A hardware Patch Librarian for synths and midi controllers, arpeggiator, sequencer, chord generator, midi LFO, message monitor, controller, scale generator, patch morpher and completely hackable.
Hi everyone, I've made a short project update video - please do watch if you have the time.
In the video I speak about the goblin wizard, new website, shipping and budgeting, as well as the future!
A pretty big system is now in place that allows for MIDI Goblins to be created, but in order to continue this as an ongoing work effort rather than a simple project I'll have to work harder on trying to actually....profit from selling MIDI Goblins.
Despite raising over $20,000 on Kickstarter - I definitely priced the Kickstarter units too low ....In fact, I will end up losing a pretty good chunk of change on the initial 193 units sold through Kickstarter - DARNIT!
Not to say the Kickstarter run was a total loss, or that I'll be in financial peril as a result of the Kickstarter campaign - quite the opposite - that initial amount raised covered vast majority of the start-up costs. There were a lot of unexpected costs though that are un-avoidable and I will personally lose a bit of money to get those first units out the door - it'll be worth it though.
Thankfully the Backerkit sales are quickly evening things out. The Backerkit prices are a bit higher than the Kickstarter prices were and selling a couple dozen more units through Backerkit should actually put the project as a whole into profit territory so a huge thank you to both the Kickstarter and Backerkit backers - also please spread the word if you can. Even a simple share on social media can go a long way. I'm doing my best to keep the prices of MIDI Goblin down so everyone can afford them and the best way to do that, is to sell a whole lot of em'
As for shipping - I am still estimating late November - early December for when shipping will begin. There's a ton of work to be done still and Its hard to anticipate delays with a project like this. I will try to keep everyone updated a bit more consistently here and on my instagram - especially if I can foresee some sort of delay - but rest assured I'm working hard to create the Goblins, the ball is rolling and they're going to be pretty dang cool!
-Andrew
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Hi everyone. This isn't a full demonstration but just a tiny little preview. I hope 106 and DX-7 users find this useful...
Dear Kickstarter backers - I have some bad news. The expected MIDI Goblin shipping date will (likely) be pushed back until late November/early December - but - this update isn't just going to be bad news.
First - the bad news: Despite my best efforts, there have been a couple significant setbacks this week which seem like they're going to impact the shipping date of MIDI Goblin.
1. Out of stock component: The manufacturer of the MIDI Goblin's PCB (printed circuit board) is out of a vital, surface mount component....rather than waiting multiple months for them to have the part back in stock, ill be attempting to source the part from a different supplier and installing each one by hand.
This will likely distract me from being able to perform other important tasks such creating thorough documentation the the device itself, overhauling and preparing the Midi Goblin firmware for its release, updating the website and creating high-quality demonstration/instructional videos of midi goblin's various apps..I do intend to continue to work on these things - in fact, I have more things I intend to add - but this missing-component issue is a pretty big setback.
2. Unexpected fees - this was a bit of a team effort as I did not predict the correct amount of the enclosure import fees, and a representative at the enclosure manufacturer was under the impression there would be no import fee at all - We were both wrong!
There were also many unexpected fees associated with prototyping the MIDI Goblin PCB and enclosure. Ordering new screens, modifying the enclosure, redesigning the PCB and basically rewriting all of the code to work with the new hardware ate up a lot of resources but the result is a better device so it was worth it. I will likely have to personally take on some contract work to offset these unexpected costs which will also cut into MIDI Goblin production time.
Typically electronic devices like MIDI Goblin take a long time to develop. Many electronics projects on Kickstarter give themselves generous timelines for their expected release date. Its not uncommon for it to take up to a year before backers receive the thing they backed.
Had I priced MIDI Goblin higher, made no improvements and set the expected shipping date for next July - there would be no missing component issue, the screen would be smaller, I'd probably have made a hefty profit and I think everyone would be kind of disappointed in MIDI Goblin. I do greatly apologize for setting expectations incorrectly with the shipping date but it was exactly that - an expected shipping date. I will try to have midi goblins ship as close to it as possible but - more time is needed to ensure you receive a finished product.
Now for some good news - Sysex commands. I've added the ability to send individual sysex commands. Ill have to go into more detail on this in the future but, this is a pretty major update. Having the ability to send a sysex command to certain synths allows you to do things you can't normally do with standard midi messages...it could potentially allow vintage analog synths like the juno 106 to use the midi goblin's arpeggiator...I will experiment with this more as I wait for the missing components to arrive. In theory this could lead to sysex patch storage capabilities and remapping sysex parameter value messages to cc or vice versa - quite useful...but for now, you can send individual sysex messages - cool!
You can now also save settings for each individual synth you have added to midi goblin. A separate settings file is created for each device you add to your Goblin now, so if you have one synth that uses certain channels, you don't have to worry about manually setting them when you restart your Goblin. App parameters like the arpeggiators tempo, arp notes length, the default sequence length are also saved in this settings file too so if you like the way you have things set up for your synth - you can save it now without effecting other devices added to MIDI Goblin.
Also a small arpeggiator improvement: you can now control the velocity of notes that are being arpeggiated - sweet!