Lall

Hi, Given the current speed at which I'm working, I vote for November ... ... 2010 ;) Serisously now, November gives indeed a bit more time but if the date is in June it's fine too. Maybe June would add some extra motivation to find time to have better progress... Best regards, Lall

That indeed looks amaaaazing. Excellent job! I'd also be interested to know where the illuminated buttons come from. Best regards, Lall

Unfortunately I don't know. I did look at the datasheets few months ago to see what the theoretical max load was and I think it was quite smaller than 800mA if I remember correctly. Then I wanted to measure the load of the LCD, the core and the SID on my Step A SID but I've used an old PSU I made but never put in a box and the regulator moved I don't know how but finally I think I've got Vin instead of Vout on the 5V line. By chance I did my first experiment without the SID on-board but the PIC and the LCD are dead :( and I haven't repaired the stuff yet... Maybe you can find that info on this forum, there was once a discussion about the load of the Core and other different parts so maybe the 9V line is also there. Best regards, Lall

It's for me as well :( Given the comments above, I can hardly stand waiting to them... Bring back the pics, bring back the pics!! :D Lall

Hi, As far as I've heard from colleagues using LDO frequently, good choices for standard LDO's can be found at TI or National. More specific and specialized ones can be found by Linear Technologies for example. You have to use their parametric search tool to find the ones that best suit your needs and then compare the found items with what you can get from your shop/supplier/... Looking at the TI website, I've found this one: http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tlv1117.pdf that could do the job apparently. There are also quite others to be found. In that document they explain shortly how to use it and the recommended conditions. My colleague also brought my attention on the fact that the main voltage can vary quite a big +/-10% so does the secondary voltage. As a consequence, you can have quite some variations at the input of the regulator and therefore you need to choose it to support enough at the input for example 15V max. Best regards, Lall

Hi, Indeed, you have to have the usual bridge rectifier to transform the AC into unregulated DC followed by the regulator between your transformer and the SID's 9V input. The 9V AC output of your transformer should give you 12.6V peak voltage (Vpeak = Vrms * sqrt(2) or 9 * 1.4 in this case). With the usual full wave recitifier, you'll loose two times the drop voltage of the diodes used in the bridge. This makes ~0.6V * 2 leaving ~11.6V peak. You'll loose again still some voltage due to the capacitor used before the regulator, the bigger the capacitor the better. In the end, you will have to use a LDO regulator I believe otherwise with a normal regulator you won't have enough voltage at its input to have it work properly. Maybe you'll want to double check these computations/assumptions and also pay attention to the fact that the voltage at the output of a transformer has a tendency to go down as the current grows. Maybe you'll have to reserve one of the secondaries for the 9V stuff only to make sure that the current is limited and the drop at the transformer too. Best regards, Lall

Hi, As mentioned by Ultra: As mentioned by TK: So from these two docs: - for the base SEQ you need 3 DINx4 and 1 DOUTx4 which turns into 10x 74HC165 (not 12 as two are unstuffed) and 4x 74HC595. - for the extension you need as extra 2 DINx1 and 6 DOUTx1 which turns into 2x 74HC165 and 6x 74HC595. Best regards, Lall

As far as I remember from reading this forum, someone once said a Core was consuming around 100-120 mA. The consumption of the DIN and DOUT alone is close to neglictable I believe but of course you need to count the consumption of the LEDs which you can derive from the resistors you've chosen. Concerning the SID, I must say I've no clue and I don't remember if it was part of the post mentioned above. For the screen, you should take a look at the datasheet of the model you have and watch out if you have a LED or an EL backlight. Before looking at the projected power consumption of my SEQ, I had no clue what the difference was and there's a factor or more than 10 in power consumption. Anyway, the 20x2 LED backlight screen I own a consumption of 250-300mA. For the SEQ ones i.e. 40x2, it's even worse as it goes up to 550-600mA which is amolst half of the overall power consumption. Best regards, Lall

Hi Napierzaza, The base SEQ contains 3 DINx4 and 1 DOUTx4 with the last DINx4 that is half stuffed. In total it translates into 10x 74HC165 and 4x 74HC595 chips. Maybe give a second look to: http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_seq_v2.html Best regards, Lall

Hi, For the LDO on the 5V line, I'm not sure it's really useful. The battery or 7809 should have enough voltage for the usual ~2V drop anyway and it will not bring anything from power dissipation point of view. Maybe it would be more interesting for the 9V line as you're closer from the battery voltage. Concerning the usual regulators, you have to watch out that the dissipated power is given by (Vout - Vin) * Iload. So for a load of 800mA on the 5V output with 12V input, you get 5.6 Watts to dissipate. In the end you have to foresee significant heatsink if you don't want to have a 7805 toaster ;). With the usual 220V approach, the good thing is that you can of course choose your transformer to minimize the voltage difference and reduce the power dissipated which is not possible with batteries. I think that you have to look for the amount of current taken by each and every part and check what the best option is. Maybe you'll have to put several 78xx in parallel to have enough capacity. Another solution could also be to use a 78xx doing the regulation and another transistor to handle the actual big current, the schematic of this was posted already once here. In any case, the power dissipated will be the same and the heatsink will have to be scaled accordingly. I was myself pretty surprised to see the potential load of the SEQ I'm working on right now though most is coming from the LCD's backlight LED. As far as I know but I'm no expert in the field, the only workaround from power dissipation point of view is to use a switching power supply but that's usually not recommended for audio stuff. Best regards, Lall

Waouw, amazing work! I think one can speak about Beauty when looking at this, simply... I quite like the concept of freezing the modularity at some point when the design is clear and fixed and then go for such a clean, "wireless" and kind of pro solution. Best regards, Lall

Hi all, I've got to learn lately about the following modules: http://dsb.tracopower.com/PPF/PublisherID/tracopower/KundenID/tracopower/VKundenID/tracopower/S/2/Anbieter/24409/anchor/TOP/Branche/6958/L2Mnu/0/Level/3/Mode/STANDARD/NavigationLevel/0/NFP/00101/OrigAnbieter/24409/PM/5/ShowNav/1/ShowSubNav/1/ShowTitle/1/DSB_Anbieter_03_Shw.asp These are pretty cool beasts that take AC as an input and provide 1 or more regulated outputs. Drawback is that there's no 9V output available and that they are rather expensive but on the other hand building the same kind of PSU from scratch also costs quite a lot. I'm seriously considering to use one of these in my SEQ as in this case the potential noise it may generate if of less importance and that these modules are quite small and do not heat. Best regards, Lall

Hello Napierzaza, The best you can do to get information on that new PIC stuff is to read that page: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=mios_pic18f4620. For the worry on changes in the hardware, take a look at this one: http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_seq_v3_wishlist.html I'm currently working (awfully slowly though) on the SEQ and I've ordered the stuff based on the current DIN/DOUT/Bankstick/Core part list with the exception of the PIC where I'll directly take the new one. "Old" applications can run on the new one so there's no problem there. One thing to add, as mentioned in the PIC18f4620 page, is the IIC MIDI module (http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_iic_midi.html) as the new PIC has a bug in the EUSART; you can find lots of discussion on the forum on this issue. If you browse the forum about the SEQ v3, you'll also see possibilities/suggestions of adding extra buttons and a BPM display I think. Best regards, Lall

Hi, If it's for a home-made PSU, I would be careful betting that only one 7805 is enough for a complete 4xCore + 4xSID + backlight + DIN/DOUT/LEDs. Indeed, as said previously in the post, for 4xCore + 4xSID, you already come at a consumption of ~1A. When using LCD backlight, you easily consume hundreds of mA and the same applies for the LEDs. Some 7805 out there are supposed to deliver 1A and some others 1.5A. If you get a 1A one, you will put it down on its knees with a quad SID. With a 1.5A one I guess it should fit most of the time. Depending on the current needed by the backlight and on the resistances chosen with the LEDs, I would add a second 7805. There's also another possibility (I think I saw it in a topic here too) of using a 7805 for the voltage regulation and another transistor to deliver the current. Anyway a very good heat sink is a must... Best regards, Lall

Bon anniversaire Torsten Best regards, Lall

Hi all, I would expect that the main problem of screens getting old and less bright is on the backlight side, isn't it? If that is so then using some IO to disable (or reduce) the powering of the backlight will be really necessary next to using this D flag that apparently is not linked with the backlight (at least that's not mentioned in the datasheet). Anyway, that's really a very good idea. Best regards, Lall

Hi Doug, That's simply amazing!!! :o How have you succeeded into putting all the stuff in such a small box? Best regards, Lall

Indeed, you got it right. I only looked at the website. I know what I have to do next time I've such a question ;) Best regards, Lall

Hi Stryd_one, Thanks for the pointing out. Sorry for not having carefully RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual) :-[ Best regards, Lall

Hi Thorsten, I'm reading about the improvement on the flickering with the separate DIN and DOUT ISR. Am I assuming correctly that there's no change in hardware required in order to get that improvement working? When I'm looking at the Core schematic (v3 from June06), I see that Rc and Sc are common to both DIN and DOUT and I was actually wondering how you could solve this issue purely with software. Best regards, Lall

Yazoo

Hi Rio, You can find all details concerning the Miss Parker project from there: http://www.axoris.be/ You can find on the website all needed files to build a Miss Parker yourself. The only nasty issue is the fact that the PCB is such that you have to have it made by some specialized companies, I mean you can't make it yourself. From the website, you'll also see that even though we're using the same kind of components than on the Wavefront's evaluation board, we've quite a different board. We have an EZ-USB as a micro-controller which the eval board does not have and so on. If I remember correctly, the BOM of Miss Parker must come close to 150 euros. Concerning the difference between the AL3101 and the AL3201, they are different beasts. [table] [tr][td][/td][td]AL3101[/td][td]AL3201[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Presets available [/td][td]No[/td][td]Yes, 16 presets available[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Good at [/td][td]filtering, compression/distortion, ... [/td][td]reverb, chorus/flange, ... [/td][/tr] [tr][td]data memory size [/td][td]1024 words[/td][td]32k words[/td][/tr] [tr][td]program memory size [/td][td]1024 instructions [/td][td]128 instructions [/td][/tr] [tr][td]arithmetic [/td][td]fixed-point [/td][td]floating-point [/td][/tr] [/table] For Miss Parker, we've started with the AL3101 but we added an extra AL3201 when it went in the market as we were not able to do reverb with the AL3101. Both have pros & cons but I guess that having one of each in the system makes sense. Best regards, Lall

Hi Rio, Yes, you will need AD/DA converters as the AL3101/AL3201 are purely digital chips. As I've seen from the Wavefront forum or docs I don't remember, you can use some other (and cheaper) chips for AD/DA conversion like some from Philips if I remember correctly. Of course the interest of the AL1101 and AL1201 is that they are 24-bits AD/DA that integrate without any issue with the AL3101/AL3201. Wavefront Semiconductors is having a distributor in Great Britain, Profusion (http://www.profusionplc.com/). Apparently you have to buy components by 5. We've been successfully ordering some in Belgium in the past so I believe that Germany will be no issue. There used to be free shipping from certain amounts onwards but I don't find that anymore on their site. Best regards, Lall

Hi Steve, Wouaw, great job! I wanted to do such a thing in the past and also the combination of a slave Core + SID but never really started seriously. I think I'll come to such a concept when I'll start with my Step-C Quad-SID, my current Step-A Mono-SID is using separate boards as usual and I quite like the elegance of a stand-alone single board doing it all. It's less flexible but quite clean with much less wiring... Best regards, Lall

Hi TK, I'm just back from holidays and that's a very good news I'm reading now :) I need to take a look at what it would mean to get my parameters from the I2C. I will give a little thinking to all this and contact you later about it. I think I will have by then some questions regarding the overall system integration... Best regards, Lall