questionable

The little bit of engraving I had done (the lines, some text) actually added quite a bit to the cost. If I were trying to save money, I'd certainly ditch the engraving. The nice thing about designing your own controller, is that everything is exactly where YOU want it, so instead of reading labels, you can just twist the knob that you KNOW is the fx send, or whatever.

Yeah, the front panel was just a bit over $100 US. That being said, having a well made front panel really makes me want to use it, instead of just being embarrassed about my poor metalworking skills.

The buttons are from here: https://www.allelectronics.com/index.php?page=item&id=PB-155&extra=a%3A2%3A{i%3A0%3Bs%3A40%3A%2203823345592a403b2f4a37a59384e7ab28f02be1%22%3Bi%3A1%3Bs%3A0%3A%22%22%3B} but they seem to be sold out.

Thank you for the kind words.

Adding to the glut of Midibox Traktor controllers out there, I introduce my new project: It is a Midibox64 based project, with 32 pots/faders, 20 LED's, 1 LCD, and 36 Buttons. It has 1 CORE Module, 1 AIN Module, 2 DIN Modules, and 1 DOUT Module, all purchased from SmashTV. I have written up a page on the wiki detailing the build at http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=questionable I have also been blogging the build (as well as that of my Arduinome) at http://www.nonsilence.com. I will be posting a video on the blog of the Midibox in action as soon as some replacement faders arrive (the crossfaders shown were mistakenly purchased as Log faders, not Linear). Regardless, the box works perfectly, and I am overjoyed to have a surface to work with that includes exactly the feature set I have been looking for. Thanks Thorsten and the rest of the Midibox devs for creating this fantastic project.

Well, I decided to look at things and tackle the easiest possibilities first. I snipped off the connector to the board, redid another connector, and voila, it works. Thank you for your assistance!

I will do exactly that. Thank you.

It's been a long day working with the midibox. I've finally got the AIN working (had some grounding issues), the DIN working (was using the wrong pins on Smash's fancy split cable DIN/DOUT design), and the DOUT working, sort of. Even the LCD that I was having trouble with earlier is working. In all, I'm quite happy with the progress. However... I had the DOUT/LED's working correctly (although I still need to assign them to the correct buttons, they were firing on different button pushes, as expected), and was sitting across the room on the sofa admiring the glow of the LCD, when all of a sudden all of the LED's all lit up simultaneously (I have 20 in total), and will not turn off until I unplug the box. Upon reboot, the LED's remain lit, and the DOUT function seems to be no longer working. Any suggestions? Upon searching for similar problems, I discovered TK recommending stuffing some caps in the DOUT module, but I'm not exactly sure how that would work, what value and where I should place them. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

It was not the LCD after all, just failed attempts at uploading MIOS. I ended up trying a manual upload with a longer delay between sends. All is well...sort of, but I'll post another topic, as it's completely unrelated.

Alright, so I've managed to get MIOS installed (i think), but the LCD is only reading "Bootloader is Up to Date", I never get the Ready text. From what I'm reading, this is not correct. Should I continue loading the application at this point?

The plot thickens. While trying to figure out how to send that string to MIOS to see if it returns correctly, I decided to try reuploading the update_without_installed_mios hex file, which then didn't work, gave me some errors. I then decided to try an upload from an older version of MIOS, which also didn't work, but the LCD gave me an error message saying "no update". So I guess the LCD is working, and it's an issue with MIOS not installing correctly or completely.

Good ideas, all of them. I suppose the issue is that there's really so many interesting and fun ways that I could have botched this thing...it's hard to wrap my head around where to start. :)

Yep, I've triple checked the connections per that diagram. Right now the backlight isn't working, but I think I recall on the datasheet I had at one point (can no longer find) that the +/- were flipped on this display, so swapping those should fix the backlight. I was hoping to find the datasheet again, so that I could double check that the pin assignments on the LCD were the same, but without the serial number of the LCD, I have no hope of finding that data sheet. If the LCD is working in general (although just displaying black boxes along the top, contrast controls do work), I suppose maybe I should be looking elsewhere for the problems. What's odd is that after uploading MIOS, the midibox is acting correctly (ie, only sends one upload request after powering up, instead of the continuous stream it was doing before), so my thoughts are that MIOS is operating correctly...which leads me back to thinking that the LCD is not working correctly. Perhaps my next step should be this (from the wiki)

Howdy Midiboxers. I've finally finished the wiring on my box, but am having some difficulty as the LCD shows only a row of black boxes on the top row, and never displays the ready text. The midi firmware upload seems to have worked fine (no errors), so I expect that MIOS is loaded properly. I'd like to make sure that my pin assignments are correct on my LCD, but I don't have any way of telling what brand/model number my LCD is. Does anyone recognize this display? I remember there was a sticker on the display that had some numbers, but that has been removed. I believe I may have purchased the display from SmashTV, but that was several years ago. Any help is much appreciated.

Okay. Thanks for clearing that up. I had come across that diagram before, but can never seem to find it when I'm looking. And yes, I'll be taking plenty more pictures.

Thanks a bunch for the review. I was hoping I was doing it correctly, but stopped progress until I knew for sure, as I didn't want to have to go back and redo things. Much appreciated. Now, I understand I need to use star grounding for the AIN pots and faders. Does that mean that I must bring every pot to a common point individually, or do I just need to daisy chain them as I've done the DIN buttons, and then bring the endpoints of those to a common ground?

Dearest helpful midiboxers: I am currently embarking on my first midibox project, a Traktor control surface based on a Midibox 64. The interested can follow my progress at http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=questionable (the Midibox Wiki) and at my blog http://www.nonsilence.com. I've just started wiring the buttons, and I'm unsure that I am handling the grounding correctly. In the image below, you can see a set of buttons, each with a rainbow wire coming from the DIN board to the button. I think I've got that handled correctly. However, I am questioning the black wire (from VS on the DIN) coming into the nearest button, and then the yellow wires that then travel from button to button for the remaining buttons. Am I doing this correctly?

Anyone have a partslist for the AOUT module from Mouser for US midiboxers? I went through the whole process of ordering through Reichelt, only to find out that they have a 150 euro minimum, and wouldn't ship to me. :( Ugh.