johnh

Sadly, everything I owned was consumed by wildfire in California this past August. All my gear, tools, house, car, etc. This thread could be deleted.

Cleaning house and found a number of unbuilt SmashTV kits, cores, dins, douts, ains, etc. any interest? Boards, components, and PIC chips...

I've got a SmashTV core kit around here *somewhere*... I'm in the USA, not sure if that makes it feasible or not. ---john.

Thanks Tk! Now I'm working to get I've got the board split into two pieces using a 'box-cutter' and multiple passes.

After some futzing around I think I successfully loaded the MIOS32 bootloader. I don't have my parts from SmashTV yet so I can't test it (or can I?) so could someone confirm, the LED blinks three times and then goes off and then comes on and stays on. Is this what I should be seeing? Thanks.

I believe forum user Robin Fawell may have done the most work on using MIDIbox to create an organ. You might search his older postings and email him to see what the current status of his project is. The MIDIIO128 project provides a base (switch inputs, control outputs) that you could build on top of but offers little organ functionality (relay) on its own. Jim's suggestion of using jOrgan has merit. You may also want to search for the work of Trevor Dodd who used jOrgan and MIDIbox to operate a Wurlitzer theatre organ.

Download a PDF of the patent here: Patent 5567902

YAPPI boards handle 73 notes (outputs) per board. There is a mode to combine two boards into 'one' if you have a rank with more than 73 pipes. You might also want to look at the Artisan micro MIDI boards [Website Here] for an off-the-shelf solution that isn't too expensive. Of course you could implement all these ideas yourself with the MIDIbox which is the whole purpose here anyway! :smile:

I suppose it would be of some use, shared treble pipes for instance, but generally the character of ranks in a very small organ are different enough that re-using them in a combined rank wouldn't work too well. I think you could probably devote an extra YAPPI board to the combined rank although you might need to include diodes to prevent back-feeding the other boards. Might work.

Yes, the YAPPI board accounts for this. What the YAPPI board doesn't handle is borrowing where pipes from different physical ranks are combined to make a new rank. In the organs in which YAPPI has been used so far there hasn't been a need for that.

This type of 'borrowing' happens all the time in a unit rank. It's not clear to me how you could retrigger the pipe in real-time without some fore knowlege that the note was about to be played again. I suppose you could just turn off the note, wait a short time, and then turn it back on but then the attack would be delayed with respect to other notes unless you delayed everthing...

Thanks for the reference to the patent application. I read it on google here unfortuantely the pdf download is not available. I'll have to check with Craig on the current status of the coupling operation. I don't think borrowing is implemented at present if you mean synthetic stops created by combining two separate ranks of pipes. I'll ask Craig about that as well.

Craig Williams designed those boards. I believe Pete Knobloch has built boards using the same concept. The web page is a bit dated. The boards now repond to MIDI CC 80/81 (just like Miditzer and several other organ systems). And yes it does push the 'relay' to the chest. Each board listens to all the MIDI traffic and keeps track of which notes are being played on which channels. This is necessary to handle the case where a chord is being held and a stop change is made. The board responsible for that stop has to know if any notes are currently on and turn on the corresponding pipes. It can get pretty complicated!

Yes, we generally use one YAPPI board per rank of pipes. There is a mode where it can drive a straight (multi-rank) chest but flexbility is lost. In a home organ the number of ranks is usually fairly small and the cost of the YAPPI board per rank is relatively low in the grand scheme of things.

Hi Trevor, Thanks for posting this. What type of SAMs are you using? Are you thinking of adding any code to check and make sure that the SAM acutally moved? I see that the Classic Drawknob Controller system is now on their website: Drawknob Controller They have a PDF showing the wiring of all the different drawknobs on the market. It's worth visiting the site just to download that! One feature of interest is this: "Calibrates power for each draw knob individually". It will be interesting to see if any information on how this is done comes to light!

Unification requires playing a single rank of pipes at multiple pitches. Say I have a 97 note rank of stopped flutes that I want to play at 16, 8, 4, and 2 foot pitches. Lets say the unification is handled in the console. If I turn on the four stops and start playing single notes, the processor in the console determines that four MIDI messages must be sent to the pipe chest. If I play a three note chord, 12 MIDI messages must be sent to the chest. And when I let up another 12 MIDI messages must be sent. For each key I press and release 4 Note On and 4 Note Off messages must be sent to the chest. In the YAPPI boards that I mentioned previously the unification happens at the chest. When the 16, 8, 4, and 2 stops are turned on a MIDI message is sent to the chest. Then when notes are played, a single Note On and a single Note Off is sent to the chest for each note. The board at the chest figures out which pipes need to be played. Far fewer MIDI events need to be sent over the wire. The location of the 'unification' processing has a large bearing on the amount of MIDI traffic required. Couplers (especially between manuals) have the same issues.

MIDI over Ethernet, MIDI over USB, or, depending on whether you need to interface to a lot of 'standard' gear, just speed up the MIDI data rate itself. Classic Organ Works / Midi Works of Canada does sell the MIDIjet wireless MIDI interface. I've experimented with wireless MIDI over the Xbee wireless modules. MIDI is plenty fast enough for a pipe organ *if* the coupling/unification happens at the chamber end and not at the console end. A friend has built and I use MIDI pipe driver boards with 'built-in' unification. The information is a little dated (we've evolved a little past this point) but the concepts are still valid: YAPPI Board It's a PIC based board that can play a rank of pipes at any of the 'standard' pitches.

Wireless is certainly possible but do you really need it? Very few organs have wireless consoles, virtually all of them have at least a power cable and signal cable of some sort coming from them. With a serial interface (MIDI or faster) you need nothing more than a CAT-5 cable between the console and where ever the pipes are being controlled from.

I don't know if it kosher to advertise my eBay auction here but anyway if some moderator wants to delete this post fine by me. With that out of the way I put 10 motor faders / pots on eBay as a lot. I bought them a couple of years ago for a Midibox project but never got around to building it. If my asking price is out-of-line, let me know. Thanks! Fader auction I'm in the US and have never shipped internationally before. Not sure how much extra work is involved.

I think I've been away even longer. I am still interested in this project but at this point am not able to even think about it again until the New Year. I'll check back in.

I've been working in the lab but don't have anything near completion yet... ;)

Or get multiple MIDI<->USB interfaces and let Miditzer handle the 'merging'.

I could borrow one...

Well, I've done some testing now and have since upgraded the original XBee's to the Pro version in an attempt to get better range. I'm using the ones with 'chip antennas' and I understand you can get much better range if you use proper external antennas. The Pro radios work around the lower level of my house, around/through walls, etc. I've pumped a lot of MIDI sequences through without any obvious issues, and would be happy to do some real testing if y'all let me know what you want to see and how to do it. I'll give it a shot at least. As an aside, for MIDI I'm using a Roland serial driver and not the Korg driver mentioned on LadyAda's site. I couldn't get the Korg driver to work properly.