DIY Monome Teletype Part 1: Build Diary #13

I’ve never had a reason to get one of these things, so thank the Sky-Lord for this DIY Monome Teletype build diary.

What’s Teletype, precious? Check it:

HOW COOL IS THAT!? IT’S LIKE FALLOUT MEETS CODING MEETS EURORACK.

So it’s either the coolest thing you’ve ever seen, or something that just looks like work.

And while I fall (clearly) into the “it is unreal cool” camp, it really is one of those modules that I just don’t need, at all. But then, those sick puppies over at Monome decided to go completely open source with the hardware. And before you know it, some beautiful green PCBs arrive at my front door.

Teletype Panel and PCB
Well actually I goofed up and shipped them to my parents place, then they shipped it to me, THEN it arrived at my front door.

Now that my need for the Teletype has been supplanted by my desire to put one together, let us begin… DIY Monome Teletype time!

DIY Monome Teletype first ICs
I started with the simpler to solder ICs, get my fingers ready for the converters and the MCU

Very nice hardware design to my untrained eyes. Resistor arrays are always a fun thing to see, but 0402 footprint components are NOT. We’ll get those soldered in a bit, but after I got the OP amps in, it was time to give the converters some love.

Soldering the DAC on Teletype
Isn't it cool when everything tucks under the OLED? Aren't DACs a pain to solder? So many questions, so little caption space.

After getting the converters and MCU soldered, I turned to the 0402 passives. They aren’t the simplest to solder by hand. It also isn’t easy to fit the 0603 sized components your fat fingers ordered by mistake on the 0402 pads… So we had to jump back on Mouser and re-order the 100n caps in an 0402 package.

And I figured, while I wait for the Mouser-Man to deliver my new caps, why not solder the rest of the properly purchased 0402 components? Great thinking. Then we hit the final two 49ohm caps in front of the USB port and…of course they are 0603. And of course I already ordered my Mouser cart without any 0402 49ohm resistors.

Rather than ordering the part and patiently waiting for it to arrive, I did what any self respecting DIYer would do, and I forced the 0603 components onto the 0402 pads. A little solder paste and a can do attitude will get you a long way in the Hack-DIY game.

0603 Component on 0402 Pad
You can see on the "C7" pad the difference between an 0603 resistor, and the pad I needed it to fit on.

They actually fit on the smaller pads much better than I expected, although there was no chance of me going through that process for all the other 100n resistors. So, I gave the board a nice wipe down with some IPA, and now we wait for the Mouser-Man!

Cleaned Monome Teletype DIY Halfway Complete
"R44" and "R43" don't look so bad, do they?

And that is where we are going to leave it for this week! The Mouser-Man should be here Monday or Tuesday, and I will have this thing typing by the weekend.

Small Stack of Parts Left
A small stack of parts left, a killer cross-stitch to watch over them, THX BB.

Thanks for reading! Why don’t you got look at my DIY 4MS SMR Build Diary while you wait for Part 2 of this Teletype build? Or check out the second part of my 16n Faderbank build diary? So much good stuff. Or like a decent amount of mediocre stuff? Anyways.

Quick Links

Monome Teletype

Software Git

Hardware Git

Mouser Cart – No Jacks, White OLED  (everything is proper in this cart, I fixed the mistakes I made) Don’t trust this cart without looking through the parts first. Mouser seems to be swapping parts on me, thanks for spotting that Bas!

 

Check out part 2 of this build diary here! The finale!! 😮

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Gerald

    R43 and R44 are missing in the main BOM, what are they.?

    1. stevetravale

      Thanks for reading! They are pull-up resistors on the USB lines, I ended up having to force 0603 sized resistors in there because the main BOM was missing them.

  2. Bas

    hi! i see a lot of 1000pf caps in your bom, but no 100n. did you solder the 1000pf’s instead?
    Thanks!

  3. crucFX

    What value for the Potentiometer?
    Is it an encoder or a normal pot?
    A buddy just gave me a board an panel!

    Can’t seem to find the pot value anywhere lol

    1. stevetravale

      10k Alpha pot! Something like this link here.

        Good luck on your build 🙂

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