched with promises of higher audio quality for no additional fee.

The two new HD Radio receivers in town include the portable HDR-700 Radio System and the HDR-650 (pictured above) Component HD Radio Receiver. The latter is intended to be integrated into already existing household component systems. So if you don’t have one, you’re up shits creek without a paddle. The HDR-700 is priced at $149, leaving the lower-end HDR 650 at a price tag of $99. With no subscription fees, could this be a reason to give up your satellite radio subscription? Probably not and y’know why? Not enough NPR.

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So here’s the biggest load of crap to hit the home entertainment market. The Whitelight Glass Fiber-optic Cable made by Nordost is supposed to deliver the best possible audio to your home theater. Your equipment better consist of McIntosh and nothing less, ’cause a pair of Whitelight cables will run you $32,825. Yes, that’s over thirty thousand dollars. I’m sure even the snobbiest audiophile would scoff at that price. Here’s a list of some stuff you could buy if you spent $25 on a set of gold-plated AV cables and saved the rest: