vversioning – a quick and dirty code versioning system

For some projects you need a real code versioning system (like git or similar tools).

But for some others, typically micro-size projects, you sometimes don't want to use a complex tool. You might want to move to git later when the project gets bigger, or when you want to publish it online, but using git for any small project you begin creates a lot of friction for some users like me. Examples:

User A: "I rarely use git. If I use it for this project, will I remember which commands to use in 5 years when I'll want to reopen this project? Or will I get stuck with git wtf and unable to quickly see the different versions?".

User B: "I want to be able to see the different versions of my code even if no software like git is installed (ex: using my parents' computer)."

User C: "My project is just a single file. I don't want to use a complex versioning system for this. How can I archive the versions?"

For this reason, I just made this:

vversioning

It is a (quick and dirty) versioning system, done in less than 50 lines of Python code.

"Comme un ciel sans nuage"

Here is some 80s-cheeeeesy French pop I made with Gaëlle W. :

FastReply – Lightweight template system for your emails

 

Install it here: FastReply Chrome extension

 

Note:

• it works even if Gmail's SmartReply feature is enabled, both can work together

• it works in Gmail and other webmails/websites

• FastReply on ProductHunt

• another small but useful extension: ShowSubjectGmail

Interested for future evolutions and other (smarter) autoreply email tools?
(several other hour-saving tools in progress)

Touches of colour on concrete

Painted together with my girlfriend some years ago ; this place is really inspiring. If you sometimes go from Paris to Orleans by train, you'll probably find where it is!

(Other pictures to be added here)

sdfgh – encrypted notepad: don't trust it, just read its 65 lines of code

Why another lightweight notepad with encryption?

Well, I needed an encrypted notepad for personal notes that has these features:

• Ask a password on startup
• Don't re-ask for the password when saving since we already asked that when opening (except if it's a new file)
• Open-source
• Dark mode colors
• The unencrypted plaintext is never written to disk
• I wanted to be able to read the full source-code before using it, without spending 1 full day on it (so I finally wrote it in a few hours)

Here it is:

https://github.com/josephernest/sdfgh

Labomedia's wiki

The FabLab / hackerspace Labomedia has a great wiki. Here are the latest articles and my (small) contributions.

 

MIDI Quantizer: my one-week journey into the Arduino world to build a MIDI event processor

Day 1: the idea

Sometimes I play and record synthesizer for a song I'm producing, but somes notes here and there are out of rhythm... I wish they had been perfectly in the rhythm out-of-the-box! Indeed, for electronic music based on loops, it can be annoying to have out of sync notes (well I agree that on some tracks, it's cool to have a not-perfect timing that brings "life", but not on all of them).
Of course, you can always use Ableton Live's "Warp" feature to correct the timing of the notes, or alternatively record first in MIDI, MIDI quantize, and then send the quantized MIDI performance back to the synth. But having to stop playing and go to the computer is sometimes not what you would have liked.

Idea: let's build a MIDI device that takes all incoming notes arriving on MIDI IN, quantize them (i.e. align them on a grid based on sync messages, for example a 1/16 notes grid), and send them to the MIDI OUT. All of that, realtime!

Day 2: get some electronic parts

I first needed some electronic parts to do that: a breadboard, an Arduino Nano, some resistors, capacitors, an optocoupler 6N138 (very often used for MIDI circuits) that I still had in my drawers, and a small ATtiny45 chip kindly provided by the cool local Fablab team.

Then I learnt how to do a basic Arduino program (with the usual setup and loop functions) on an Arduino Nano. If you have a Nano clone like me, you'll need to install the drivers (CH34x_Install_Windows_v3_4.zip) to make it work.

The next step is to be able to use the Arduino Nano as a programmer to upload code on a bare ATtiny45 chip. The interesting thing is that you can remove the Nano at the end, and your code will still be running on this small 8-pin standalone 1$ chip! To do that, first open the "Arduino as ISP" sketch in Arduino IDE, and upload it to the Nano. Then connect the ATtiny45 to the Nano using this schematic, use "Programmer: Arduino as ISP", and "Upload using programmer". In real life it takes a few hours to get all these things working, but more or less that's the summary.

Then I assembled a basic well-known MIDI IN and MIDI OUT circuits, routed to the pins of the ATtiny. I wrote some test code to send MIDI messages at 31250 baud and it worked!

An other awesome thing I wasn't even expecting: this device will require no 9V battery, no AA battery, no 9V adapter... Wait, are you saying it will not be powered? The answer is: MIDI powered! The chip consumption is so small that it can be powered by the MIDI IN cable itself (inspiration here), the only component needed for this is a large-enough capacitor, something like 33 µF.

Day 3: it works, now let's make a real PCB of it

Since it works on the breadboard, I decided to learn how to make a PCB that will be eventually manufactured in China (I phoned various local electronic companies in France: nobody produces PCB locally anymore...). For this purpose, I installed Eagle software, discovered how to find components (not easy to find them in the libraries at the beginning) and to do a simple schematic. Then go in "Board" mode and use the "Autorouter" to automatically place components on the board.

A couple of hours later, I sent the board Gerber files to Seeed China who will make the PCB for the crazy price of 5$ (for 10 units, amazing!).

Day 4: work on the code, and discover the software serial madness

Decoding serial port input raw bytes into useful MIDI messages is not as easy as it seems: certain MIDI messages are 1-byte long, some other are 3-byte long, etc. so I spent some time achieveing to do that.

I then discovered that receiving and transmitting bytes on a serial port (MIDI is just serial after all) is not an easy task if you have to do it via software. But wait, why do it via software? Answer: the ATtiny45 does not feature a UART hardware serial, so it's up to the software to do it. All works well when you play only a few notes per second on the keyboard, but things are more difficult if you receive more than 10 MIDI messages per second on the MIDI IN (and this is the case: BeatClock messages used for synchronization use 24 messages per beat): the chip is lost, and the bytes read and sent are ... simply garbage! So I tested various software implementations: NewSoftSerial, NeoSWSerial, AltSoftSerial, etc. but as of today, none of them solved the problem of being able to read and transmit bytes on the serial port at the same time with an ATtiny45, at 31250 baud.

Day 5: let's test with a chip that has a real serial port

I should maybe use a chip that has a real (hardware) serial port. An option would be the ATtiny4313 (20 pins), but I don't have any.

I then tested with an ATmega328p (thanks to Julien!), taken from an Arduino Uno. It works great out-of-the-box: the hardware serial does miracles, and there is no more issues, no more grambled MIDI messages!

Now I wanted to put this ATmega328p standalone on a breadboard, but it stopped working. Reason (discovered a few hours later): this chip was internally configured to use an external crystal clock, that I did not have. So you have to modify its "fuses" to make it work with its internal clock at 8 Mhz. Working again!

Only problem: the PCB that is currently being made at the factory has a slot for a 8-pin ATtiny, and now I need to use a 28-pin ATmega, oops! I'll figure out this later, and I'll use some wires for this v0.0.1 prototype.

Day 6: do nothing

Day 7: PCBs arrive at my door

(after the week-end)

Now the parcel finally arrived, after a long trip from Shenzhen, China.

Let's assemble the components:

(It was a bit difficult to host the 28-pin chip on a PCB made for a 8-pin chip, but anyway... version 0.0.2 won't have these cables anymore).

Surprise, it works!

The "MIDI Quantizer" device is ready to be used :)

Edit: I've now done it with a 20-pin ATtiny4313, so only 1 wire is needed:

I assembled two units, one of them was working straight away, while the second seemed to have difficulties sending MIDI to some synthesizers (some synths reacted with "Illegal Data" message). I suspected the internal 8 Mhz clock to be not perfectly calibrated. So I re-uploaded the code with a internal-1 Mhz clock setting, and then it worked. Might be a good idea to add a crystal oscillator for next version of the PCB.

An improved Launchpad for Ableton Live

The Novation Launchpad is a great controller for Ableton Live, especially because it allows you to play / jam / record without having to look at the computer screen.

Except for one thing: you can play a clip, record a clip, stop a clip... but you cannot delete a clip. This limitation can be annoying, because sometimes when playing with your synth/guitar/whatever you need to record many takes before having the right one, and you also want to be able to immediately delete the bad recordings. Strangely, this was not possible with the Launchpad (now possible with Launchpad Pro, but it is more than twice as expensive).

So here is a "MIDI remote script" (just a little .py file) that you can copy in C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 10 Suite\Resources\MIDI Remote Scripts\Launchpad (for Windows, or the equivalent folder on Mac), that adds this feature to the Launchpad: the bottom right button will be a "delete the currently selected clip" button.

Bonus: this script also transforms the last row of the Launchpad into "stop clip" buttons, which is quite useful.

Download: MainSelectorComponent.py

Enjoy!

PS:

• Don't forget to backup the aforementioned folder before adding this file, so that you can easily remove this extension if necessary.

• You can customize the Launchpad or any other controller as much as you want by editing these "MIDI remote script" Python files!

Void CMS – A lightweight website creation tool

Back in 2014, each time I wanted to start a new project and do a quick webpage, I had to create a Wordpress, create a new database by my hosting provider, edit the Wordpress configuration files about the database, and then navigate in the WP admin panel to create a new page, etc. Not lightweight enough! Also it was impossible to duplicate a whole website in 2 seconds by copying /var/www/wordpress1/ to /var/www/wordpress2/.

For all these reasons, I spent 1 or 2 evenings to juste write my own website creation tool: Void CMS.

100 lines of PHP code, and that's it! It works for both static websites and blog articles. Five years later, I still use it for a few projects of mine.

How do you write articles with it? Just open your favourite text editor, write a page (using Markdown syntax) and save it as a .txt file like /page/example.txt or /article/01.txt:

TITLE:Example

#Example page

This is a nearly empty page.

Do you want to get the latest news? The [blog](blog) is here!

You can try it here: Void CMS.

Joseph83 & 2Things - Smile (They Said)

Here is a song I composed and produced in London with the songwriter and singer Natalie Mitchell.

"The songs about
people hurting u
but just pretend to be happy
and it may work just smile."

Available on Spotify.

Here is the music video: