#vcas

I'm using ~1.5mm sheet aluminum here, with the labeling put on with a full-sheet printed sticker, then covered with a sheet of cold laminating film to protect it. To cut the panel out of the aluminum sheet, I used the tool you see in the second photo, called a nibbler. To use it, you put the edge of the sheet material into the gap between the bit on the top and the flat anvil, and squeeze the handles together. This takes a bite — well, no, a literal nibble — out of the sheet, about 6mm wide by 2mm deep. So you get nicely square edges, as you can see in the first image, but it's a very long and laborious process. They do make nibbler bits that go onto electric drills, automating some of the process, and I think I'll try to get one of those before taking on this scale of project again, because it really does tear your hands up. I'm pretty sure the web between my thumb and forefinger is going to bruise.

David Haillant, a few days ago, posted the circuit for a module he titled the "Simple VCA". And it really is. A voltage controlled amplifier with three signal inputs (all mixed together at unity gain), a pot and a CV input to control the amplitude of the amp, and an output, it'll handle audio or CV signals and uses just one chip, an LM13700 dual transconductance amplifier. His version is a little slimmer, with a knob; my version has a big slider pot for the simple reason that it was the first panel-mountable potentiometer of the appropriate value I could find in my parts bin.

A VCA is essentially a volume knob that you can control with other devices. I'd built a couple of more rudimentary versions — low pass gates and the IamO jfet device — but they both have two problems. First, they can't actually amplify; they're kind of like a volume control you can only turn down. More pressingly, they each color the sound going through them, subtracting or adding harmonics. This one is a clean amplifier.

The circuit is built around one of Kristian Blasol's P-0+o (pronounced "proto") boards. Blasol did the YouTube series "Modular in a Week" that's been a big inspiration to me, and the boards provide a lot of the prototyping niceties that really help in a build like this, such as three easily accessible power buses down the center. That said, the particular jacks I used for this build worked less well with it than I'd hoped, and I had to do some manual routing of things I'd hoped would be taken care of. I'll have to see what else can be done going forward.

Verimatrix, formerly known as Inside Secure, and Broadcom announced a new collaboration to streamline Android TV set-top box (STB) deployments. By pre-integrating components of the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS™) with Broadcom’s Android TV Platform, the partners offer a fast time-to-market for any video service provider looking to launch Android TV streaming, including 4K/UHD…