rambinator

Thanks for the suggestions, I like the idea of glueing the leds. What size of vectorboard is this: http://www.midibox.org/midibox_lc_photos/19.jpg ? It is big enough for 8 strips....

Thanks a lot, that should be the reason. I don't even have the pots yet (I am saving money for alps motorfaders). So my midibox seems to be working :) and I can begin with the enclosure.

Hi folks! Today I got the displays to work ;D The problem was some sort of glue-layer sticking to pin d7 of j15 for some unknown reason. i rubbed it off with a screwdriver and know it works great. The onlay question remaining at the moment is if the random pitchbend data is something that is normal... cheers rambinator

I wish everyone on this board a happy and sucessfull year 2005!!! cheers rambinator

The contrast problem might be that the wallplug psu is to weak with 500mw because it gets worse the more components i connect... I also uploaded the crc-check-utility and it returns the correct string via sysx but not on the display, that means theres something wrong with the displays but i havent figured out what it could be yet, just tested every connection again. Is there something i could test at the data pins of j15 with a voltmeter or a scope?

I came across the same problem with the heigths of encoders and switches when I planned to lay them out on a vector board and I also decided to have seperate boards. Does anybody have experience in doing this for a midiboxLC with vectorboards? Is it possible to organise the ledrings with their resistors on a vectorboard or should I make custom pcbs (which I wanted to avoid generally). Does anyone know where to get vectorboards big enough to cover the whidth of eight fader strips? especially in germany (I only managed to get eurocards, I saw double-eurocards at conrad but they cost 12€ :( ) cheers rambinator

Hi folks! I've now finnished most of the parts of my midibox LC and have entered the stage of testing. I have burned the loader sucessfully using JDM and have uploaded mios 1.7 using midi-ox and then the midiboxLC using serge's loader. I have connected two of the 402A displays from reichelt and i have checked the display cableconfiguration several times. How the box behaves: When I switch on the box the displays light up, but no characters are shown (didn't test it when there was just mios on it). I tested the displays with no data pins connected and they showed the usual black bars but with very poor contrast (couldn't improve it with the pot. i could make the characters disappear but couldn't get better contrast. the backlight voltage also drops quite a lot when the midi-out led on the ltc is active, causing the displays to flicker) Then the box sends F0 00 00 7E 40 10 01 F7 once (that is correct as far as i understood the resources?!?) Then it keeps sending random pitchbend data. 1) When I disconnect the displays it gets faster. 2) When I ground pin 0-7 of J5 it slows down. 3) When I connect the four DINS (with no buttons connected) it slows down even more. ... That's it so far :) I just wan't to know what could be wrong with my box and how it should behave correctly or if there's something I should consider. Thanks a lot in advance! cheers rambinator

Thanks a lot for your replies.... @kostix: I allready thought about something like that myself, I guess thats how it works in the commercial ones... but I didn't try it yet because my father who is a mechanical engineer quite skilled in craft things laughed at me and said I wouldn get it to center at the correct position where I need it to be for the original note, because the pot doesn't have a detention at that position. But maybe I'll give it a try anyway. @goyousalukis: That sound like it is worth playing around with. I should have an old joystick somewhere. Also the use for filters you're proposing seems interesting. cheers rambinator

Hi! As I am using a yamaha clavinova as a midi-keyboard I don't have a modwheel or pitchbend. I am know progressing with my midi box and I asked myself if it would be possible to integrate some wheels in the box but I couldn't figure out how to do this mechanically and I didn't find any spare parts on the web either... Has anybody allready realized something like that? cheers, rambinator

Thanks a lot for that information, that's just what I needed to know. My pcbs and parts have now arrived and I think I will start building the box this weekend...

Hi xile! Thanks a lot for offering your advice. What I am not sure about at the moment is how it generally works if you use one of the "working" vst-instruments. The online manual I saw on my collegues daw just talked about how to control effects in a certain channel-strip. So let's say you want to use one of the "bigger" vst instruments like absynth, vanguard or z3ta+. What do you have to do to remote control lfo parameters or filters like cutoff? are the parameternames displayed on your box's lcd? I hope you allready found out about that :) cheers rambinator

Hi everyone! I'm new to this board and would like to introduce myself. I've been reading here for quite a long time and have finally decided to start building a midibox lc. I've now ordered pcbs and parts from mike's midishop and can't wait to start soldering :) I've allready done quite a lot of electronic diy project so this won't be much of a problem. As I am planning to set up some sort of DAW, step by step, I still have some questions regarding the MboxLC and some aspects of working with it, buying software etc. Since now I've been playing around with my yamaha clavinova as a masterkeyboard, an uc16 controler and orion platinum as a sequencer. The main problem I have with this setup is that orion's midi implementation is really poor as you can't use relative encoders and don't have any midi feedback. on the other hand it is quite easy and intuitive to use... Recently I saw Sonar 3 at a friends house and was quite impressed how cakewalk products have developed (I had an old version of cakewalk, before cakewalk pro audio came out). Now I'm planning to set Sonar on my wishlist for christmas :)... Nevertheless there are still some questions I couldn't answer surfing the web and reading this forum. So I hope there are some members in here, using Sonar and owning MidiboxLC... 1) As far as I understood, the Mackie Control is the best solution for controlling Sonar's mixer and effect plugins, right? But what about vsti/dxi- instruments? will I be able to controll their parameters? (will sonar "show" them to the box via LC-protocoll) or do I still have to use crappy uc16 (which I want to put on ebay) for this without midi feedback? I was reading some articles about Mackie Control and Sonar and some mentioned VSTI-Parameters but it was nowhere really described. I read that Sonar will have an update soon to support forthcoming Mackie C4. Does that mean that instruments aren't supported yet in the way the mixer is? if I won't have midi feedback and have to assign every parameter via midi-learn I could also stick with orion... 2) Are there any german motorfader-group-orders going on at the moments? if not I will order some at albs anyway... 3) Would it be possible to have another 8 encoders on the LC which aren't connected to the din by default but could be connected by the software, using a spare dout line and some optocouplers (at the same time disconnecting the motorfaders and some buttons to provide spare dins)? or is that nonsense because lc-protocol won't support more than 8 encoders and another 8 (as if you had a mackie xt or sort of small c4, if the implementation of this device will get known) would have to use another midiport (forcing me to build another complete midibox lc)? ...well that's it for the moment :) I hope that these questions aren't too dumb anyway. I'm really glad I found a new project I can spend my sparetime with  ;D cheers... rambinator