My summer building break is over (late, but it started late too). I’ve built, technically, two new modules, though one is hardly enough to merit the title.

Power Display

I’ve built one power display module (just a couple LEDs and test points) for each of my bus boards, but I decided to do a new version to replace at least one of them. This one adds a power header on the front panel — to make it easier to power modules that are being tested or undergoing troubleshooting.

Front view of a narrow black module in Kosmo format. There are two LEDs and three test points labeled GND, +12V, and -12V. The LEDs are illuminated. Near the bottom is a Eurorack style power header.

Power Display (version 2)

Rather than having a little PCB behind the panel, the panel is the PCB. The “inside” power header is surface mount as are the LED resistors. The LEDs are “through hole” but I bent the leads to solder them to surface pads. The “outside” power header is through hole.

Back view of a narrow black module in Kosmo format. There are two through hole LEDs soldered to surface pads, and two tiny SMD resistors. Two Eurorack style power headers are visible, a surface mount one on this side and the pins of a through hole one mounted on the other side.

Power Display (version 2), rear view

Exposed voltages on the front panel?

Close up of bottom of power display module, now mounted in a case. There is an IDC connector covering the header, with a piece of string securing it to the module's mounting screw.

Power Display (version 2) protective measures

I’m no fool.

I mean, not always.

Kassutronics Slope

I bought a PCB set for the Kassutronics Slope module a while back — two PCBs, one for board mounted panel components and one for the main circuitry. Eurorack, of course. Then I spent some time trying to figure out if it would be less of a pain to design a Kosmo-appopriate PCB to replace the original panel components board — or, rather, two of them, one for the jacks and one for the pots and switch — or just to panel mount everything and wire it to the main PCB. And then Ben Rufenacht on the LMNC Discourse dropped his Kosmo version of the module. Normally I’d hesitate to use a copy of a commercially available design, unless it was to make more serious changes than just converting to Kosmo, but I’d already bought and paid for the PCB so I figure it’s all good. I just had to restyle the front panel… and make a few little tweaks on the PCB.

Front view of a 10 cm wide module in Kosmo format. It has seven knobs arranged in a hexagon, seven jacks, and a toggle switch.

Kassutronics Slope

This is a slew limiter module, or at least that’s part of what it does. But you can also put in a gate and get an ADSR envelope — with voltage controlled rise and fall times, though the fall time is the same for both the decay and release, and separately variable rise and fall shapes. Or you can put it in loop mode and it’ll retrigger itself, similarly to my version of the Kassutronics Precision ADSR, for a sort of LFO behavior.

Git

There are Git repositories for both modules:

<– 2023-10-24_less-droopy-yash — 2023-11-04_and-design-draft –>