/tilted/

That is beautiful. Unfortunately, I now must make one.

Cheaper idea: Vactrols... Depends on the price / level of visual feedback ratio. Also the whole thing might depend on the type of pots used in the original unit.

I think the 1k should be considered a minimum value, only to be used if you have only a few pots. 1k pots are probably fine if you have 1-8 pots. more than this may cause problems. [tt] 64x 1k parallel = 15.625 ohms. current @5V supply = 320mA 64x 10k parallel = 156.25 ohms. current @5V supply = 32mA 8x 1k parallel = 125 ohms. current @5V supply = 40mA [/tt] so you can see that in terms of supply load, there is quite a difference. I'd say you definitely want to keep your total parallel load up around the 125 ohms or more range (< 40mA).

They crazy! Man those early users squeezed a sh%tload out of those 6502s, not to mention the whopping 5k of ram.

That would be creatorlars.

OK, so having actually looked at your data, I think this problem may well go away with the upgrade to 10k pots. I think that having such a low total resistance on your power rails is pulling the rails themselves together, and introducing noise to your pots as they do so.

I got one for about $4 us. They sell them on eBay. These say they are for car dashboards, but it's all the same. edit: you could absolutely power 2 LCDs from one inverter. I hope that I can do 6...

By the way, while doing the pots in banks of 8 is certainly a good idea, it does not change the overall resistance presented to the power rails. Instead of 1k//1k//1k//1k//1k//1k//1k//1k//1k//1k = 62.5 ohms, you have: (1k//1k//1k//1k//1k)//(1k//1k//1k//1k//1k) = 125//125 ohms, = 62.5 ohms. I think the main reason for the banked structure is that it makes fault finding slightly easier.

In a word, yes. Not the problem, but not exactly part of the solution. Putting 16 x 1k pots in parallel across your power rails is the equivalent of 62.5 ohms. This will put a drain on your supply of around 80mA. This is not huge, but it is not helping. Changing to 10k pots will increase the equivalent resistance to 625 ohms, reducing the load on your power supply to 8mA. This will also increase the resolution that your pots present to the AIN pins on the core.

I run lighting in a small-ish theatre in Melbourne. It has 376 seats. I counted them. The George Fairfax Studio It is the smallest production theatre in the Arts Centre building. Which looks like this. Edit: the short version of the essay... I've been in to electronics "forever". I've been in to music nearly as long. I started tinkering at about age 7 with those springy elctronics prototype kits. Taught myself to solder around age 9 and have been building electronics gadgets ever since. Music has always been a part of my life. I remember listening to LPs with my dad as a yougster, many of which I have now pinched from him, or bought second-hand. I took up guitar age 9 ish (I still suck), piano age 10-11 (which I suck a fair bit at), and drums age 13 (which I suck the least at). I've been in a heap of bands (up to 5 at a time), but am currently in none. I am working on a malletKat clone, and contemplating a modular... Musically i really love Zappa, and anything experimental, though I draw the line somewhere before Stockhausen.

If I might make a small suggestion... Don't do "force to scale". Or maybe, have an easy to find button that does the "force to scale" mode. If you leave the force to scale mode off, your child will make some of the most amazing beautiful, uninhibited music you've ever heard. Besides, they'll have the rest of their lives to be told which notes to play. ;) Re: the circular step pattern:

What value of pots are you using? Have you double-checked your wiring? Do you have enough power? Do you have a smooth, stable power supply?

I usually buy really low spec 0 ohm resistors. I find that even the 20% tolerance types are still pretty good. But you still need to measure them. If you get a 20% tolerance 0 ohm which is 20% under, you're in big trouble. I think they call these "batteries".

your encoder type is DETENTED Ie, the second one on the uCApps page you linked to. The point TK is trying to make is not that you have wired your encoder badly, but rather that you have wired it wrong. By this we mean that while you might have a good strong physical connection, the connection is to the wrong pin on the DIN board. Now, we've established that the centre pin on your encoder goes to GND (Vss), now you may have the other two pins wired backward. I would also suggest you double check that your centre pin is to GND (vss), as i still think this is the real problem. If you connect one of your other pins to GND, and the centre and opposite pins to your DIN board, the encoder will seem to work, but only go in one direction, just as you described.

I'd say it is very unlikely that you could damage a rotary encoder by soldering it. However the spec sheet you linked to did mention it.

Nice work. I wish my friends would make me cool synths... actually, that would take the fun out. For me, at least half the fun is in the building. ;)

In your case, it seems the centre terminal is to go to GND. If you get the other two back-to-front, "all" that will happen is that the encoder will work the wrong way (ie, clockwise turn will decrement value/position) I'd be a little careful with your encoder, as the manufacturer does not recommend hand-soldering. So to be safe, you might prefer to swap wires at the DIN board, rather than at the encoder.

If Wilba runs out of these cut resistor leads, let me know. I've got heaps, too. Edit: if demand proves high enough, maybe we should do a bulk order? ::)

I have added myself to the list on the wiki. I have done this because this is an absolutely fantastic deal, which I cannot turn down. Thanks heaps MTE! Thank you very much for organising this order.

Hey, guess what? I think I got my Saffire working! Nothing to do with the box, or the drivers, but more to do with those fabulous boffins at Microsoft not quite getting the Firewire sorted out in XP SP2. There's a free patch available to all law-abiding XP owners.

Two cores from one power supply... yes. Two cores from on 9v 500mA supply... probably not. You may find that you need more current. The good news is that you can test your cores individually with this suppy, then try the two together, and if you run out of steam the cores (maybe one, maybe both) will simply reset. - Then you can go get a bigger supply.

The biggest problem is the trade off between safety and EMI. In order to meet certain EMI restrictions, many new designs of SMPS have a pair of class Y1 capacitors connected between the mains line and the output, as a form of EMI suppression. These caps essentially mean that the output "floats" about halfway between ground potential and your mains voltage. This in itself is not a big concern, as even an AC transformer will have a floating output, but there is potential for these caps to develop a charge as you plug in (plugging in thus un-floats the output) and increase the output-to-ground potential yet further, to around the peak-to-peak voltage at your mains line. I should stress here that this is not considered to be a hazard to humans, as the amount of energy available is probably not enough to kill you (although it does hurt - a lot). The amount of energy available will easily destroy, for example, your DIN boards, probably your SIDs (by plugging external devices into the inputs), potentially your core (if say, AINs were connected to a device with a seperate supply). I should also stress that I am not trying to start a panic here. I just think we should be a little careful, especially regarding super-super-cheap SMPS-s.

If anyone might be feeling tempted by low prices and impressive specs from Switch mode power supplies (also called switching supplies and SMPS) - Read this article first: http://sound.westhost.com/articles/external-psu.htm Note that the article is actually about a proposed change to Australian legislation to outlaw external linear PSUs, but the information is still important from a non-legal standpoint. There are significant dangers not only in terms of increased audio noise and confused digital signals, but in terms of destruction of electronic equipment, PARTICULARY equipment which PLUGS INTO or otherwise ATTACHES to OTHER EQUIPMENT. Sorry to "shout" but this is really important, and I would (if I may) call it required reading for any midiboxer.

No. There is not.

...or the design might call for pull-down resistors...