jimhenry

My wiring guide should help get the LCD going: http://www.midibox.org/users/jim_henry/building_a_midibox_lcd_cable.pdf

You don't need an LCD but it will make your life much easier if you have it. You'll be able to see the core properly loading the software and then see what inputs the project is recognizing and what outputs it thinks it is sending. With 32 inputs and 64 outputs you'll want all the clues you can get. After you sucessfully build one project, then you can consider building one without an LCD, but I bet you won't want to.

You might want to ask the question in Design Concepts with a better explanation of what you are trying to accomplish. MIDIfication is mostly people who are connecting on/off switches to MIDIfy keyboards and organ consoles. There is not as much experience with continuous controllers like faders here as in other areas of the forum.

I think Per was saying you don't need an AIN board which is for continuous type analog inputs such as a potentiometer. The switches of the pedals are on/off devices and they are read with a DIN board because on/off switches are considered digital devices. So if you make a CORE module and a DIN module you will have the necessary hardware to use the MIDIO128 project to connect your pedal switches. You should provide an LCD display on the CORE module because it simplifies knowing what is going on.

Yes, this is exactly the way it works. You do need a diode for every switch to avoid some other problems and I have a writeup that I am working on for scanned matrices that explains this.

Repeatability of the potentiometer output will be important. I would think 60 degrees would be enough to get the resolution needed for a swell pedal. Adding additional mechanical components could create lost motion that will more than offset any improvement from the increased electrical output. Keep in mind that I haven't done anything with potentiometer input, much less build a swell pedal. You might want to hook the pot to a MIDIO128 and see if the 60 degrees will be satisfactory before you begin mechanical construction.

I was thinking of using the same shift register string but different pins for switches and LEDs. Now that you mention it, the "selector" output pins might be sharable between switches and LEDs. So you might be able to do 64 switches and 64 LEDS with 16 output pins and 8 input pins.

There are several "Example Applications" for LED matrices on the MIOS Download page: http://www.ucapps.de/mios_download.html Note that LED digits are LED matrices too. MIDI Box SID uses a real 8x8 LED matrix. If you want to combine a switch matrix and an LED matrix in one project, it will be easier to use "sm example1". The superfast version may use tricks in the way it handles DOUT that would make it hard to do two different things with DOUT.

If you want an Opcode 64x, shop on eBay. They are light so shipping should not be prohibative. It shouldn't cost anywhere near 150£ where you live (that's in Sweden) unless you have a really bad customs situation or I am seriously off base on the exchange rate.

By default MIDI-OX provides a MIDI Event to MIDI Out connection for every Out. That allows MIDI-OX to send MIDI-OX generated events like loaded SysExes. You won't need a MIDI In to MIDI Out connection for programming a MIDI Box. In to Out can be very useful for a performance setup when you are using MIDI to make music.

Look for an Opcode Studio 64x on eBay. It gives you 4 MIDI devices over a serial connection. It is no longer supported but mine has worked absolutely flawlessly for a year. They usually are pretty inexpensive, less than the cost of a nice case and 8 MIDI sockets.

Is your plan to get the MIDIbox working first and then connect the console to the MIDIbox incrementally? That is the approach I am using because once the MIDIbox works it becomes a fast way to check the console wiring. You can temporarily configure stops to send Note On/Off and hear whether things are working as you go. Will your MIDIbox be a CORE, DIN, and DOUT? If you have a full DIN and DOUT it is easy to change the dimensions of the matrix by changing the software. I hope that changing the software will be easy too. ::) Have you made any decisions about what matrix dimensions you will use? I chose to make my DIN 32 bits wide to allow large groups of switches to share a common bus. I have a wired pipe organ console that I am working on and it has 122 key contacts on a common bus. I'll have to divide that into 4 busses. I will use 16 DOUT bits to select busses to give me 512 inputs. If I made the matrix 24x24 I could get 576 inputs with the same number of wires but I would have to divide my keyboards to have 6 busses. Right now, I have an 8x8 matrix working. If you want something other than 16x32 I should do that next as it sounds like you are closer to wiring something up than I am. So far I have half of my diode matrix built and it will be at least another month before that is finished. It will probably be another month after that to assemble the whole MIDIbox which will be a panel that goes in the back of the console to receive all the existing console wires, none of which is color coded or identified. Then I start tracing hundreds of wires to connect the console to the MIDIbox.

My idea is that I don't want pipes at home. The care and feeding of pipes is just more than I can handle in my house. I do all the things you talked about in a C++ program running on a PC. Since I use PC hardware, SoundBlaster, to generate the sound it doesn't matter to me whether the relay function is done on the PC or in the MIDIbox. Putting the relay in a PC rather than a MIDIbox means I don't need to think so hard about being efficient. I only need MIDIbox to convert console keyswitch contacts to MIDI. Are you planning to use the switch matrix in your project? If so, I better get busy and release something for that project.

What you propose is possible but very ambitious. If you want to do that, I think it will be better to learn PIC assembler than C. Since you can't afford the pipes right now, have you tried any of the virtual organs? Hauptwerk http://www.hauptwerk.co.uk/ is good for classical organs. My program, Miditzer http://www.miditheatreorgan.com/, is a theatre organ, highly unified in the way you propose. jOrgan http://www.meiers.net/sven/ is written in Java. Not only will these give you some immediate gratification, they will give you a chance to learn more about how organs work. There are commercial solutions for connecting consoles to pipes. Unless you value your time at nothing, you probably will come out ahead using a commercial solution. Look at Opus Two http://207.236.55.58/users/opustwo/index.html for example.

No wires are soldered to the pins on the upper side. The long pins that you see in the picture are connected with a connector that is plugged onto the pins. If you want to connect two boards with soldered wires, then the wires go straight into the holes of the circuit board. Yes, it's bad. Mechanical connection are a common source of problems in electrical circuits. You don't want unneeded connections. The only difference between the white connectors and the black connectors is that the white connector provide extra plastic support for the mating connector to make the connection more reliable. You can substitute the "second kind" pin connectors.

No wires are soldered to the pins on the upper side. The long pins that you see in the picture are connected with a connector that is plugged onto the pins. If you want to connect two boards with soldered wires, then the wires go straight into the holes of the circuit board. Yes, it's bad. Mechanical connection are a common source of problems in electrical circuits. You don't want unneeded connections. The only difference between the white connectors and the black connectors is that the white connector provide extra plastic support for the mating connector to make the connection more reliable. You can substitute the "second kind" pin connectors.

I think the two connectors you are describing can be plugged together. They can be used to plug two boards together. Most people use the 2nd kind of connector (pins) on the CORE and DIN boards. You have to find a connector to go on your cable that mates with the pins. This is usually a crimp on terminal that is then snapped into a plastic housing. You can find this type of connector in scrap PC wiring harnesses I think. I'm lucky. The shop I go to has new connectors at a good price. ;D This picture shows the connector on the CORE board at the bottom toward the left:

I think the two connectors you are describing can be plugged together. They can be used to plug two boards together. Most people use the 2nd kind of connector (pins) on the CORE and DIN boards. You have to find a connector to go on your cable that mates with the pins. This is usually a crimp on terminal that is then snapped into a plastic housing. You can find this type of connector in scrap PC wiring harnesses I think. I'm lucky. The shop I go to has new connectors at a good price. ;D This picture shows the connector on the CORE board at the bottom toward the left:

The CORE board from Smash TV has 5 holes for a SIL connector J9 and the DIN board has provisions for a similar connector. A simple straight across cable identical on both ends connects DIN to the CORE. I imagine boards from Mike's are similar. Also the layout on Thorsten's site.

The CORE board from Smash TV has 5 holes for a SIL connector J9 and the DIN board has provisions for a similar connector. A simple straight across cable identical on both ends connects DIN to the CORE. I imagine boards from Mike's are similar. Also the layout on Thorsten's site.

Thanks to Synapsys for the link to the excellent article on audio grounding. One thing that was probably confusing in my post is that if the shield is to be connected at only one end, and yes that is a legitimate arrangement for some situations despite any impression of the article to the contrary, the cable should connect the shield at both ends. It is the equipment that should connect or not connect the ground as appropriate. This link shows how MIDI cabling is supposed to be handled http://www.midi.org/about-midi/electrical.shtml which is that MIDI In connectors should not connect pin 2 which is the pin that the shield is connected to. The cable should connect the shield at both ends so that it won't matter if the cable is turned around. There are two major concerns about shields. One is making them effective as shields so they reduce rather than cause noise in low level signals. The other is safety. You don't want dangerous potentials to appear on exposed metal parts under any possible malfunction. Not bringing mains power inside your chassis is a good start on the safety aspect. You are correct that the shielding on the microphone has to be connected through the cable to ground in the mixer. If the mixer is a commercial item it should be arranged so it is not possible to have a dangerous potential appear on the shield.

If you are in the US I'd suggest using the kits supplied by SmashTV http://mbhp.coinoptech.com/. In Europe look at http://www.mikes-elektronikseite.de/midiseite.htm. After you've built a working project you will be in a better position to "roll your own" if you still want to go that route.

If you are in the US I'd suggest using the kits supplied by SmashTV http://mbhp.coinoptech.com/. In Europe look at http://www.mikes-elektronikseite.de/midiseite.htm. After you've built a working project you will be in a better position to "roll your own" if you still want to go that route.

When I am ready to go I'll email SmashTV. We can use the Switch Matrix project as a test run for what can be done with these types of projects. It's not like we are popping out this sort of stuff at the rate of dozens a day. ;)

When I am ready to go I'll email SmashTV. We can use the Switch Matrix project as a test run for what can be done with these types of projects. It's not like we are popping out this sort of stuff at the rate of dozens a day. ;)