Today we announced our new product, Builder. Builder is a series of DIY parts and components created to assist musicians, artists, makers, hackers, or anyone looking to make their own MIDI controllers. I am particularly excited about this product because it is something we have been planning to do since we first started Livid in 2004. Before starting Livid I was just an artist with ideas on creating alternative interfaces, but I had zero experience with electronics and building. I started tinkering in college, creating multimedia installations with sensors and other physical controls using a DIY serial I/O board and Macromedia Director. I moved into MIDI when I created the 3rd version of the Viditar using Max/MSP, and that opened a lot of possibilities to work with other software and hardware. I could never really find a simple and easy way to connect components and parts together (well never a way that agreed with my wallet) so I would hack together parts from other controllers, keyboards, and electronics. I was also looking for something that would allow me to experiment with different controls but never had the resources to easily tinker.

Fast forward to 2007. We create the first Ohm with a board we intended to release as a DIY MIDI board but never released it as a standalone product. We were too busy with making our own products and never had the parts to spare. I also thought at the time that it still wasn’t easy enough to use, so we delayed the DIY project as we built up our production shop. Over the last few years we designed our MIDI boards we use in our second generation products (ohm64, block) with the intention of releasing it as a standalone MIDI Brain. At the same time we built our manufacturing shop out and added circuit board assembly machine, cnc machines, and an assembly line with talented like minded makers. I realized that we finally have the resources to create on demand products and that we needed to share these resources with the DIY community to make our Builder line easy to use and versatile.

So here is the fruit of these efforts… Livid Builder, centered around the Brain, a class-compliant, bi-directional, USB-powered MIDI device, and the BYOB (Build Your Own Board), a series of perforated modular circuit boards for buttons, knobs, sliders, and LEDs. Here is a brief overview of the products in video (which is part of our Quick Startguide for beginners).

We also sell various parts and components such as our rubber keypads, faders, and materials needed to create your own controller. More info can be found here. Happy building!

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