Hello again!

The Pocket Integrator campaign continues this week. We’re making slow but steady progress toward our goal: to manufacture, distribute and support this Pocket Operator accessory that adds tap tempo and downbeat, MIDI Clock, USB power, a digital maraca, and more!

This holiday season, I give my deepest thanks to all of you who have followed, liked or forwarded any of our campaign’s social media: @musicsystemslabs on Instagram, the Pocket Integrator YouTube channel, and my own personal accounts on Facebook and Instagram, which I’ve hijacked for the duration of the campaign. This is a really helpful way to reach other Pocket Operator fans who haven’t seen the Integrator in action yet. Nobody can be everywhere on all the different social media, so thank you very much for introducing us to your friends.

Many thanks are also due to all of you who have shared the link to the main campaign page. This is where it all ties together, where the pitch video and all the details can be found, and where the magic "Back This Project" button lives!

We are so especially grateful to all of you who have already pressed that magic button and backed our project! If you haven’t pressed it yet, well, obviously I would love you to do so. But more to the point, if you’re on the fence about ordering, I’d definitely like to hear why. I’m happy to answer any questions or concerns you have about the board or the campaign. Ask me anything! Use the Technical Questions button at the bottom of this page. And remember, your card won’t be charged until/unless the campaign succeeds.

(By the way, if you’re waiting for a last-minute discount, or a holiday sale event on the Pocket Integrator… sorry. I’m afraid it’s already discounted as much as we can manage. Also, a last-minute discount would be unfair to everybody who signed up early at full price.)

I’ve put a few more demo videos up at the Pocket Integrator YouTube channel this week, and there’re more in the pipeline. This video demonstrates how to get BPM-accurate sync just by tapping. This one shows how you can stretch and squeeze tempo in Ableton Live with the USB MIDI feature.

Meanwhile, it’s been a bit too wet and windy here in Portland, OR to jam in the park lately, so I’ve been having friends over to jam in the warm indoors. Fun times! I’m always trying to put the Pocket Integrator in other peoples’ hands and see how it works for them. Here’s my old friend and collaborator Danny Norton, who brought over his Drum Buddy — one of the wildest and weirdest drum machines ever made! Video of Danny playing that thing is coming to our YouTube channel soon.

In nerd-news: I mentioned before that we had to change microcontrollers due to supply chain issues. So while I’ve been pushing this crowdfunding campaign on the internets, I’ve also been bringing up the firmware on the new RP2040-based Integrator. That’s going smoothly, feature by feature, it’s very gratifying. If you’re a hardware hacker, I highly recommend the RP2040 for your next microcontroller project. The documentation is superb, the pin layout really eases board design, and you can use a Raspberry Pi Pico, plus a firmware called Picoprobe, as a USB debugger instead of spending $100 or more for one of the J-Link-based commercial options.

More updates coming soon, here and on the interwebs! Thanks for your support!

-mykle-