We are now taking orders for the Teabox and our various sensors. You can find more info at: http://www.electrotap.com/teabox/ and http://www.electrotap.com/sensors/

We will also be presenting the Teabox on Paper Session 12: Interactive Systems at ICMC next week. We will have a limited number of Teaboxes and sensors with us for sale – if you are going, please be sure to say hi!

One of the biggest challenges for us in designing the Teabox was trying to figure out what do for the chassis / enclosure for the unit. I thought I would post a little bit of info about that here.

Our enclosure for the Teabox is manufactured by Bud Industries. We began with a stock unit of thiers, then supplied drawing specifying the modifications to the dimensions as well as the holes we wanted and the silkscreen we wanted for the front and back panels.

A friend of my father’s is starting a business on the side building a high-end antenna rotator controller (digital display, presets, computer interface, etc.) for ham radio towers. He is using a company called TenTec. They will make you a “1st piece” sample for free.

Another place to look is here. You can probably get a nice box made by these guys for $30 to $40 (in quantity) including the front and back panel, holes, paint and silk screening. If done right (down the road) you can slide the board into the grooves in the extruded sides of this enclosure, simplifying PCB mounting.

We’ve had our cables and adapters in the system for a few weeks now, but we haven’t had the order pages up on the site. We’ve put together those pages now. To take a look at what we’ve added, go to http://www.electrotap.com/cables/.

Cheers

Our initial array of sensor technical specifications are now up on the site. Go to http://www.electrotap.com/sensors/ to check out our first offerings. We will start accepting pre-orders next week, and will be shipping November 10. That should also give us some time to get more info about the sensors online.

Enjoy!

We are getting very close to the release of the Teabox! We have several units ready to go now, and will be taking pre-orders starting early next week (shipping will begin on November 10). Below is a picture of a Teabox.

I thought I would also include a picture of a unit in action. The picture below is a Teabox that is being tested. It is sitting on top of my RME Hammerfall Multiface. If you are interested in seeing one, I will be at the AES show next week and ICMC the week after that. We will also have some Teaboxes for sale at those conferences – so if you want to have one in your hands before November 10, that’s the way to get it. Just drop a line if you are interested.

A few interesting items have floated my way this past weekend.

The first: A site that details a project that farms out audio processing tasks to run on a graphics card. This is really quite amazing! http://www.bionicfx.com/

A stunning new interactive control surface has been announced. There are some really nice pics and demo movies. This thing isn’t going to be cheap – but wow! http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php

Some objects for MSP that look promising (I haven’t tried them yet) have been talked about on the Max list. I’m hoping to check them out soon. http://www.mshparisnord.org/cicm/dl_en.htm

Yesterday we received the completed production circuit boards for the Teabox. We have spot checked a few units and they work flawlessly – better than the test units we were building by hand. Needless to say that yesterday was a pretty exciting day…

A year ago, my wife and I were taking the trip across Norway to get from Oslo to Bergen. In Oslo I was presenting as a part of the Ultima Festival. Then I was in Bergen for a workshop/lectures.

We took the train west from Oslo up into the mountains, and then switched trains to take another down the steep slope into Flåm. It was spectacular. We then took a boat through some fjords before taking bus back up to catch another train for the trip into Bergen, where Trond met us.

We have hit a snag with the Teabox. While we haven’t publicly announced the release date (in case there were problems, which now there are), it was supposed to have been within the next two weeks. This would coincide with an announcement at the AES convention and ICMC in the next couple of weeks. The problem, unfortunately, is that one of our suppliers has informed us that they are way behind schedule.

This puts us in a very awkward position, and we have written letter to them to try and find some way to resolve the situation. I’m considering posting the contents of that letter here, but I’m going to wait a couple of days before deciding whether or not to do so.

In the meantime, we should be making our sensors available very soon. Stay tuned…

Chris O’Shea has a really interesing site @ pixelsumo.com. His most recent blog entry talks a little about the Teabox. Look under his “projects” menu for some pretty cool stuff!