DrBunsen

Tiny trackball from Sparkfun Electronics 8mm ball, pulse output for X & Y directions, ball acts as push button, 2 internal LEDs

That's a top idea - print out a set of 16 strips on laser printer transparency and cut them out. My suggestion though - if the film has to move, you need 2x length of the film clearance under the board, for all the way up and down. Mount the film stationary, and attach the LED/LDR pair to the fader handle. Probably a little simpler to construct too. Dust, smoke, fading or aging of the film could be a problem. Now who's got an idea for a homebrew motorfader?

Hey that's great! What city are you in? Put me down for two and postage to Melbourne. PM me with the details.

There's also the heatgun method - hot air gun on the back, tap the board against the bench when the parts are loose. Also known as "Shake and bake" :)

Put me down for two, if you can take Paypal and ship to Australia.

I've just added a topic about software that can do this on the Mac or PC - emulate a Mackie or Logic Control on any MIDI hardware.

VMIDIJoy - software for Windows - separate versions for analogue and USB joysticks - X,Y and Z so potentially 6 knobs three or four(?) knobs per joystick port. Has a link to building the hardware. MIDI Toaster - another site with instructions, four knobs. A bunch more links from the CDM forums, including Mac software for USB joysticks. MIDI Controller software page from the Shareware Music Machine - Find "joystick" on this page - there's a few. There ya go!

Or you could take the guts out of two (or more) USB analogue joysticks - there's MIDI software for them too. You'd have four (or more) pots and a bunch of assignable buttons to press too. Here's some basic joystick port info to get you started - still not the link I'm looking for though :)

The joystick port supports two joysticks - that's four pots (X+Y x 2). I've seen software for using PC joysticks as MIDI controllers, then you just have to build a board with four pots wired up as if they were joysticks. I've seen it done (on the web) and it's a lot simpler starter project than a parallel port/PIC thing. If you were going that way, you might as well go all the way and make a simple MIDIbox. You can build one with as few as -one- pot. Let's see if anyone can beat me to googling up a link :-) Course, I guess a lot of new machines don't have the old soundcard joystick/MIDI port. You could stuff in an old soundcard just for this I suppose.

From the Create Digital Music blog: LC Xmu for Mac - $US 40 Wisemix MCmu for Windows - Eu 39

the photo's not loading for me (Firefox/ubuntu), anyone else?

Wooow swirly, lookit go round and round and round and round ...

mythicbeast, you realise the SID was made by the people who started Ensoniq? I must say the ESQ-1 is a nice synth for old-school digi/analog 8 bit CEM filtered fun. Around $200 or less for the rack module.

The problem is, the newer the Palm the less likely it will have a serial connection rather than USB.

The FPAAs look promising too. Field Programmable Analog Arrays. I think they are the ones on the Alesis development board, right stryd? I don't think MIDIbox community is all about cloning, I think it is more about originality. The SID and the FM are not clones, they have opened up enormous new possibilities for these old chips. A MIDIbox FPAA module would hopefully be just as extended and weird over time :) There is a lot of activity and websites around for cloning old analogs. Take a good look around and when you find one you like, add a MIDIbox design to it for control.

Nice as the 707 is for sequencing its own drums or triggering analogues with the seperate outs, it's -useless- for MIDI sequencing as it won't send MIDI notes in pattern write mode... no jamming to MIDI :-( BOO Roland, boo !! I'm looking for a 505 or a 626 for that reason. I like your thoughts on an ideal controller :)

Do you have any of this boatload for sale, MRE? :)

Both CME and M-Audio have announced cheap wireless MIDI units in the last week or so. The M-Audio one is built in to a small controller keyboard, and the receiver has USB and MIDI in and out. They are releasing a plug in (ie no keyboard) unit soon.

Yeah, what JR said.

And please tell us how it went, and the model of the LCD :)

Please do! When you have written something, the wiki is probably the best place for it :D:D

Episode 2 is up now.

stryd_one: excellent list. What about the old floorboard project? Only needs a PIC 16F and you could probably make it up on vector- or proto-board, as there's no PCB available from Smash.

My two are a "maybe" and with my budget for this month they are rapidly sliding towards a "no" so don't count mine.

And hit "home" first, then "search". Or open up the dropdown in the advanced search page and click all the forum boxes.