Thursday 30 January 2020

MIDI Clock Sync Labels

One of the things that was lurking at the back of my mind whilst I was looking at connecting the Novation Circuit to the Novation Circuit Mono Station was some way of highlighting the way that the 3.5mm TRS sockets are wired up. I have other equipment that also uses 3.5mm TRS-to-MIDI adapters, and not all of them are the same - there are two different ways of connecting that little socket in common usage (and more if you try hard, but please just don't!).

Which got me thinking - and here's the result:



Yep, two different sticky vinyl labels that can be stuck to the underside of equipment, or stuck to a luggage tag and attached to the piece of equipment (now that's an interesting tip). Of course, you will need to check the way that the sockets are wired up - I couldn't find any way to make a sticky vinyl label that is that smart!

To save you some of the hassle of finding sticky paper (or better, vinyl), printing onto it and then cutting out the labels, I have used one of those on-line drop-ship companies to do most of that for you! Unfortunately, the die-cutting only cuts out part of the sticky vinyl labels, so you will need to do some work with a pair of scissors. Unlike most other things from this blog (but like everything on my store), I'm afraid that you have to buy these labels.

My store is here: https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/synthesizerwriters-store

The store also has some 'statement' T-shirts, plus another die-cut vinyl sticker for labelling those sockets that are hidden away on the back of equipment. More cutting is required - sorry. I'm hoping that eventually the people who do the die-cut stickers will find a way of improving the cutting out...

In use...

Echoing back to a previous post, here are the labels in use on my 'non-RP54' Novation Circuit and Mono Station:



These are prototypes, and I will do some photos of the real things very soon.

Vinyl!

The vinyl labels arrived in the post from the USA today! The labels come in pairs, so there are two of each type on a single 5 inch x 5 inch (yep, imperial measurements) square. As I mentioned, the algorithm that does the cutting out is designed for a single vinyl sticker, not four separate ones, and so it tends to just fill in the centre section between the labels:


Here's me making a mess of cutting out a label with a pair of scissors!


And I'm now wondering what I can do with the bits of sticky-black white vinyl that are left over...


Update - June 2020

There was an error in my store! It should be fixed now. In the meantime, I have updated the design of the labels to use up the white space. You now get 12 labels in 3 sizes, including some tiny ones intended for the top of devices.



The 'tiny' labels mean that you can quickly connect up devices by matching green out to green in, or yellow out to yellow in, using the same TRS MIDI cable in each case. The screenshot above is the prototype of the revised version. 
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