Last sunday I went to Tokyo MAKE Meeting 04 with Gianluca Martino: a member of the Arduino team. He has been super popular and he really appreciated the Japanese Arduino scene.
During the show Gakken displayed the prototype of the JAPANINO (Arduino clone). It will be released next spring in the Otona no Kagaku (in Japanese it means “Science toys for adults”) magazine series with a Persistence of Vision plastic Toy with color LEDs. The price tag will be less than 3500 yen (ca$35) and it will help a lot of people to get into the “Makers” scene. I’m doing consulting for Gakken on this project so I can not reveal all details but this release will definitely make the Japanese Arduino scene the biggest in the World as in a couple of months the magazine will probably sell what the original Arduino sold worldwide in the last years...

NOTE: Arduino team is not officially involved in this project but should be featured in the magazine.

After the ubergeek retro technology set Wire Recorder di Poulsen Gakken is going to release the GMC4: a 4 BIT COMPUTER (with a crash course to 4 bit programming) covermounted to the Volume 24 of the Otona no Kagaku magazine that will be out in June.

Today Gakken released the kit of the SX-150 analog synth (a perfect match for the new Nintendo DS  Korg DS10 analog synth card!).

GAKKEN SX-150 MIDI MOD: RJ, a Japanese hardware hacker, has posted a guide to create a Midi interface for the Gakken SX-150!

• Gakken SX-150 Midi Interface schematics
• Gakken SX-150 Midi Interface Hex code (+ C Source code)

After realeasing the great mini Theremin kit, Gakken has just announced a new build your own analog synth kit called SX-150. This synth is controlled trough a slider (this is a clever choice made by Gakken to keep the kit super cheap) and can even be connected to the teremin kit. The kit will be realeased on July 27 at 3360 Yen.