Radica (Mattel) U-create music

[der Warst]

Hey,

anyone of you come across the U-create music? I found it a while ago in this Blog: http://nomeist.com/ucreate-music/199/comment-page-1#comment-584 (read the comments, too, this is where the real informations are). Needless to say, I immediately bought one and to say the least, this thing frelling ROCKS! Well beyond any toy I ever bought for about 10 pounds before, or any proper instrument i got for an equal amount of money, for that matter. I would even go as far as saying it beats the dren out of quite a few so called "pro" pieces of gear for prices waaaaaay beyond that. The effect section alone is unbelievable for a unit this cheap, and yes, you can use it as a standalone fx unit. Apart from the somehow quite average flanger/phaser/distortion/delay/filter it has those amazing looper and pitch fx --instant aphex twin! It's no KP, but amazingly close when it comes to controllability and fun factor. Only one effect at a time, but, well you could just buy another one.

There's no comfy way to add your own samples yet, apart from the two sample slots, which is why I'm trying to spread it around the DIY community a little.
Perhaps some of you know how to write an alternative frontend for it, or how to reverse engineer it or whatever...

Oh, and I don't work for Mattel. I'm just very impressed with that thing. It's just too cool to not be hacked to its full potential.

der Warst

[spam4life]

this device have a lot of potential, can be a real good alternative for people with out money who wants to use electronic instruments..
30$ for a sampler? that is great!

a 3rd party open source development, or something like that, for this baby can be reaaaaaaaaally nice..

fingers crossed

[synthmonger]

Using the built in software allows you to change the banks with samples from their servers. I imagine it'll be easy for someone with some coding experience to figure out how to add your own samples to all the banks. The sample quality is pretty iffy but hey, a 17 bank sampler for 30-50 bucks ain't bad ;d

[spam4life]

this guy release something calling "u-load" under gnu license.
allows to load our own samples (but only 5 seconds, no more no less) in the ucreate.
http://marbs-online.blogspot.com/

[blakeAlbion]

It seems like all knowledge of UCreate has fallen into the vortex of antiquity like my Keepon robot.
Does anyone know anything about the technical internals of this?
I'm guessing it has an XML-based web protocol and connects without HTTPS to _something_.

sigh

If I learn anything I will share it here.

[cementimental]

There's lots of info on the facebook group if you can find it amongst lots of random videos of the thing in use

https://www.facebook.com/groups/UCreateMusic

This post contains the U-load software and lopgen for converting the samples, but I haven't tried it myself and not sure if it's the latest version - https://www.facebook.com/groups/UCreateMusic/posts/1239177866177038/

I should dig out my spare ucreate and give it a go. I managed to hack my main one back in the day when the website was still online, by sampling two samples at a time with the actual toy, downloading and renaming those files and doing some trick where you quickly copied them onto the machine half way thru uploading so they replace the built in samples But that's no longer possible alas

I left well enough alone after that for fear of bricking them Still use the hacked one a lot

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