I have been lurking around the world of PICs and Micro Controllers of late and came across the beautifully minimalist Monome device [LINK]. I don’t know what it is, perhaps Asperger’s or latent autism but there’s something about this thing that I’m drawn to.

What is it? Well from the site it’s described as…

"a reconfigurable grid of backlit keypads which connects to a computer. interaction between the keys and lights is determined by the application running on the computer. there is no hard-wired functionality."

It’s a box of buttons that connects to your PC through a USB cord. The entire thing is open source. You can have it do whatever want. Mostly folks use it as a musical device. Go to YouTube and search for "monome" for some great examples.

Fit and finish seem excellent on the thing and just having it around I’m sure is a comfort. At $450 for the 64×64 unit it’s a bit too pricey for my casual interest though.