John Kinkennon

Hi johnc, I used an encoder from another source, but it's similar to the one from Smashtv with 12 detents per revolution instead of 24. That wouldn't matter in this application. One would be a little more sensitive than the other. The mods that I've seen were to remove the detent action for those who prefer that feel. For menu selections like with the midio128 the detents are helpful. For use as a volume control, or something similar, the detents might not be helpful. They work right out of the box -- if the direction (CW/CCW) is wrong just reverse the leads. I was going to reply about your organ relay thoughts, but I use Haupterk almost exclusively and it does all the relay functions in software so that one just needs to provide something like DOUTs with the right drivers and power supply to handle the SAMs. johnk

I thought my wireless optical mouse needed a new battery. When I moved the LPC17 core I was programming the mouse stopped working completely. With a little investigation I realized the mouse worked fine with the core unplugged (USB power and connectivity). Eventually the fix was to replace a dirt-cheap USB cable with a decent, but not expensive, Belkin cable. I tore into the cheap cable and found only a foil-wrap shield without a drain wire. The foil was not connected at the computer end of the cable. Well, the moral of the story is obvious. Spend a little more for reasonable quality. In the case of these two cables the difference in sheilding was obvious from the way the better cable kept its shape when coiled.

My reference to difficulties with the LPC Expresso IDE had more to do with getting the hang of setting up include and library paths in an IDE that I'd never used before. I'm working in two directions at the moment. One is to port a nice non-MIOS encoder from PIC32 to the LPC1769. My second goal is to learn enough about the MIOS approach to pursue a MIDI over IP project, taking advantage of all the great work that went into MIOS and RTOS. I've also tried out C++ on the Red Suite NXP Edition. So I've got too many learning curves overlapping and I need to try one step at a time. My main point was that the project itself (midio128 v3) went without a hitch.

I built the midio128 v3 along with the SD card and control surface with LCD and rotary encoder. I don't recall any surprises along the way with the exception of the LCD wiring. Don't make any assumptions with the LCD, just follow the instructions. :) The control surface adds another way to do some setup changes of course. The USB connection just worked as advertised. I'm still struggling with the LPCXpresso IDE to get it to work with complicated projects, but that's another issue that is possibly due to my own limited programming experience. Johnk

The LPCXpress is currently available at Mouser. I too await word on whether there will be another bulk order for the MBHP_CORE_LPC17 or whether SmashTV will have them. John