Sebiik’s Ksoloti core has made it to Thonk.
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cool… looks interesting.
for easy reference,
here is the comparison sheet against Axoloti
what’s nice about this is, its more focused on DIY… though, that also means its only useful to those wanting to yield a soldering iron 
(as there are no audio jacks on board)
I’m a bit surprised they didn’t take the opportunity to upgrade the processor, or add more sdram.
though, this approach means they didn’t need to update/re-write the firmware, so much less dev effort, and means broader compatibility. its nice to see the move to usb-c !
~75 gbp not bad price, don’t know how easy it is for them to ship to EU.
anyway, good news… sounds like (for now) solves the hardware availability issue (for some), but doesn’t look like they putting effort into the software (understandably) as they are still using the 1.0.12 build from axoloti.
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nice… (though showing as out of stock, and 176gbp + vat is pretty steep)
I tried for a long time to get Johannes to release his equivalent of this, as I thought having a ‘standard’ form factor could really push Axoloti to a new user base…
so its really nice to see some one do it.
also I see they have a eurorack module too
https://ksoloti.github.io/7-big_genes.html
I also tried to persuade Johannes to do a eurorack version, as a bit of a ‘cash cow’ to help fund the diy board, which is hard to make a profit on… at the price he wanted to sell at.
it would be so cool to see these two as finished products, or at least a full diy kit.
could give it a new lease of life.
in fairness, Johannes was very much into the ‘maker’ community, so he wanted axoloti to be an affordable diy product…something like a music focused Arduino.
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The Ksoloti stuff seems to drift in and out of stock fairy regularly, but I expect they’ll be back soon. There’s also the new K Control Mini.
https://www.thonk.co.uk/shop/alt-circuits-k-control-mini/
I guess these are kind of like the Daisy Field and Daisy Pod of the Electrosmith range. Sebastian seems to have done a remarkable job in pulling all this together and continuing Johannes’ work.
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cool, a few variations is good…
I feel daisy is a bit of a different target audience, more low level…
whereas axoloti is attempting to do programming Nord modular style.
(though, theres overlap in many of these products esp. if you consider libpd etc)
have to say, in fairness I’ve moved on to other projects.
so, honestly, not really that interested in Ksoloti now.
mostly my regret is that this didn’t happen (collab with Johannes?) around first couple of years of axoloti, as now its really lost most of the momentum from the (former) community.
but as I said above, I do wish it has alot of success, it’d be nice to see something come from axoloti.
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Cheers. Thanks thetechnobear for your previous work on Axoloti, if I am not mistaken you did the MPE subpatch code back then? I have recently reworked it and I could see you left some placeholders for future fleshing-out of MIDI channel handling and MPE zone stuff!
As to funding and going commercial, it is not really my aim as I do this in my free time. Not losing any money doing my hobby is a plus, pun intended.
I’d be happy to see more patches and objects coming up at some point when there are more people using Axoloti/Ksoloti! So to me, “success” is already happening as more people are playing around with the platform.
The Euro module is coming along nicely, I’ll be receiving the final(?) revision prototype in a few days.
I did upgrade the SDRAM to 32 MB and while I did not bother upgrading the STM32F4 (and other MCUs weren’t even available until very recently) the package I chose makes them pin-to-pin compatible so I do have a few experimental boards with STM32F767 and STM32H743 on them. It might be easy to port the Akso firmware to H743 Ksoloti one day, or continue from v1.0.12. The main point is to stay compatible with the existing patches and objects.
But back to MPE, Axoloti was quite an ideal little companion for MPE so I do care a lot about MPE functionality.
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hey @Ksoloti , nice to see you here
congratulations on your work on the Ksoloti, as I mentioned above, its great to see its continued development.
yeah, I did the MPE stuff before the standards was actually ratified… and it was still in a state of flux - particular the zone side.
(amusingly, in midi 2.0 the zone side will change to a form that existed in the earlier mpe proposal)
indeed, mpe works really well with axoloti… and was why I got involved very early on.
so you are using 1.0.12 as a basis? I think this is a wise move…
(iirc, this was the last stable release before some dubious changes were made, that, imho, destabilised the whole project…which is why I decide to get less involved)
I’ll be interested to see how your eurorack module goes… as I mentioned above, I do think this is an area that is ‘untapped’.
also, my involvement with Percussa means I do have quite a lot of ‘thoughts’ in this area virtual modular are ‘effective’ , and how that relates to axoloti 
anyway, feel free to DM me, if you want a chat about any of this stuff…
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Yes it seemed like anything beyond 1.0.12-2 was far beta… and i dare include Akso in that too.
I am not too concerned about getting new features in ASAP to the next level as Axoloti used to, I’d rather spend some time to polish up what we have and get some good patches and documentation done.
About the Euro module, its super nice that this would basically bring MPE (and so much more) to Euroland.
What plan does this forum work on by the way?
I got a Ksoloti Discourse open source forum thing approved from their staff but they shut it down quite soon due to no activity…
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we are very fortunate that the guys behind GigPerformer have given us a virtual server on one of their hosts.
unfortunately, Ive had those kind of issues with open source projects in the past…
many dev companies will support open source projects with ‘free’ resources, but they’ll require a certain amount of activity on the project.
it’s kind of understandable, as there are so many stale/inactive open source projects, or ones that never really reach any level of ‘maturity’.
however, it does make it very difficult on smaller projects, with a more niche community. 
all that said, if you are not getting a certain level of ‘participation’ on a forum, its probably better to just post somewhere else with a bit more ‘visibility’.
… or, perhaps you might be better off with Discord? its not great for archiving information, but small scale its ok… that alongside a wiki (host on GitHub) could work well?!
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A mailing list works better for low volume traffic. IRC can also work. If you want to self-host, I can provide technical support, but that mostly depends on what you are aiming to deploy.
Thanks for the suggestions! At first I was hoping to recreate the Axoloti Community Forum on Doscord, perhaps even import the old content as read only or so. Now we have a slightly messy copy here and the combination of Discord and a Github page is in fact what I’ve been doing now.
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In fact I just thought of something. Maybe keep it public here so others who have knowledge can chime in? I believe I read on the old Axo forum that there was a branch with USB hub functionality working, were you involved in that? Was that for version 2 only?
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we need to keep the focus here on expressive instruments/controllers, as this is the communities focus.
ofc, its totally ok (and why we have this topic) to have posts about things that are used with expressive controllers (eg. support mpe), but Id not want to start hosting sub-forums that are not specific to this domain. ( *)
you remember correctly… this was played with on the experimental branch, for the OG axoloti.
unfortunately, as I remember it, this required a new version of Chibios, and that in itself open up a whole can of worms.
also… like a lot of these changes, it got mixed in with all the other changes… so it’s probably not a set of changes that could be easily separated from the ‘rest’.
this was kind of the problem post 1.0.12, a lack of focus, attempting to do too many things at once, meaning the whole foundation became very shaky.
if you are really willing to put a significant effort into software development, it would be an interesting ‘question’ , as to if its better to restart from 1.0.12, or attempt to salvage things from the later code base (we did do some important changes in there)
… if you are thinking of doing this, Id highly recommend, you spend a good chunk of time, researching and check the codebases before determining a strategy, its not clearcut by any means, and its a big undertaking either way… but doing so, will probably save some pain - and also give a clearer idea what you are getting yourself into
Personally… I do have another completely different idea for axoloti, that perhaps I might explore when you get to release the eurorack version AND if I get some time.
(though, honestly, thats at least 3 months out for me… )
( *) perhaps thats a bit of a confusing distinction (if we look at the ‘tech side’)?
however, look at the ‘community’ aspects its perhaps clearer.
the community here are all interested in expressive controllers/instruments.
Id not want to ‘extend’ that to those that have no/little interest in this area… i.e. broadening it to ‘just’ music tech… I think there are plenty of other sites that do this.
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Got it, no worries. You’re right about things getting too technical and too Ksoloti here, haven’t thought about it. Thanks for answering anyway!
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Great to see this project got off the ground!
Atm I see the ksoloti is sold out at thonk, are these getting restocked every once in a while or will availibility stop at some point (or already)?
I love that you’ve enlarged the SDram, this enables me to work out some module ideas that needed more SDram to actually be useful (eg. multi-track sampling&looping&mixing and larger multi-dimensional fft/wavetable morphing).
Along with technobear, I would love to see an upgrade of the cpu as some of my fft-projects definitely need some more of it to become useful for something else other then a single lonely fft-oscillator voice.
I often hit the max júst before I finished all the wanted functions.
I also want to add that it would be really nice to have a cv/gate expansion module (or just a board for diy) that works over i2c and could be connected through the back of the modules.
So this would be boards with onboard voltage protection for eurorack levels for CV-inputs or CV-outputs between -5 and +5 or 0-10, that would have simple programs on them to either send or receive cv-data over i2c (with dedicated modules for it in the patcher to receive/send these messages).
Such a board might very well also be used with other boards that can use i2c, giving it a broader audience then only the ksoloti-users.
Hi sss, I am familiar wth your objects but did you happen to code a 12-bit (or retro-type) reverb at some point? I believe I heard some demo on the old forum and loved it, but I never found the thread or link again.
Cores and Gills kits just got restocked and the Cores sold out this weekend. Restocking as we speak. Thonk will also soon carry the related Eurorack module kit called Big Genes, if you’re into Eurorack CV stuff.
So would I. It’s definitely on the list but for that to happen a few smaller steps need to be taken and I try to put stability first. The faster MCUs weren’t even available since the pandemic until few months ago. Now they’re almost the same price like the original STM32F4…
Anyway, trying to learn from the challenges Axoloti and Akso were facing!
There’s the Ksoloti Gills CV expander board that creates bipolar 12V from Ax/Ksoloti’s 5V and has two modular level CV outputs as you describe. It connects directly to pins PA4 and PA5 set up as DAC. No gates however due to space constraints.
Though a board with lots of cv and gate i/o (probably via I2C as you suggest) isn’t a bad idea! What exactly do you mean by “connected through the back of the modules”?
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Though a board with lots of cv and gate i/o (probably via I2C as you suggest) isn’t a bad idea! What exactly do you mean by “connected through the back of the modules”?
I’m indeed into eurorack, so from there I was thinking that it would be a nice accompanying module to add more CV in/out without the need of using the pins on the ksoloti board itself. Then just use an i2c connector at the back of the modules, so they can communicate together. And using i2c would allow users to also use it for the daisy board and others as well, giving you a larger user-base then only axoloti/ksoloti users (as long as they can code a board themselves so they can handle the exact i2c messages that it’s sending).
did you happen to code a 12-bit (or retro-type) reverb at some point? I believe I heard some demo on the old forum and loved it, but I never found the thread or link again.
Probably did something like it once, but I think it was an 8-bit reverb in that case. But I’m not sure whether I’m able to find it back, as it might be hiding in some project that has a different name (like a patch that started out as a new oscillator after which I added effects and stuff). Looking at my fx/delay folders, I don’t see anything about an 8-bit reverb…
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I’m starting to think it might have been about some 8-bit fft oscillator that álso featured a reverb, but I’m not sure whether the reverb itself was 8-bit. OR it was an 8-bit delay… I do have a project with that name…
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Sounds like a job for the expansion header of the Big Genes Eurorack module. It carries all sorts of power, I2C and SPI pins (and a free GPIO/ADC pin) so you could make an expander module with gates, CV, additional button matrix or whatever you (or the designer) have in mind.
Page 12 of the schematic. Note that the header is 1.27mm pitch.
Though I am guessing you mean a more Eurorack-independent design? I am more following a sort of “if modular, then all the way” philosophy, meaning also the audio i/o levels should be scaled, and so on.
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