Hello again from the workbench.

What’s been going on since last time?

Firstly, we restocked at Thonk; we’d run out of UtiLFOs and stocks of other tiles were running low. So I did a second run, sitting in the basement bagging, and now our stocks are replenished. Good.

The prototypes I mentioned in Foxnotes #1 march on. I revealed some glimpses of them over at Instagram.

FOX006 is revealed to be called Auricula; I’ve made one minor change to the board, built up a BOM, and once I’m happy with the build that should arrive in the next week or two, that one can be taken into production.

FOX007 is called Phones, and it’s pretty obvious what it’s going to be. I’ve got a BOM built up for that too, and a really nice panel design; I’m just finalising the panel layout and investigating different options for the large jack on it.

FOX008 has had me erring back and forth. Is it too complex? Is it just right? It’s our most crowded tile to date (and likely ever) and it’s gone through a couple more iterations; I’ve got the latest arriving shortly. It’s acquired the name Thorn along with a panel design. What I do know is that this is a tile I frequently reach for, and that makes me want to keep using it.

I’ve also broken ground on something we should call FOX010 for now: a digital 3U module, built around an ARM chip. I’ve been coding up a version of this and learning a whole stack about embedded development beyond the land of *duino; it’s equal parts fun and frustrating.

So, you know, not a lot to show just yet, but lots of things marching forwards. I think it’s unlikely this batch of tiles will be out in 2017, but I’m hoping I can release them in early 2018; Auricula and Phones should be available at similar times; it’s unclear whether Thorn will make the cut as well.

And that’s it for this time. It’s been great seeing people happy with their tiles and enjoying building them; let us know if you’re enjoying yours.

Happy music making.