gerald.wert

It is great when you get the bugs sorted out! Amazing how much time you can sometimes spend on things that are simple when you know what the actual fix is.

Ilmenator you are welcome to cut and paste it into the wiki. Might be nice to have it all in one place. Documentation is good to have. Great little board! Finished up the 16x4 last night too except for the leds. Want to get the panel ordered and fit them to the panel. Beautyofdecay_ you probably just need to rework the solder on U1 pin 15 that is the pin for the decimal point. Those legs can be tricky getting them 100%. I am still working on my smd technique but what is helping on problem legs is small diameter solder (.015). I can bend it a bit and heat the leg from the top and put the solder in right under the leg and with that diameter have plenty of clearance to the other leg so no bridging. I also found keeping the tip really clean helps a lot. I use a solder sucker even if I get a little ball of solder on the tip. It really helps prevent bridging. I really need a smaller tip for smd but have not bought one yet. Thanks for the session information. I will try that. I just finished the sequencer and am just starting to now really get to use it. What a great sequencer.

I have used the murata dc to dc converters. They are isolated and can take 5v in to -/+12 out. They are generally 1A but you can get them in 3A or higher packages. I have mostly used them to build isolated laser, rdm and dmx controllers. They come in allsorts of voltage options both on the input and output including +/- output. The non isolated ones are a bit cheaper. Either would work great to power the analog module. I used one in my midibox sid build. They run cool too unless you short the outputs. They do take a short for a bit but will let the smoke out after a while. Lot less heat, space and weight to think about than a transformer and 78xx regulators. Should be much cheaper than a dual voltage transformer if you are considering that. The Dlink 7 port fast charging hubs or Linksys DUB H7 are really good too if you have several devices to power by usb. They both have a 3A power supply... and should work anywhere in the world as the plugs are 100 -250v. Not as nice looking as the one linked above but they put out a lot of available power if you need it. Currently I am just using a 1a usb cell phone charger cube. I like the ones that the usb plugs on the top as they make power strip management much easier. I have oleds, wilba's front panel, tpd and midi io. I have a 2c midi too but it currently is not connected. I am under 500ma and the 1A cell phone cubes work great. If I had back lit LCD or a 16x16 BLM the current draw would be a good bit higher. I also used one of these so not to plug directly into the core: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Micro-USB-5-Pin-Male-to-Female-with-Screw-Hole-Panel-Mount-Extention-Cable-A248/401507370741?hash=item5d7bb446f5:g:6SgAAOSwOwZZiAYA I might go with one of these now I did not see them at the time: https://www.ebay.com/itm/90-Degree-Left-Angled-Micro-USB-5pin-Male-to-USB-B-Female-Panel-Mount-Type-Cable/162358249642?hash=item25cd4e48aa:g:dbYAAOSw9GhYenj~:sc:USPSFirstClass!27312!US!-1 The usb B is just a lot more sturdy connector.

There are simple sequencer built into the sid platform too. It is a more basic 303 base line type. You might be able to make use of that and have your two evolving tracks on a seq light. It would take up lot less space and the cost would be a lot lower. The Sid sequencer is more of a menu driven sequencer. The full sequencer would give you a lot more tracks and is a lot easier to manipulate with the enhanced control surface. The lite sequencer version is really good for fast live type improvisational or quick playing. The file format is also compatible between both so a more advanced sequence can be set on the full version and played on the lite version if you want to keep things smaller and more portable. Good to consider your options and requirements fully while still in the planning stages.

Just finished building my TPD. It is recommended on the WIKI to test everything before soldering the led displays in place as they cover several of the 595 IC. The schematic is good but there is a lot more data that would make testing go much quicker and easier. Here are the work sheets I put together to test my TPD. Hope this saves you from having to work this out on your own. The following Dout assignments are with the TPD directly connected to the core with nothing in between. This is recommended for testing as you do not have to worry with anything else if your core is good. Dout shift register chip chain order and pin counts u1 u2 u6 u7 u8 u3 u4 u5 u9 0-7 8-15 16-23 24-31 32-39 40-47 48-55 56-63 64-71 SEG SEL M2G M2R M2CA M1G M1R M1CA BiLEDS U10 is on its own DIN serial chain. DIN is easy to test just close the switch and you should see the pin toggle in the console. To test Digital Out Shift Registers from the mios console: Set dout 0 1 --> sets dout 0 to 5v set dout 0 0 --> sets dout 0 to 0v I liked turning things off as I went so only the one that I was testing was on. IC IC pin dout# led pin IC IC pin dout# led pin IC IC pin dout# led pin U3 1 40 10 U4 1 48 11 U5 1 56 12 2 41 7 2 49 8 2 57 9 3 42 4 3 50 5 3 58 6 4 43 1 4 51 2 4 59 3 5 44 22 5 52 23 5 60 24 6 45 19 6 53 20 6 61 21 7 46 16 7 54 17 7 62 18 15 47 13 15 55 14 15 63 15 IC IC pin dout# led pin IC IC pin dout# led pin IC IC pin dout# led pin U6 1 16 10 U7 1 24 11 U8 1 32 12 2 17 7 2 25 8 2 33 9 3 18 4 3 26 5 3 34 6 4 19 1 4 27 2 4 35 3 5 20 22 5 28 23 5 36 24 6 21 19 6 29 20 6 37 21 7 22 16 7 30 17 7 38 18 15 23 13 15 31 14 15 39 15 Led matrix pin out from top of board: 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 For U1, U2, U9 and U10. These IC are also not captive when the board is complete so you can get at them fairly easily. It would still be good to test everything with just the IC, caps, box header and resistors on the board. It is a lot easier to get at the ic legs with a soldering iron with the other components not in place. IC IC pin dout# led pin IC IC pin dout# led pin IC IC pin dout# led pin IC IC Pin Dev Pin U1 1 0 a U2 1 8 Step 100 U9 1 64 G U10 11 ENC1 2 1 b 2 9 Step 10 2 65 G 12 ENC1 3 2 c 3 10 Step 1 3 66 G 13 ENC1 SW 4 3 d 4 11 BPM 100 4 67 R 14 Available 5 4 e 5 12 BPM 10 5 68 R 3 SW1 6 5 f 6 13 BPM 1 6 69 R 4 SW2 7 6 g 7 14 BPM .1 7 70 R 5 SW3 15 7 DP 15 15 Available 15 71 G 6 SW4 Hope this makes your testing go much easier. I did this on paper and marked with red anything that was not working or just did not seem right. I then went back and soldered anything that needed it again then retested. I am not sure why but some of those 595 pins just do not want to take solder. Maybe I just need more practice or flux. on the encoder mine is turning backwards. I read elsewhere to set the config to the odd shift register instead of the even. I have not tried this yet but will give it a shot. Tested and I set the Encoder to 1 instead of 0 on the shift register and it is good to go now. Does anyone know how to get the display to run in the other modes? I see in the sequencer program that there are other modes but I do not see a way to alter it. Is there a pointer to the location of the text that displays on the TPD on startup? It plays "HW config v4l" on startup. I have not located it yet in the code but am looking. I looked through the TPD wiki and the seq manual but do not see anything on the above. Thanks for the great add on to the SEQ now I just need to get the panel cut for it.

I do not see it documented anywhere for the stm32f4. I believe you are going to have to define it. have you tried this in mios studio console: testlcdpin e3 1 -> sets E3 to ca. 3.3V set this first so you get voltage testlcdpin e3 0 -> sets E3 to ca. 0V Set this to toggle the pin voltage off to verify your pin This should be working on the E1 and E2 pins for sanity check on J15. You should be able to look around with your meter for what pin is being enabled and disabled if it is configured already. I believe it is not and you will need to configure it in the code and compile for the additional functionality you are after. If you look in the SVN at: /trunk/mios32/stm32f4xx/mios32_board.c http://svnmios.midibox.org/filedetails.php?repname=svn.mios32&path=%2Ftrunk%2Fmios32%2FSTM32F4xx%2Fmios32_board.c I think you will find what you need to update there. It looks as E 3 and E 4 is not set there. You just need to determine your pin assignments and set them. Someone a little more familiar may be able to say if you need to set something anywhere else as well. I believe you will have to also add in E 5 and E 6 since you want 6 displays but that is just adding the additional lines of code for the enable lines. Not sure if you will need to make those changes anywhere else in the code as well. There is still the question of if you need to shift the voltage from 3.3 to 5 volts as well. once you have the pins you want working you will know better if you need to do that once you have enable lines working. A 74hct08 or 74hct245 may be better than a 595 since you are only looking at a 4 additional displays you should not have to multiplex the enable lines via a 595. There are plenty of available pins you can use for enable lines already. You could use a small transistor as well for the voltage conversion but the ic is likely to do a better job and take up less space. Transistor my be viable while you are testing things to get that first display working. I am a beginner on the programming so can not help you much more there.

It may need the 595 to shift to 5v unless you have 3.3v displays.

My programming is very beginner level or I would help out more. Good luck with it!

The leds do that on the matrix in the midi box sid. Maybe you could look in the code there for inspiration. Also there is the beat led on the midi box sequencer to look at as example.

This is what I use to program my chips: https://www.ebay.com/itm/PICkit2-PICkit3-PIC-KIT2-3-PIC-Debugger-Programmer-Emulator-Controller-Adapter/182330060727?hash=item2a73b7efb7:m:mfV2ouyRNxouLlRtL_pWMjg I use the pic kit 3. I would burn you a chip but I do not have any on hand and paying shipping twice (once to me and once to you in Taiwan) is more than the cost of buying the programmer. Hope someone closer can get you one. They are easy to program. Mike also sells them programmed here under accessories: http://www.mikes-elektronikseite.de/mshop_englisch/index.htm Again It may be worth buying the programmer as shipping may be higher than the cost of the programmer.

The ST7066U controller should work. I have seen a few threads with people getting them to work. Have you compared oleds? they have a good bit more contrast so may be easier to read then a standard LCD. They do also tend to cost more though depending on your budget. There are also single line displays that have even larger characters. It would be beyond my ability to write the drivers and code get them working though it may be worth your research. EA W202-XDLG 2x20 9.66mm 180x40 mm Yellow http://www.mmselectronics.co.uk/lcdoled.htm

Yes there are some sellers that sell a whole kit with both connectors and a bit of ribbon cable for great pricing. Or just the connectors. It is good to have spares. I always make a cable backwards or decide to move or add something. Also sometimes you just make a bad one that does not work right. Great to have a spare and not have to pay shipping again for just 1 more. Raechelt has pretty good pricing but ebay, amazon often beats them by a lot on these parts and the other pin header kits. The gold plated ones should never have corrosion issues.

You can use the D. If you do not solder it first you do not have to bend or use wire. there is enough flex in the header and sockets to get it to line up and once it is aligned you solder. If you solder first you will need to bend the pin legs or replace them with wire. It is a bit tricky to do but it does work.

You could use the spark fun or adafruit 4x4 pads and cut the piezo down to fit where the leds are. would run you maybe $50 or so for all the parts if you used their board, pad and frame. If you can machine parts or have time and patience with a drill and file you could do it a bit cheaper. You could also cast and mold the pads from silicone. Check this out too they offer "thick pads and the sensors: https://www.ebay.com/sch/mpcstuff/m.html?item=301515084828&hash=item4633b3141c%3Am%3AmuVDO-jgali2LUAqVpfIjXA&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

https://www.ebay.com/itm/10-Pin-2x5-2-54mm-Box-Header-IDC-Male-Socket-Straight-Lot-of-5/191660569998?hash=item2c9fdc358e:g:lEUAAOSwuTxV8Guu The female are for the cable side. You can get them as a lot with male and female sockets with the cable as well.

T. Stoeckl Dual SSM2044 --> USA? let me know if you can send it I am interested. Hope the move stuff is going well. I moved 3 times in 8 months 2 years ago it was hard things are still in boxes, HAHA! Moved my entire office building for work this year... Good luck it is a lot to get done. Hope the packing is going well or even better you are able to hire it out. It is totally worth it if you have the $$$ to spare and they are good. Best, Gerald

I totally get that. I went down the whole computer music rabbit hole when it first came out. I built my first midi box the old midi box 64 on the pic to have a knob box as the mouse got to be exhausting, limiting and I really missed the hands on part. A good sampler is the only thing that is really missing from the midi box platform. That said I am also aware of the cost in time and effort to build create something that the big manufacturers are already building ie maschine. Good luck on what you decide if you fine the time to work on the tsunami it looks to be a really good project. There are boards for the sega chips too. You could build a sampler around them as well. that project is in the works a bit last I looked at it but it sounded like it would play samples if you set them in the sega format. What about the korg electribes the newer 2 S? The new roland tr-8s also is supposed to let you load your own samples if you are mostly working with drum samples. There is also the https://modularaddict.com/bastl-microgranny2-kit. Their site looks to be dead but code page might be helpful if someone was wanting to get something going on midi box platform: https://github.com/bastl-instruments/microGranny2

Have you considered a tablet pc running kontact, mashine or don't forget fruity loops? They all have huge sample libraries already. You will also get a ton of effect and sample processing power. Fruity loops has tons of automation, effects, routing and samples. All these solutions have excellent midi integration. A small tablet or ipad mini would be super portable and have all the storage built in. A bigger screen would be a bigger screen. You could assign knobs and buttons to your sequencer so you would not have to have another interface. No mouse or keyboard to clutter things up. The mashine interfaces are fairly good as well. I have a micro and the regular mashine. It is a good interface for changing between banks of samples. The regular standard and producer mashine also has midi on it. You also get pressure sensitive pads for entering midi data to your sequencer. Bit depth will be at least 16bit with the onboard sound card. Cost will be much lower then octotrack too... You can go Native instrument Komplete elements for about $50 and just run Kontact player as well. Kontact player is also free on NI site but it is not as featured as what you get in elements. The Tsunami looks pretty good solution but it will need programming (time) and it would not have the built in effects of the software solutions. The one thing to look out for with software would be latency. I think with ASIO and software it should be low enough (under 5ms) but if it is super critical it would be better with a hardware solution such as the octotrack or possibly the tsunami. A hardware solution would be super cool and compact but the software solutions are also well established and very powerful. They are worth a look if you have not tried any of them out. I think these solutions would be a lot simpler and more functional than ableton. I own all these softwares on my studio pc and I would recommend them all. Hope this does not clutter you thread as you are asking for hardware. ( I love hardware ) I am just aware how good the available software is for this function. -G

You can change any of the button assignments in the hex and recompile it and upload it. That will fix your buttons. There are some additional buttons that are available as well if you wanted to add those features. look here : http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/windows_toolchain_quickstart The extra buttons and leds are in the source code. The panel looks nice with the laser cut wood. They make two tone acrylic you can laser cut as well. Where you etch it with the laser will be a different color. Just as an option your local fab shop may have some or a sample to show you but the wood looks great too just as it is. I built some swin sid and they do not have the filter bug so are quiet. You also get a few more wave form options with them that you do not get with a sid. I had to turn the option on in the source and compile it to get the extra features. It was a while ago so it may be in the hex already depending on what one you uploaded. I agree the sid chip has a more interesting sound and is way louder. I built the atmel swins with the external DA converters. I do not have any of the nanos to compare them to but in the nano they did away with the DA converter. The nano has a faster cpu so maybe that helps too. Not sure if that affects the sound at all or in what ways. As to mixing all the outputs in the device it will really depend if you want to run effects on anything. If you are not going to run effects your plan to mix them will work well. Small mixers are also fairly affordable... You may want to consider going with all nanos as well for the matching if you are going to mix them on a single output. Lots of ways to get it to work. There is also a gate circuit floating around the forum if you want to silence the sids maybe helpful if you have a quiet break in your sequence. Good luck finishing up your build! If you get a pt-10 case without the metal blanks they are quite a bit less.

If you are happy with it I would not. I have not connected the leds but my understanding is the leds are a bit dim as is. I am not using osc so have not had need for the network. The only software I know using osc is reactor. There are several advantages to osc if that is what you are asking mainly the increased distances between devices. 20 feet is generally considered good safe length for midi cable vs 300 for Ethernet and if you have a fiber transceivers you can go miles with no grounding concerns.

On the newer boards you do not have to remove the programmer. It has a jumper now to enable/disable it. I would not remove it unless you really need to reduce the space to get it to fit in your application. You may need or want to reprogram later and it is a lot easier with the programmer attached. It does not have the pin header on the bottom and the pitch is fairly small to solder it on there if you needed it and had removed it. You have some options on the leds. I have not tried them yet so can not help a lot here. Also I am not sure how comfortable you are with soldering SMD or removing SMD parts you got the jumpers in place so maybe it is easy enough. You could remove the led on the board and your led on the jack should be much brighter this is not the best option though. You could source from the left side of the resistor. If you do this you may need to still use a resistor inline on your jumper. You could adjust this resistor value for the brightness you desire. A 100K pot would be an easy way to adjust for the value you like and when you have a brightness you like use a close r value. If you go to low on the resistance your led will burn out so you may want to put some additional amount of r in line with the pot just to be safe as the Ethernet jacks can be really annoying to unsolder if a led burned out. I am not sure what to recommend for the additional amount of R as I have not measured voltage and do not know the current and voltage the leds on the magic jack.. Possibly the leds are supplied at 3.3v and do not need the additional R. I have not tested and will not be able to for some time so can not be more help on the actual details here. If you have the time to test it out more please let us know I am sure it will help others as well. You may want to test with some leds not the ones on the Jack, especially if you have a few that are rated the same as the ones on the jack. That would save on having to remove the jack incase of a opps moment. I have been known to be an expert at making an opps moment. :)

Happy new year!!! May your mail box is full of parts in the new year!

Label makers like the ptouch are nice while you are in the development stage. They cost the same as what you are proposing so not sure you come out ahead much there. If you have a good idea of what you want for a layout and do not think you will change it they are not as nice as other options at that point. I have also printed a lot of my stuff out just on paper while I was working it out. you may want to consider a laser etched acrylic panel as your label. They look super nice and are fairly affordable. you can get multi color acrylic so the etched/engraved part will be a different color. Check https://www.ponoko.com/ Just some thoughts. They also have a good maker space in San Fran, check them out they should do laser cutting/engraving as well. Maybe cnc aluminum but that tends to cost double to triple depending on the design. What you are suggesting should work and be ok for a while but over time I think it would tend to start to peel...

+1 for what Peter says, I think it would be easiest to do what you are asking in a script file in NG as well. Like Peter says you would edit your configuration in a text file so the screen would be irrelevant. That is way easier development then coding in an existing product. You would not have to worry about processing time as you would adding onto the seq firmware and if you ever wanted to do something different you would have the parts to do it. With editing the code as a script file screens would be irrelevant. You can edit over usb from mios studio. Scripts even saves a ton of time on compiling for that matter you do not even have to setup proper development tools just a text editor. This is especially fast through the testing and development phase.. I would think the only thing you might want if you end up with more then one configuration is an encoder with a built in switch and some leds to show what configuration you are running. possibly even one or 2 leds and one switch say for enable disable depending on what you want to do and how you wire your rig up. You could set one port to have translation and the other to be original. Just some thoughts on the possibilities.

It may or may not be the boards. You may have an issue with your core or the jumper that goes from the core to the dio. I have even had a faulty STM with a shorted pin on the cpu. The boards also have an in and out sides for the header coming from the core to be aware of. I would check the entire path for faults all the way back to the cpu. It is easy but tedious you just need to look at the schematic. http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp/mbhp_core_stm32f4.pdf This post might be helpful it has the pinout of the cpu if you want to trace all the way back to the pins on the cpu. http://midibox.org/forums/topic/20396-stm32f4-sdcard-reading-cid-failed-with-status-256-solved/ I would not attempt a repair as in the above post if you picked up your board form a good supplier if you find a similar fault but return it. I had bought this one on Amazon and the seller would not return it as I had had it for quite a while before I found the fault. That said it is way more likely that the issue is either a bad cable or a bad solder joint but I would check everything. Sometimes you get lucky and everything just works the first time and other times you have to put in the trouble shooting time to find the bug. It is helpful to remember a lot of other folks have this working and that it works. It can be a bit easier once you have some working parts as you have known good parts to test against. That is all part the learning curve of getting started. I would be really suspicious of the SI path and would check that for shorts, continuity and proper wiring along that path. I would test the cables and make sure they are pinned out the way you think they are as well. It is easy to reverse a connector or pin header on a din board.