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ON THE PCB
Lift the lid off your Altura’s acrylic case, or open the top of your card stock case, and take a look inside.
1. BATTERY HOLDER
Use a high-quality 9v DC alkaline battery, like Energizer. Do not waste your money on cheap batteries!
You will regret it. Insert the battery into the holder, and push down to snap the battery into place. You
may need to use a small screwdriver as a shoe horn to coax the battery into place.
As the battery drains, the ON LED will grow dimmer and the Altura MkII may behave unpredictably.
You are not likely to damage anything, but it simply won’t work well. Replace the battery!
Plugging in a 9v DC power supply will disconnect the battery. It’s okay to leave the battery installed
while using an external power supply. The only concern is if you forget the battery is there and years go
by. Eventually the battery will leak acid all over your Altura MkII, and this could damage or destroy it.
2. ISP HEADER
On the PCB to the right of the 3-digit display there is a
cluster of six pins. This is the In-System Programmer (ISP)
header. This is the data port you use to communicate with
the microcontroller that runs the Altura MkII. To make use of
it, you need a little device called a programmer. This is a
little circuit board with cables thaat connects a USB port on
your computer to the ISP header. Pin 1 of the header is the
bottom right pin; look for a tiny white dot on the PCB. (This
is upside-down compared to how ISP headers are typically arranged.) The socket on your programmer
will have an indicator on one corner, or a stripe on one wire, to indicate pin 1. Be sure to attach
your programmer to the header correctly! When installed correctly, the Altura’s LED and display will
illuminate.
We used a USB-Tiny clone programmer to develop the Altura MkII. Zeppelin Design Labs offers this
programmer as an accessory. If you obtain a programmer from another source such as Sparkfun or
Adafruit, be sure it is a USB-Tiny. Some users have had trouble with other types of programmers, such
as Arduino boards. How to use the programmer is covered in the section “Programming the Altura”.
3. ARTICULATION ADjUST
We developed the Articulation feature to improve the stability and playability of the Altura MkII.
Since your hand is a floppy, squashy thing, the Altura can have a hard time figuring out where it is
exactly. We use a few data processing tricks to distinguish signal from noise and stabilize the Altura’s
performance. One of these tricks is to simply increase the minimum allowable time between notes. We
call this adjustment “articulation”. Low articulation values (below about 25) mean faster response: the
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