matrigs

a ok now i feel you - in fact i must have missed the pdf about the led rings. yeah they have to be matrixed and it seems that my 8 channel version will be ready on on core until the end of the week.

yes that's right but i'm momentarily thinking about having them connected each one single just to test them out.

the first question is bout these potentiometers - french radioohm. the spindle is completely round and slick and has not any hole or drill or anything. so how do knobs hold on to them?? i mean i guess i cannot use a simple knob which i use for my potentiometers which spindle looks like this and the other question: these knobs: what is the screw for at the top? is it just to calibrate the exact height of the knob or is this specially for the pots with the round spindle to somehow narrow them around them?? please help me with this one - o have to finish my box really soon and have to get the parts for that... and i guess this questions is very simple to someone.

ok - next day - even more frustration. i have completely false counted the amount of digital outputs! the led rings are 11 leds each and i have 10 of them making 110 digital outs. but the buttons are lighted too and there are 32 of them so i would need summary 142 outputs which are impossible to do with one core ! so i will need for sure another core which actually is a must when i also want to launch that spare 9th channel... my god what a dumbass i am :| but that's not only the only of todays problems. as you can see i have stuffed quite a lot parts today - it seems quite nice so far does it? it doesn't really... on the above picture you can clearly see that most of the drills of the buttons are not really round an untight. the problem is the following: you can see on that picture that for mounting the buttons i just used a big prototype-pcb which i have cut into pieces. when i measured it the distance between the drills where 0,25 mm. but when i mounted the buttons i came to the conclusion that the board isn't really produced accurate and the drills are about 0,25 mm and a few 1/1000 mm away. so when i mounted them the first three rows fitted perfectly but the position of the next few just didn't match! so i again had to widen them with a hand drill which resulted in non exact openings. i didn't pay a few hundreds for this project too look crap again... so, to have at least something positive today - here a picture of the buttons by night: yeah this picture tells me that it's worth it! to answer all questions: 1. i couldn't find any supporter in poland for some prefabricated ledrings so i have to make them by myself. the look good from the front-side and they work so i guess it's not that bad. 2. the software for this will mostly contain of the 64ain_128din_128dout software written in c by tk with a few small additions. the big opening between the encoders at the top is for a 40x2 lcd screen which will show, in the upper line the name of the functions controlled by every single upper encoder, in the lower line the functions of the lower encoders. i have 8 signs for every encoder so i think most of the function names will fit. the opening on the right of the lcd are for buttons which will change the functions of the encoders, and which will change the according function names on the screen. all the function names have to be in fact programmed every time you change your setup but, as my setup is mostly not chaning anymore this is just perfect for me. for example - for live use with ableton live the 10 encoders will control all the functions of the ableton reverb, and when i press a button, i can control a filter delay.

yes that's right - i will make this blog while doing my new, second midibox project called - "the massive". i hope that this blog besides being entertaining (you will later see why), will show a few problems and some possible solutions to them and maybe someone will get some ideas later. the idea was to make a controller looking like a mixer used for ableton live, reaktor, and some other applications. 8 channels, lots of control. so - this is the old project - my first ever midibox yeah i know it's ugly as hell - all the holes and slides where made by myself by hand with a high-speed drill, but sure it worked very vell. this black slider on the right is a crossfader from a reloop rmx-2 crossfader - it's stereo, it's about 50 kohms (dunno if it's liniar or logarithmic) but it works very very well. so now to the most important part of my new project - this time i got my frontplate from a company which makes stands and signs out of plexi and plastic and send them my project so they would cut it out with their laser. material is 3 mm milky plexiglass, special antistatic. here you have the plate like it came to me the idea was to make a controller looking like a mixer used for ableton live, reaktor, and some other applications. 8 channels, lots of control. it is very accurate made and very nice - and the price was ok too i guess. there was just only thing that was bothering me when stuffing the potentiometers in. as you can see i was talking above about 8 channels. now it seems that i have made a terrible mistake when creating the project in autocad, pasting the channel rows too often which now resulted i having 9 channels... the problem is that i have all parts counted for 8 channels so i will have to get the parts again which will result in massive shipping costs for just a few pots and buttons... on the other hand now i came to the conclusion that it's not that bad - now i have an additional channel which i will use for the master channel. i hoped that would be the only problem. hoped too soon. as you can see i have also made a mistake when making the ledrings which now resulted in having two of them in a slight narrower diameter... goddamn. i was just hoping that they wouldn't collide with the encoder. thank god it didn't problably you just laugh about the mess of the cables at the leds but i mean - it works. i have bent and soldered one of the legs of the leds together round the encoder in a circle so i didn't have to solder them with cables also. i just had to cover the encoder with some tape because the legs where to near to it and the voltage was jumping over to the encoder. so, i will post here everyday posting pics about what i have done next - much work left. keep your fingers crossed for me !

thanks tons for this !! you know what - i did exactly what you said the whole time over and it still didn't work and i was really at the edge of crying before the solution just popped into my head. all the time i was curious why the hell did my button press send some midi cc data when it wasn't supposed to (no din_notify_toggle in my setup) - even when i completely tossed out everything related to button press it still sended midi data. i nearly spoiled coffee on my screen when it suddenly got me - when i launched the encoder i engaged all pins of the first two shift registers to encoder mode but there was only one encoder connected and the rest of the pins are buttons !!!! so that's why it didn't work all the time :D thanks so much for your help i think this project should speed up a lot now :P

call me dumb but as the shift variable is local it gets erased once the din notify is ended. so how can i ten use this variable a few lines beneath in the enc notify function ?

in fact i found an old topic about that issue but tk was meant to check it with a faulty ls165 and see what's causing problems... any updates on that ?

i just soldered a din together using those chips and something seems to be not working - is it the chip that is not usable or bad soldering ?

i'm sorry but the thing is that those explained examples are perfectly clear for me but changing a single character makes me unsure about it. i understand the c example with sending the midi notes and i understand WHAT i should do but i don't know how to just put the code together. yeah but i guess that's the way

just em, could you maybe also show me how to connect this shift function to a button press?

thanks i'll have to try that one out!

could you give me any hint on this one? i'm doing a program in c from scratch with the skeleton. i have already launched the analog inputs, pots are working fine now there is a thing that i would want to implement. i want to add 8 encoders (i guess launching them will not be to difficul) and now, i want to have 4 buttons which will shift their send cc numbers. so let's say that they are sending cc 0-7 from the beginning, when i press the button they sen 8-15 then i press a third button and the send 16-23. i guess i have to somehow "shift" the pin number in the MIOS_MIDI_TxBufferPut(pin) function as this is sending the appropriate cc to the core (i hope i got that one right) could anybody give me a hint ?

i rather wanted just something like a "kickstart" and someone to tell me where i should begin so i don't loose a few months coding before i get to the conclusion that i created a monster patch and have to delete it and start from scratch. but i guess that's the thing with diy. i mean you guys already have knowledge - i really want to work efficiently and the only thing i need is a small push. i will start from zero - with the skeleton. first i think that it would be absolutely annoying to delete all those unnecesarry functions from an application like m64e or m64 because there are just too much useless ones for me second i wold rather want to stick to c and as the complete apps are all in assembler i don't want to mix it. i think that launching all analog and digital inputs as well as showing the labels that i want on the screen seems to be rather simple as there are ready made examples in c for it. the part that will make my nights sleepless is the part with switching the encoder cc's. i will try to document every step and progress so i can make a decent tutorial afterwards. cheers.

some simple hint would be very nice - maybe i should start from midibox lc?

actually a 6th question came to my mind: 6. what is more efficient (time and money wise) - making led rings or letting the value's of the encoders be shown on the lcd?

so - at the beginning i wanted to make a very simpel controller looking like a simple audio mixer - 8 faders and above every fader a column of 7 pots which control sends, eq, gains etc. but before i consider making this rather simple box (one core, 2 ain, 1 din for buttons and 1 dout) i thought about "pimping" it a bit up and that's where i need help. you can see what i'm talking about on the attached picture so, the addition would be those two 2x40 lcd's with encoders beneath and to the right of them. they would be useful to control the two effects that i have stuffed to send channel 1 and 2 - the upper would control the effect on send channel 1 (probably reverb), the lower one controls the effect on send channel two (probably filter delay). so - what i want to achievie is following: the encoder to the right of every screen scrolls through "pages" of predefined control names - very similar to the midibox tc with the only addition that insterad of a few buttons, i have a encoder to control every function. the screen doesn't have to show me the actual value of the control, nor that it has been changed (i guess this will be a few days of programing less...) i want to use predefined names because i mostly use a very standardized setup for playing and all those automap/logic control features creep the hell out of me when i have to, let's say scroll through 128 parameter names in absynth 3 to find the desiered one :| i already made a very simple box with 9 faders, an a lcd, 24 pots and a few buttons - so i guess the "hardware part" wont be that difficult for me - already got a company which will make the frontplate out of milky-plexi-glas - looks very awesome. now to my questions: 1. - is this setup possible to make on only one core? i mean it should be - as i don't exceed the input/output count but i mean performance related - is that a good idea to stuff that many to just one core? maybe i should divide the analog and digital part between two cores? 2. - how much time do you think it would take for me as a complete program noob never touching c to make those lcd's work like i want? 3. - should i use the midibox tc code and extend it or start a program from scratch? 4. - if i would want to use led-rings around those encoders - how much work is there with them? is this about copy&paste the example code into the c file or is there more magic behind it? 5. what do you think about the idea actually - do you think it's worth spending the money for the lcd's and the encoders and the time for this project - or should i, with mi minimal programming knowledge better stick to a simple interfeace? thanks you VERY much for your help in advance, matrigs

ah i guess i'll try the solution with multiple small screens if i find any free pins on my pic :>

is it actually possible to use two T6963C screens on one midibox, like it's possible with character lcd's? the thing is that i need just a solution for my new midibox projekt that would allow me to have a screen on the left of my box which will ha 21 cm length and coul display about 4 characters in a row.

okay - there was this idea add a big 4x40 lcd screen to my box, vertical on the left of all my potentiometers. graphical displays won't be a good idea in this case. i guess i'll have to use multiple small screens.

i am not sure how lcd's work but if i understand correctly it has all the different character signs written in it's memory - horizontal and this it's not possible to make them vertical? please correct me if i'm wrong - this would actually change my midibox layout quite drastically :D

i was afraid you would use that term "write in c"... i guess i will have to learn it if i really want to achieve something...

okay i'm lost on this case - is it possible to configure buttons the way so that it - pressed once has one function - pressed a second time has another function and pressed a third time jumps back to zero ?

i found this really need and cheap leds lately which shine on different colours depending on the polarisation. now - is it possible to somehow connect this led to two dout ports at once so, let's say when port 1 is active the led shines green and when port 2 is active the led shines red? this can be interesting for example when you make a midibox similar to an audio mixer - when the channel is playing normal the led doesn't shine at all, if it's muted it is red and when it's solo'ed, it's green.

i'm curious if it would be possible to make something like this as shown in the http://waveidea.com/en/products/bitstream_3x/index.php would be a neat addition to ableton live as there is no such funciton like midi looping in it. of course you can make it with some midi-yoke's and stuff but that's really not comfortable !! any hints ?