machinate

Hello again, I hope the exams went well? Anyway, I would love to help out with the testing, but I am too much of a novice to do anything useful, I think ::)

you'll need a soundcard that has at least two stereo outputs for this. I'd try to keep the two pieces separate.

Bump! I already ordered a gazillion buttons for my next project, but I'd still love to see a 4 ps/2 keyboard interface - Duggle?

very nice indeed - looks like an Ableton Live controller, yeah? Could you elaborate on the assignments and such? I see A/B buttons?

well it looks beautiful. :) I like interfaces with loads of buttons and compact design! :)

why not upload it to imageshack and let us all have a look at it? In a separate thread? You're likely to get a bit more help that way, I think...There are a bunch of Live users here. Andreas (enthusiastic Live-user)

Hey Lide, what kind of case is that? It looks modular?

I'm not in much of a rush. Just trying to get an elegant solution put together. I will start construction in a few weeks, case and core soldering first.

Hvor lang tid tog det dig at lodde kernen? (jeg håber det er okay at spørge på dansk ;) ) Andreas.

I read Non-detented somewhere - somehow that should give a higher resolution?

Well, my system can be realized with one din and two douts (8x16), which would be up to 2ms of latency, right? hmm. still inaudible. I'm ordering a big shipment of pcbs and all of that, I might just order the parts to do a midi128 and a 64E, my case is certainly big enough ;)... If the sooperfast matrix code is ready soon, I'll do one of those, if not I'm going two-core. I just liked the elegance of the matrix, and my case wouldn't get as cluttered with cables!

A few things I've been thinking about wrt this discussion: 1: I think one would have to set up one hell of a production line to actually make any *real* money building these controllers. How fast do you guys build your stuff? 2: It is very easy to stipulate to whomever you're building anything for that they shouldn't pollute a diy-forum, with specific questions best answered by the guy who actually built it. If my mechanic moves out of town, I don't start bugging the Fiat headquarters on how to replace my broken speakers ;) 3: Where do you draw the line between diy and non-diy? Currently I can order a kit, with a preprogrammed PIC, all the components, also the knobs and all of that from one dealer. The software bits are already out there, of course, thank god for that. I send my frontpaneldesign to schaeffer and they do *that* for me. Schaeffer makes money building my design. What is the difference??? It is an interesting exercise trying to find out what is going on. Of course I'm being the devil's advocate here, no offense Vercengetorex :), but the only difference diy and non-diy is x hours of soldering and assembly. I for one spend hundreds of hours, (I suspect it is even the bulk of my time spent) PLANNING the build, and *if* I made a deal with Verc. I'd sure as hell still feel like a diyer! I don't think anyone would feel like its not their project if it is handled like Vercengetorex proposes. Nor do I think he would feel very diy while doing it. He'd be a contractor. No more, no less. Does the diy community lose anything? well, if people are willing to *pay* other people to solder their boards, they prolly aren't potential diyers. That money would be going to doepfer instead... If anything, the builder gains a lot of experience by building many systems for others. Experience that he's very likely to share with us. Having said that I wouldn't dream of trying to make money of this. It's too flippin' hard. !!! Andreas/ Machinate...

A friend of mine is in negotiations with a Taiwanese company. He's trying to get a decent price on 2x80 lcds, I think with two inputs (?) They have to be custom made, so the end price is anybodys guess, really. Anyway, if that goes through, you can expect a bit of a group-buy thing going on. One 80x2 character display would be so much cooler than 2x40x2.

I 've been thinking about midi note interfaces Built much like a regular dj mixer: an encoder, 2 vertical sliders, one wide button below them and a row of buttons above. The encoder sets the main pitch. The left vertical slider would control the pitch across a scale type (pentatonic etc.), selected with the row of buttons. The right slider selects the octave. The wide button below the sliders could be thumb activated, so that both the scale step AND octave could be manipulated with each hand, for mad arp action. This could be done as a strap-on as well, the scale step selector as the neck of the guitar, octave buttons by the left thumb on the neck, and a velocity sensitive area as the body, but basically much like the one you suggest. The thing is to not let the slider work across the entire range of midi notes, but 2 -2½ octaves at most, otherwise you won't be able to hit specific notes to save your life. Also, forcing the notes to a specific key+scale would make playing it a lot easier.

you can get ps/2 compatible surplus touchpads for about 5€ all over the place, imagine hooking four of them up to a core! A ps/2 output would be useful as well, so that integrating "normal" touchpads and so on into our projects could be realized without leaving the midibox world. Can't wait to see what you come up with! :D Andreas

Thorstens first example did a complete scan in 8oµs, right? that's fast enough for my fingers ;) And I'd only need the dout for the matrix, LEDrings are not my cup o' tea, so using a newer design that hogs the entire dout section isn't a problem, either. A 512 matrix would be cool for doing big trigger installations as well!

Thanks for the swift reply guys! Jimhenry, I'm sorry, but I don't follow? wouldn't an 8by16 button matrix only tie up one Doutx4 chip - 8 pins and 16 pins on the dinx4? like here: http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp/mbhp_scan_matrix1.pdf -times two, of course. Also, wouldn't the 32 encoders only take up two dinx4s? - again, I'm referencing the .gifs on ucapps, they're so concrete :) http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp/mbhp_midibox64e_full.gif I'm very confused right now, but I reckon I'm learning as I go along ;) Yeah, but the thing is, I *do* need more. It might be a lot easier to take the midi0128 AND the 64E and stick both projects in the same box, they will work more or less "out-of-the-box", but it would mean a *lot* more soldering and wiring. I just really dig the elegance of the scanning matrix... Already been there, and I see you're quite the nameity on the button matrix :) I really appreciate it, guys. I'll throw my view in there as well. Being able to do 128 buttons and 32 encoders on one core would be awesome. I hope I figure it out! Cheers! Andreas

Hello people! I'm in the process of designing a large (77x40 cm) controller to fit inside an old keyboard case, making it super-portable. Basically it's a button matrix, 16x8 big arcade style ones, 32 encoders, a crossfader and some shift buttons. Basically I have two areas of concern: Ergonomics and the circuitry involved 1: Ergonomics A bit about me: I work exclusively in Ableton Live4, although I've started rewiring to reason on occasion. I am looking for a controller layout that lets me move about a bit whilst playing, making the whole thing a bit more physical than your average uc33 or what have you. I've printed out a 1:1 copy of the layout done in frontpaneldesigner, to check out the feel of it all. Standing in front of it it all looks very fine, but I obviously can't do a test gig with a 2x5 paper controller ;) here's a link to a crummy screengrab of the fpd file: http://server5.uploadit.org/files/Machinate-big_ass_midi_controller3.JPG So I was wondering if any of you experienced lot are using big-ish controllers for live performance, and could share some words of wisdom on the subject? Should I do it the other way around, ie knobs above the buttons? And any advice on where to stick my shift buttons would be most excellent 2: Circuits The original plan was to do 64 buttons and 32 encoders with the midibox64e, and use one of these for the remaining buttons: http://www.x-keys.com/custom/xkmatrix.php But reading up on recent development led me to believe that I would be able to do my desired 16*7 button matrix AND 32 encoders with one core unit. Am I way off base here? As I see it, I can just copy the 8*8 example shown here, and alter the code accordingly, although that might be easier to say than do ;) It wouldn't be a disaster, if I had to do two cores, since I don't plan on installing an lcd, and the shift buttons would only control part of the layout, but if I can avoid it using the appropriate matrix, i'd be very pleased. *Any* advice on these two things would be very much appreciated! Cheers Andreas/ Machinate