mongrol

Hmm, light bulb moment. I'm already fed up pressing MENU+GP to get to pages. Since I have ALPS encoders with buttons it would rock if I could use those for the gate function and have the GP buttons do their thing without having to press MENU. Do the encoder buttons have individual addressing or are they simply addressed to FAST and no more?

Thanks TK. I didn't miss it. My intention is to get familiar then see what I can do from some hardware or other (probably Teensy)

Since the BLM talks to the SEQ via MIDI I thought it might be possible to code up a BLM using some software I'm familiar with before looking into hardware options. Is the MIDI Map available for it anywhere? I had a look through the SEQ MIOS code base and BLM modules but couldn't find a listing anywhere.

A thought on the Count-In wishlist (which I'd like to 2nd). AStart=On holds the sequencer until the user inputs a note. Setting "Count-In=2 measures" could use the same AStart function. i.e: The seq is held until the Count-In clock reaches zero where Astart runs the sequencer. I thought of an easier to implement alternative of just being able to run the Metronome while the SEQ transport isn't running. We could then use Astart to record on the measure we feel like.

Thanks Jjonas. Mine operates just like yours. I think I'll wind my ambitions back a bit, make some short patterns and experiment with different ways of working, different views etc.

Hmm, seems like a usability issue there. I must say I'm struggling with this beast. After moving from a MidiREX where its very flexible and fast to jam things out the SEQ isn't appearing very accessible, even with the great new docs. It's hard to tell what a button does since there isn't a coherent paradigm on how buttons are used. I realise the buttons are all shortcuts to options in the "menu" but some are used in odd ways. Some appear to be shortcuts to shortcuts and then there's combo's like the FollowMode which looks like it's not used since it would involve toggling it off and on all the time. There's even a combo shortcut to reach Bookmarks, which themselves, are a page of shortcuts! It's clear there's a lot of different ways to work with the SEQ and the Wilba CS by default comes with buttons that may cover the 80% but at this stage I feel like taking a black pen to every button label and starting again. :) I think I'll kick off a workflow page and encourage the more experienced to divulge how they use the SEQ on a day to day basis. I feel this would benefit us n00bs greatly and choose how we want to work. Actually, I didn't answer your question. Yes, while recording or playback the displays don't follow the cursor. I have to enable FollowMode for this, which then means I can't scroll fully around the track when playback is stopped.

Hi folks, I'm finally getting my hands on a working SEQ. When doing a live recording of more than 16 steps the view after 16 steps doesn't change so I can't see where in my loop the chaselight it at. Is there a way to make the view follow the bars along the loop?

Great work.

Ok got it. My Alps STEC is front mounted on the PCB and is pretty solid there. I've looked and even if I widened the cutout to let the wheel through I'm not going to gain anything as the flat of the shaft is flush with the top face of the panel. So I'm just going to shorten the datawheel stem. Easiest solution.

Mine is front mounted. Are you talking about the wheel rubbing against the aluminium collar on the pot not being good? I suppose I could cushion it with a couple of spacers/washers. Widen the hole so it drops down enough, then have it sit on washers instead of down against the bottom of the encoder shaft.

It's the "official" Alps datawheel listed on the wiki. Like hen's teeth they are but I found them at Conrad. Had my mum in Scotland buy them and send 2 of them to me in Australia. Conrad wanted $70 to post them. :) http://www.conrad-electronic.co.uk/ce/en/product/715751/ALPS-863002-Rotary-Knob-With-Finger-Grooves?ref=searchDetail

Yeah the datawheel height is on my enclosure bug list. I'm going to widen the hole a little to sits inside a bit. Save me hacking my precious datawheel (this thing was hard to get without a Kristal)

Thanks folks. I have a Core-Elec voucher to use up so I'll just get one and see.

Would this board be a working prebuilt ETH module perhaps? http://core-electronics.com.au/enc28j60-ethernet-lan-network-module.html

#9 - Fitting and FInished At last I'm done. I can finally put this beast together. I'm still waiting on a replacement OLED for the one I fried (won't do that again). Just on that I've lots of suppliers punting the same display with different names and descriptions. Check the OLED Displays thread for info. I also still need another run of the enclosure to fix the bugs before I publish the SVG and writeup a build guide for it. As Captain Barnacle says "Let's do this thing!" Get bottom panel and stick in 12 bolts and nuts for the MIDIIO's and Core. These needs to be 10mm bolts. 8mm no worky. Place the Core and MIDIIO boards. Secure the boards with nuts or little standoffs with the exception of the bottom left core bolt. This needs a 27mm standoff as it rises up to the CS. Make some ribbon cables of a lovely length and route it between the bottom panel holes or else a fouled by standoff you may be. The displays sit on 35mm standoff as they bat right up against the inside of the top panel. In the top right hold stick a little 5mm standoff as it'll have a top panel screw coming downwards (final enclosure will use untapped spacers). Try your best to make a nice neat ribbon cable and fail. Move on with your life. Attach a bunch of 30mm standoffs in the top left corner and along the front. One of two in the middle is nice too. Look! The friendly enclosure designer put holes everywhere in case we need them. What a nice guy. Bottom left standoff on the core is 27mm or 25+ washers. (Bizarrely I got some 27's in a pack of 30's from Jaycar) Stick on the CS REMEMBERING TO ATTACH THE CABLE! (yes I forgot and had to take it apart) and screw on some 10mm standoffs or spacers around the edges and middle. Remember only the edges have top panel holes. Finally clip on the sides, back and top. Shove in a USB and watch the lights come on. Wonder to yourself what is displayed on that dark OLED. Phew! There will now be a short interlude while the final enclosure is finished. Thanks to TK, everyone in the thread for chipping in with advice and that bloke (which will be credited) that I purloined the front panel SVG from. Mongbox Enclosure thread here. P.S. I have no idea what this thing does.

#8 - LED Fun Man, this bit was so easy I had my 8 yr old son helping me. I was worried about LED height and Mr Hawkeye advised getting the panel made first so this was the main reason in doing the enclosure earlier than I was expecting. What a great idea! The LED's have a little lip on them so they can't slip all the way through the panel hole, which thanks to (that person who's name I shall get and credit), is a tad smaller than the diameter of the lip. All I had to do was drop the LED's into the CS. Stick on the panel with it's 10mm standoffs, turn it over and the LED's fell into the holes at exactly the right height. After a quick test I soldered all 40 of them in two go's with none of them going wrong. Win!

So being in Australia, TME not having any Raystars in stock, my local company being dodgy, First charging me 70eu postage,and Rapid declining my credit card means I'm still on the hunt for a replacement display. It appears TME have yellows and whites from a company called Display Electronik. Again, they appear to be the exact same display as the Raystar and Winstar, yet they want nearly 20eu more. http://www.tme.eu/en/katalog/?id_category=112917&used_params=1134%3A59300%3B1140%3A356437%3B

#7 - CS. The 12mm Alps Encoder Edition Now I have a fitting panel it's time to solder the rest of my encoders. With the panel in place I can see the first encoder I soldered before is in good alignment so I'm confident in doing the rest of them. I'm using the Alps 12mm encoder which the CS wasn't designed for. It's nearly half the price of the 16mm part and has a click function for acceleration. Since it's 4mm smaller we need to do some pin bending to get it to fit. Not only that, but some clever people in this thread realised that pins 2 & 3 need to be reversed in order to remove "Detented = 1" (whatever that is, it must be a bad). Still, anything that keeps us soldering and not making music has to be a good thing right? You betcha! We bend the structural side pins up 90 degrees so they point straight out, then at 90 degrees back down about 2mm out from the encoder body. The 3 encoder pins are bent up to 90 degrees then pins 1 & 3 back down and left at 45 degrees(ish). After some practise, say about 16 times later, you get quite good at this. The encoders should then fit into the holes quite easily. I used some nose pliers to carefully pop in pins 1 & 3 making sure the encoder sits totally flat on the PCB. Pin 2 is soldered to pad 3 using some left over component tails. Make a U shape of the tail and dangle it over pin 2 with one end into pad 3. It should then be stable enough to solder with 2 hands. Solder the pad end of the tail and adjust if needed to keep it clear of pin 3 and also away from the LED pads then solder the end on pin 2. Snip off the excess and we're done. Repeat x16. Rejoice in your new skill then realise there's no more to do. I then stuck the panel back on and found all 16 encoders in perfect position. A quick connection to the core and displays proved them all working nicely too. At last a post with no drama!

Here's another source of yellows. http://www.texim-europe.com/product/WEH004002ALPP5N00000-WSR

#6 - Enclosure Bugs & Mounting I've assessed the enclosure for fitting and worked out the best mounting strategy for all the cards. I now have a definitive bug list for the next cut. I also have a nice wtf moment (or perhaps a senior moment) with my displays. Bug List Core Audio hole too low. Needs to go up by half. 0.5mm wider USB hole too left. Needs to move right by 2mm and expand 1mm in all directions Display Angle pins need to face right. Face right. RIGHT!!! GEDDIT! Case Sides need to go up by 2mm to give the CS it's 10mm clearance or else buttons will be too high. Fix all slot widths. Sides fit but are a little too tight for comfort an extra 0.1mm would be nice. Top panel Datawheel hole needs to be wider Everything else lines up so great job whomever I stole this panel from (will find out later and credit properly) Mounting To give the CS it's 10mm clearance the sides would need to go either up or the CS down. Unfortunately I have about 2mm clearance to the Core underneath so up they go. This will give a total height of 48mm. PCB's will be mounted on m3 nuts for joint clearance. CS will be 30mm (standoff) + 2mm (pcb) + 10mm spacer. Displays are 35mm standoffs All lower standoffs and nuts need to be tag epoxied to the bottom panel. This is essential to avoid a spinning standoff later and leaving you unable to open the case. You don't want any threaded parts inside a standoff sandwich being able to move. WTF To keep the nuts to a minimum on the panel meant I had to bottom mount the displays on standoffs. The problem is the IDC socket won't fit between the standoffs so I've put on some angled headers instead (with the desoldering delivering brain damage to one oled). This had proven a very good idea until I realised I had them pointing the wrong way. Both headers foul the CS and display next to them. More oled brain surgery coming up!

#5 - The Enclosure The enclosure is back from Ponoko with mixed results. The Good The tab in slot design is so solid that even without screws it holds together beautifully. So much that you can hold it in one hand by the end and wave it about. Black frosted acrylic looks the "dugs baws". It's surprisingly robust too. So far with my fiddling around (see The Bad) there's not a scratch on it. The empty P3 frame with hundreds of little parts makes for a brilliant childrens craft toy. Leave the sticky there and watch them go at it! The Bad Unfortunately I made a mistake with the front slots. Even with filing, snapping, glueing, more filing, I ended up snapping all 3 of them. Oh well. It's the journey, not the money. Engraving on black frosted doesn't go white and the lettering on this iteration is single line so I can't really fill it in. I'll need to think about this later. Even though I've snapped it I'm still happy. It's such a big design (some 10 hours work) and Inkscape is too quirky for big time sink designs I'm surprised some slots being missed is all thats wrong. Oh wait. I haven't put anything in it yet!

Thanks for the reply. I did get housings and crimps from Jaycar but they are just too loose. I've also noticed the pins differ slightly between my Encoder and pots and also the PCB style pins on these devices vary in thickness. These housings all seem built for header pins which are square. I've found these which are similar. Since I have a voucher for Core I'll get some and try. If it fails the solder gun comes out. :) I've noticed with pots the signal can just go barmy without a really good connection so I expect soldering is the only way to be sure. Headers for proto sure, soldering for final build. http://core-electronics.com.au/connectors-sockets/crimp-pins/female-crimp-pins-for-0-1-housings-100-pack.html Matching housings. http://core-electronics.com.au/connectors-sockets/crimp-connector-housings/0-1-2-54mm-crimp-connector-housing-1x4-pin-10-pack.html

This is for my Axoloti project. I have a bunch of bourns 12mm pots which naturally have pins on them. I'm panel mounting these and wondering what is the best way to connect wires to the pins? They are standard 2.54 pitch so header strips fit on them pretty tight. I've been looking for crimps of a sort but I'm totally failing to find any. Google Fu is weak this time. Anyone have any ideas? My best bet so far appears to be snapping female header down to 3x and soldering wires on it.

What shipping option did you go with? I still don't understand the Oun Forwarder is $0

Crest have came back to me with a price of $38 AUD each. I asked for prices on yellow and green, so I assume white will be the same. Lead time is 5-7 weeks (they do say Midibox is a journey) but this is awesome pricing considering TME cost me $150AUD for 2 yellows. I'll be ordering a yellow and 2 greens.