Max Romantschuk

Unfortunately I'm a bit behind my already rather unambitious schedule. Family- and work-related stuff has occupied my time lately. But I'm definitely going to complete this project, even if it takes a long time. :)

Baby steps... I'm not dead yet but Real Life got hold of me for a while and good too. I finally got the desoldering job done on the DIN tonight. Gotta read up on the docs and put it all back into active memory so I can hopefully get some more done soon. :) I should be able to do that, have to look into that as well.

Gorgeous. :)

Hehe :) I envy your progress... My project is going a lot slower than yours. Then again I did anticipate this from the start. After work and the kids there's not a lot of extra time except for the occasional late night. ;)

I really like this design. :) I think Sasha has a good and rational point about the displays, but then again being creative should call for the interface that inspires you the most!

If you wanted to downsize the power supply you could look at those used for mini-ITX builds. If you're booting of usb the wattage should indeed be minimal, processor+motherboard load only basically. Keep us posted on your progress! :)

Who runs that midibox.org blog anyway? I think it's sort of weird when you google midibox and end up there... Would be better to end up in ucapps or the wiki.

I'm sorry but I don't think anyone is willing to do the hours and hours of research and planning your project entails for you. You need so spend some time looking at ucapps and the wiki linked at the top of the forum. Once you have a real plan, not just a fancy idea, post a new post to this thread on how you plan to build your box. Then I'm sure people will be happy to help you with ironing out the details. I don't mean to sound harsh, but the Do It Yourself idea with midiboxes is just that... :D

Gotta say I love the color. It's unique, just like the device itself. :)

I personally have no experience with Live, but I do know a fair bit about designing successful standards and protocols... Make it as open and well documented as possible. The more accessible the information on how to implement the protocol is, the more likely it is to be adopted. I've seen a lot of great technology fall due to the fact that it was poorly documented, or alternatively the documentation wasn't made freely available. Making a custom protocol is a double edged sword. On one hand it gives the greatest flexibility, but then again adopting an existing open protocol (Open Sound Control, for instance) could be a good option as well. Not that I claim to be able to judge the suitability of OSC for an application like this. Also, don't make people buy your product to be able to interface with it. I don't know if there is already a suitable demo available, but it makes sense to have a full-featured version of the product with a full protocol implementation freely available for download. (Saving disabled or something like that.) This way someone who wants to try interfacing his DIY controller with your product can give it a shot, and you might end up gaining a customer.

I'm feeding the 7805 9V DC. Right now I only have a core and an LCD. With just the core it runs nice and cool, attach the LCD and it goes too hot to touch. (I do know it's under a 100 C.) The LCD is from Mike's, but I don't have specs on how much the backlight draws. (The datasheet I've googled only refers to the data pinout.) I don't think I have any errors on the core, as it works fine and the 7805 stays cool without LCD. The LCD works, so I'm at a loss as to what could be wrong there. I did leave the core and LCD on for over an hour, and no magic smoke came out of any components... Seems the 7805 just gets hot, so maybe I'll just heatsink it and not worry unless something malfunctions. ;)

Work is slowly progressing on the DIN module, 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there... I have all the top-side bridges, and having soldered two of the bottom ones I realized that they use the same hole as the shift register chips. Next up: Desoldering. ;) Will probably finish the DIN next weekend, if all goes to plan. Any input on the 7805 getting hot by the way? The search terms "7805 hot" didn't seem to do me an awful lot of good. I'm feeding 9 volts to the core, that should be within spec, right?

Ah, figured it out now... :)

Um, reading the ucapps docs it seems faders/pots should be 10K linear, not 100K. Or am I missing something? :)