ilmenator

You want to build a MIDIbox LC. For inspiration and more infos, take a look here.

Resistance is not the limiting factor for maximum cable length in MIDIboxes - capacitance and other parasitary effects usually are. Janis has it right with his example.

Na da bist du hier genau richtig - herzlich willkommen! Du wirst eine Menge lesen muessen um dich mit den einzelnen Modulen und ihrer Funktionsweise vertraut zu machen, aber die Belohnung ist, dass du am Ende einen Controller genau nach deinen Wuenschen bauen kannst :-). Also, schau am besten erstmal auf www.ucapps.de unter "MB Hardware Platform" auf der linken Seite nach den unterschiedlichen Modulen (LPC17, DIN, DOUT, LCD etc.). Die werden dann zusammengebaut und das sogenannte Core-Modul programmiert, das das "Hirn" des ganzen Controllers ist. Hier im Forum findest du auch jede Menge Beispiele von Leuten, die ihre eigenen Controller gebaut haben. Evtl. ist es sehr sinnvoll, auch mal im englischsprachigen Teil zu schauen ;-). Viel Erfolg!

You are not navigating to the low-value order pages... go here instead!

I would assume that this will work fine for "regular" MIDI data, but will miserably fail for system exclusive MIDI data. It looks like a no-name version of many of the black-listed USB cable interfaces known to NOT work properly. Also, how can that website get away with shamelessly stealing the YAMAHA DX logo?

Just to follow up: these are Marquardt switches, model 6425 - you can find them for example at Distrelec, and they can be had with or without LED. You can also get a version that is double the width, which makes for a nice ENTER button. The datasheet is here.

Not sure if you have considered power requirements here? If all 64 LEDs are on, and you use standard ones, you'll end up at 64 x 20mA = 1.28A, which is way above the 500mA max. current draw specified for USB devices. And that does not include the core MCU or other ICs. Of course, it's highly unrealistic that all LEDs will be on at the same time, plus you could use low-power LEDs. So, it's not completely impossible to USB-power this thing, I guess. Just make sure you know what you're doing here, i.e. do the math!

Any (momentary) button will do as long as you find a way to mount it. I.e. you either mount them to the front panel directly, and have some (loose) wires going to the shift registers, or you solder them to a PCB and then mount the PCB to the front panel. If you are not planning to have a front panel at all, you'll also end up using this latter variant. Most of the buttons you'll find (and also the tact switches) are PCB mount.

I assume that's a typo and should read HD44780 - if so, then it is compatible. See here for all the necessary information on LCDs on a MIDIbox.

Apart from voltage regulators and SID chips I would not worry about any components in the MIDIbox world being overly sensitive to (lack of) heat dissipation. Placing shift registers between two layers of PCBs (that are about a cm or so apart in any case) should be no problem at all.

The board to Norway arrived today - thanks!

Ich verstehe nicht so ganz was du gegen TK's Løsung hast? Vermutlich verschwindet die schøne Platine doch eh in irgendeinem Gehæuse. Æhnliche Nachbesserungen finden sich uebrigens in einer ganzen Menge "professionellen" Equipments :rolleyes:

The board is not soldered yet - no time... The buttons are recycled from a video editor - they are absolutely great. I forgot who manufactures them, but I think they are still available new. Unfortunately, their footprint is not compatible with the ones commonly used in MBSEQ and the Sammiches.

Welcome chrisk! Not sure why you post that here, though?

No, unfortunstely not. You'll have to check yourself.

Why would you use a MIDI interface anyways? Connect the LPC baseboard directly via USB and you're set. Unless I did not understand your setup properly, which is probably the case because the facts you give are very sparse...

Bad solder joint?

A bit on the small side, eh?

Back from business trip and the protoboard has arrived :frantics: I hope to find the time to solder it over the weekend. Laen's PCB service was excellent as always - thanks!

I can only wholeheartedly recommend Laen's excellent PCB service with the purple boards. Even if you can get a similar price tag from Batch PCB if you actually manage to do a group buy (and thus go to larger quantities), I think it is worth supporting a low quantity service like Laen's. Just being able to order small boards in small quantities has helped me out a lot in the past.

Try :-)

This is correct!

You want to look and hurry up!

Well, the obvious would be: get another encoder!