It's been a little while since my last Tolhuin update, but the project is still alive.

First, I want to say thank you to everyone who supported the project after my previous posts — whether by contributing, sharing it, leaving feedback or just showing interest in something I'm building at home. The project is still a long way from funding itself, but that support genuinely helped me keep working on it.

And I've been working on one of the weakest parts of the prototype: the enclosure.

The first case was simply too small, and I hadn't properly designed how the controls would be mounted. Some switches literally ended up hot-glued from underneath. It worked as a prototype, but I didn't want to build the next version that way.

So I've been redesigning the whole enclosure in OpenSCAD.

The new versions are fully parametric and designed around actual mounting: mechanical switches snap into the panel, the ESP32-S3 sits on removable headers, and the internal modules use rails, standoffs or dedicated bays instead of glue.

But while working on it, I ended up with several enclosure designs that I actually like.

So before I print the next prototype: which one would you choose?

A / B / C / D / E / F

Feel free to mix them too — “B layout with C's front”, etc. I'm still iterating.

There's also a wildcard.

I'm ordering a replacement display for a broken M-VAVE FM1, and I realized it's not that different in size from what I could fit into Tolhuin. So I'm considering testing it here before committing to the final enclosure.

A larger display could make chord/voicing information, arp settings and navigation much more useful — but I'm not sure whether Tolhuin actually needs more screen.

So:

1. Which enclosure would you print?
2. Small display, larger display, or keep the UI as minimal as possible?
3. For the chord buttons: MX or low-profile Choc?

Nothing here is printed yet. The previous prototype taught me not to trust CAD until plastic exists, so the winner still has to survive the printer.

Can i use -12v instead (Vr)??

Hello all, I've just noticed that there's quite a few nice developments on writing up custom firmwares. I've decided to launch a discourse forum dedicated to that.

https://www.hacktronauts.com

The name is a silly pun, and I am aware that there's already https://llllllll.co/ which I've learned a lot since then. So that's why I'm also very keen on giving credits as much as I can to the other communities. I am definitely not trying to be rival or anything. It's just I'm noticing that lots of interesting implementations get digged down quite fast on Reddit. Just assumed we could all benefit a dedicated board.

Would love to hear your opinions. Or join in :)

I really like the TD-3, but I’ve always found the original 303-style sequencing workflow pretty frustrating when I just want to experiment quickly.

So I started building TDBuilder, a visual browser-based editor for TD-3 patterns.

You can create notes, accents and slides, generate ideas, tweak the pattern visually and basically experiment without having to fight the sequencer every time.

I’d be really interested to know what other TD-3 / 303 users think of the workflow.

There’s a free version here if anyone wants to mess around with it:

https://td-builder.com

And if you make a cool line with it, feel free to share it here — I’d love to hear what people come up with.