stryd_one

For things that you only use from time to time, you could use a jogwheel and a menu... Do you really need LED rings? Doesn't the value of the encoder get shown on the computer screen anyway? But it sounds to me like all your controls will work well as absolute controllers so at the end of the day, it's best to do what fits your needs best, not what everyone else needs :)

Definitely... I'd recommend trying a few different ages though, because a small UDMA5 drive might not work, where a small PIO drive may, etc... Will depend on the vintage of the controller.

Heya Jim :) Sounds like maybe you could use some of the code from the new router app?

Well I'm glad that your apprehension isn't something worse than that... I thought maybe I had screwed something up :) Regarding the dual-SPI or Dual-I2C, it really won't be very hard to implement at all, that part I am 99% confident about. The other 1% is about the circuitry side, but I'm sure I can make the PIC do it. Don't even worry about that bit :) Thanks for the lowdown on true bypass, I know what you mean now, just didn't know it had a name ;) . I'll keep looking... Found this, thought it might be of interest: http://members.shaw.ca/roma/switching.html Now, as for the fine/coarse pots and all that jazz... What I was thinking was this: <insert screeching tyres here> Now this is hilarious... I typed for an hour or three with all these ideas and diagrams and stuff and just found this: http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Application_Notes/20666174AN582.PDF Seems I'm re-inventing the wheel ;) Check out that PDF, you'll see where I'm going... and you'll see what I was yet to discover too :) I'm bummed that I just spent a week on this only to find out that analog devices had already done the same work and more, but it's nice to know I was on the right track... some of my schematics are identical to theirs :) Note Figure 6... After thinking all day, I came up with that schematic, no longer than 10 minutes before I found the PDF... laughed my ass off at the irony of it ;D that's a resolution bit-doubler, so it takes it from 6 bit to 12 bit... Using 8 bit/256 step pots will take it to 16bit, which is way more than we would use as NRPN's are 14 bit and I can't think of any more high res realtime MIDI than that... I want to make it so that you can use a single board with normal 256 step pots like what you're planning, and then have an addon board that shares all the digital lines except the data line, and inserts another digipot (or two) in order to increase the resolution. That way someone can go 8bit (single digipot, 256 steps) and if that turns out to be insufficient, simply rewire to include the fine digipot board - I was thinking of a daughterboard actually... remove jumpers from a DIL connector, and plug on a daughterboard with more pots for higher resolution. Change a constant in the application so it knows that pot X is fitted with the daughterboard and drives it accordingly and upload it again, and you're set to go. That way, like you said, we can go ahead with making the single-pot board and then maybe expand upon it. Gotta walk before we can run!

<insert encouranging and thankful one-liner here> ;D This thing is truly awesome mate! As a guy who can write ASM in his sleep but has to code an app in C which he has never used before, you have no idea how badly I have wanted something just like this. Fan-freakin-tastic. ooh look your karma just grew again, how did that happen?! ;)

It's all good mate :) I wouldn't have bothered answering all those questions, obviously TK has some inside knowledge on this subject. MAX/MSP can definitely send sysex :)

8) Wow that's a nice find :D I've been using UltraEdit with highlighting turned on, but I don't get built in compiling and debugging with that Thanks koki!

See this is why we all worship TK, he obviously know the answers to some of my questions before you even answered ;D TK, the Omnipotent One! hehehe

Cheers mate! Good call! ;D Moebius is going to bash me if I keep being such a smartarse :-X ;)

Hi MayBites :) I have to ask lots of questions so I can get a better idea of the situation before I can help. Can you tell me: So what framerate are you running at? Have you tried slowing to something very slow like 1 frame per 2 seconds? Does that work? Hae you Captured the output from MAX to a MIDI file? How many bytes are you sending? Are they evenly spaced or do they slow down in the file too? Are there any bytes being sent which are unnecessary or unwanted? Have you tried sending this MIDI file out to the px1m0d from a midi file player of some sort (Cut max out of the loop)? Do I ask too many questions? :)

Never! ;)

No!

Nicely spotted, keep us posted mate :) Could be nice to embed one of those suckers in a case with a SID or FM ....

Yep, typo :) Really? Oh I'm disappointed I thought I might have found a good solution... Why the apprehension? Just 'fear of the unknown', or something else? Totally... But can we? This is the part where I confess ignorance... Uhm... What? (Edit: I should say, I know what SPDT/DPDT is but not what 'true bypass' means) Well you could, but it wouldn't truly be in sync, because they'd be on different clock lines etc...

Sorry but I make many "stupid one-liners" and I intend to continue doing so. I talk on forums etc the same way that I talk in real life. I like to think that I'm a friendly guy and I like to encourage people and lend my support, even if that support only consists of the fact that I am there, letting the person know that I think what they're doing is cool. And yeh, if you think that the forums calling you a guru means that you are one... well... WRONG! look at me! ;D hehehe At least I know what the "Frequent Writer" thing is now, it's the secret MIOS "Old Boys Club" ;) I'll make sure I try and give you guys something to talk about ;)

Switches: http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Data_Sheets/34346341663340ADG714_5_B.pdf ADG714 (SPI) or ADG715 (I2C) 8 switches in 1 IC, controlled by whichever buss we choose for the digipots Something I just noticed, these are TSSOP packages... Personally I don't care, it might be SMD but it's not like we'll be desoldering or anything...

OK I know you can find them in the base of air regulators in paintball guns and sex toys ;) I think it's just a matter of visiting hardware/plumbing/fish/automotive etc stores and looking around.

(Pretty much) Everyone around here uses Eagle, so.....

Yeh that's it, it would be a shame to turn away from such a solution when that's the only drawback. And maybe we'll have a way around that, and if you can beat the digital interference, well... We will have kicked this things ass :) Ahhh! Where's your confidence mate?! ;D Yeh they'll work in series just like a normal resistor :) Well here's the trick... We have a 10k? digipot and a 1k? digipot, each with 256 steps... This means steps of 40? and 4?... So we can do this: Value 10k 1k 0 0 0 4 0 1 8 0 2 12 0 3 16 0 4 20 0 5 24 0 6 28 0 7 32 0 8 36 0 9 40 1 0 44 1 1 48 1 2 52 1 3 56 1 4 60 1 5 64 1 6 68 1 7 72 1 8 76 1 9 80 2 0 84 2 1 etc etc Problem with this is that the digipots are serial, so the pots can only change value one at a time, the values would either go Value 10k 1k 32 0 8 36 0 9 0 0 0 <<< only one pot changes (fine) 40 1 0 44 1 1 Value 10k 1k 32 0 8 36 0 9 76 1 9 <<< only one pot changes (coarse) 40 1 0 44 1 1 As you can see we would need to change both values simultaneously or we'll get a big jump (as fast as it may be)... But... What we could do is make a dual SDO SPI implementation, so that we could use one clock and one chip select for both digipots, but send different control values to each digipot by having dual data lines. It just means adding another wire to the digpots, and writing bit-banged SPI (perhaps based on the existing IIC code) instead of using the built-in SPI implementation on the chip. Now unfortunately I made a funny math error last time, so I'll try again hehehehe 10k pot / 256 steps = 40Ohm +/-1 1k pot / 256 steps = 4Ohm +/-0.1 This means we can get 10 steps of the fine pot for each 1 of the coarse pot. That's 2560, over 11-bit. But hey, while we're chaining up resistors, why not play some more ;) If we run two of the 1k digipots, doing the same thing at the same time (so not needing extra wires, just connect to the same CS, CLK and SDO lines), in parallel, then we get a 500k digipot. This means each step is half the magnitude, and we can get twice as many :) That means 20 fine steps per coarse steps, which is 5120, better than 12 bit. This is really cool because if this works then we should be able to chain them further... And each time we chain them further, we get finer resolution. It could easily be implemented that the MBFX software could be told how many 1k pots are connected in parallel and use the appropriate amount of steps of the fine pot before stepping the coarse pot. For example, with 4 1k digipots in parallel, we would get 40 fine 1ohm steps per each 1 of the 40ohm course steps, that's 10000 steps, better than 13 bit... For example, with 8 1k digipots in parallel, we would get 80 fine 1ohm steps per each 1 of the 40ohm course steps, that's 20000 steps, better than 14 bit... Every time you double the amount of 1k digipots linked in parallel, you increase the equivalent bitrate by 1. And you could just keep going on adding pots and making finer resolution if you're that crazy about it :) But me personally, I say if 12-bit is good enough for TK then it's good enough for me, so I would need a 10k pot followed by two parallel 1k pots. What you think? While I'm at it, some AD digipots which caught my eye as having possibly useful features: AD5254 (Quad) and AD5252 (Dual) These are nonvolatile (so they remember their settings when they're powered up, they talk I2C (much easier to implement seeing as it's already done! All we'd have to do is pick the 2nd data line ;) ) support synchronous update of the wipers (saves on wiring and board size, which is good for conversions) reading the wipers (don't know why you would but it's interesting!) and can work in linear or logarithmic mode which enhances compatibility.... Oh and they have a separate Digital Ground pin for avoiding interference - I thought that might interest you. There's also the AD8403 and 8402, which are quad and dual, and they have a separate analog ground for every pot. I think this could also help with the noise but the problem is that it would require modifying existing circuitry. I really like those 5254's though! Food for thought eh.... Now I'm off to look for nice switches :) Edit forgot those IC's

Could you get clear plastic washers? I've seen black rubber washer things that look just like those... Kids in school used to wear them like rings... Note, I mean pipe washers, not nut&bolt washers...

Ahhh I understand now, sorry! You can use a scanning matrix for large numbers of buttons...But then the keyboard hack should be cool too :) And useful in lots of ways :)

Firstly, you could test those resistors with a multimeter instead of frying them :) But hey, if you like the smell ;) heheheh Thanks for the formula and method of doing this :) I have taken a long time to wrap my head around it but I think it's OK. I think that maybe the radix/racine/wurzel aus is called something different, I can't find any reference to it in the context that you have used... I think maybe it is the same as what we call the Square Root... Does it look like a sort of 'tick'? ? square root ? ohm Now we can cutnpaste those characters...maybe :\

Nice find :) I have to learn C some time or other, I might do this as a 'Hello World' :) Will you help me out? I'll probably need it!

Good luck with this... Many have thought of it, but AFAIK none have tried.... yet :)

If doing this keyboard hack for the specific hardware becomes too difficult maybe you could try to finish off the PS2-IIC converter? That way you could use any PS/2 keyboard just by plugging it in :)